Local
Forced labor operation busted
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
November 24, 2008
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| Between seven to 11 women are said to have been held at a time by Soripada Lubis at 7129 Roosevelt Ave., in Falls Church. (Andrew Harnik/Examiner) |
For the past seven years, federal authorities say, a Falls Church man forced almost a dozen female illegal immigrants from Indonesia into a form of slavery, selling their services as housekeepers to Montgomery County families.
Soripada Lubis has been charged with conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants. He has been released on bail and ordered to stay at his Roosevelt Avenue home with his wife and children.
It’s in that home, a federal agent said in a sworn statement, that Lubis kept between seven and 11 women at a time, sometimes sleeping two to a bed. He allegedly held the women’s passports, and threatened kill their families in Indonesia and alert immigration officials if they left him, the statement said. In summarizing an interview with one of the women the agent compared her response, based on his training and experience, to that of “victims of human trafficking.”
The women were charged between $300 and $350 a month, plus other expenses, to live in the one-story home on weekends. Lubis, or an unnamed relative, would drive the women to households in places like Potomac, where they worked and lived during the week, the statement said.
Investigators say some of the women had come to the United States legally, but fell into Lubis’ clutches after they overstayed their visas, or were persuaded by his offers of financial rewards to leave their original employers and violate their visas, the statement said.
Andrea Powell, executive director of the Washington-based anti-human trafficking FAIR Fund, said Lubis’ alleged threats against the women go beyond harboring and enter the territory of human trafficking, a form of slavery.
There are thousands of women who are trafficked every year in the United States. The majority of trafficked women are found in the sex slave trade, but in the Washington region, experts say foreign diplomats, and others, are known to hire illegal immigrant domestic help and then trap them through devious means.
Earlier this year, the Montgomery County Council passed a law enabling houseworkers to form contracts with their employers as protection against human traffickers.
Councilman Mark Eldridge played a key role in passing the contract law. He said Lubis’ case “shocked” him.
“I’ve heard about individuals taking advantage of one worker at a time. ... But this goes way beyond that,” Eldridge said.
Over the past eight years, the State and Justice departments have heightened their focus on combating human trafficking, a wide-reaching term that includes the sex slave trade, child soldiers and, much like the women held in Lubis’ home, involuntary domestic servitude.
On Wednesday, Mark Lagon, who heads the State Department’s efforts to combat human trafficking, told an audience in Bern, Switzerland, that “under the guise of legal and beneficial migration, traffickers are grossly exploiting the aspirations of thousands of poor women and girls, luring them with promises of jobs ... and delivering them through force, fraud, or coercion.”
Authorities learned of Lubis in 2006, when a relative of a woman living in his basement contacted U.S. diplomats in Jakarta, Indonesia, seeking help. Over the next two years, authorities met with four women who said they had lived with Lubis at various times starting in 2001.
Investigators say they watched as Lubis, and others, carted the women in a 2002 Silver Honda Odyssey to their Montgomery County jobs. Authorities searched through his trash, finding evidence of the operation as recently as October.
Lubis was taken into custody Oct. 27. His attorney, Kevin Brehm, did not return calls for comment.
