The drafting of the TVPA was partially instigated by the U.S.
government's inadequate and belated handling of landmark cases that drew the United States' attention to the problem of labor trafficking. 43 In
September of 1995, police conducted a raid in a garment factory in El
Monte, California where they discovered "seventy-two Thai nationals
working in slave-like conditions," who had been trafficked into the United
States to work 18 hours per day, seven da a week for less than $0.60 an
hour, restrained by threats and violence. Two years later the New York
City Police Department discovered 62 deaf-mute Mexican immigrants who
were trafficked into the United States and were forced to beg in the streets
for 18 hours per day, seven days a week. When they failed to meet their
$600 per week quota they were subject to physical beatings, electrocution,
mental abuse, and molestation. Another case arose in 1996, when Miguel
Flores' labor camps in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina were
discovered after the camps had been operating for years, where Flores had
enslaved between 400 and 500 people. This had first become apparent in
1992, when members of the NGO, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
(CIW), were approached by six laborers who informed CIW that they had
not been paid for their work at the camp and that their boss shot a
worker."' The Department of Justice delayed taking action until 1996
when an indictment was brought in U.S. District Court against Miguel
Flores, his partner Sebastian Gomez, and two of their recruiters, all of
whom entered a guilty plea the next year. The delay in prosecution indicated that "[t]he government simply wasn't prepared for modern
slavery, and the result was hesitation, confusion, lack of interest, and
constant misunderstandings on the government's part in pursuing it, as
well as the inordinately long time it took to bring the traffickers to
justice." "' These cases, and others like them, magnified the "general
concern that available criminal punishments would not be severe enough
to fit the crime." 50 This realization was "instrumental in bringing about the
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in 2000, with its sets of
definitions, charges, and penalties for dealing specifically with cases of sex
and labor slavery in the United States