Rights groups estimate 30, migrants, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, are working in bars in shopping streets and red light districts in the bustling city near the Guatemala border that has become a trafficking hotspot. This includes increasing numbers of women and children fleeing Central America due to the deteriorating situation, said Francesca Fontanini, spokeswoman for U.
UNHCR figures show the number of Central American migrants seeking asylum abroad surged five-fold in the four years to to around , The number of families, mostly from Central America, stopped at the U.
Customs and Border Protection said. But while chasing their dreams, migrants make easy prey for traffickers on their journey north. Often poor and with little education, they are lured with false promises of good jobs in restaurants and hotels. She has no support networks. Traffickers, called enganchadores, lurk in migrant shelters on the prowl for potential victims, often young female migrants traveling alone with their children.
Flor Maria Rigoni, an Italian priest who founded the shelter two decades ago, helps migrants and those who have been rescued from prostitution rings run by organized criminal gangs.
It usually starts with a trafficker befriending a migrant, showering her with gifts, kind words and offers of help to cross into the United States and pretending to fall in love with the woman, even marrying her, Rigoni said. Over the past six years Rigoni has helped nearly migrants, mostly Honduran women and girls, who have been trafficked into sex work.
