Young Mexican women forced into prostitution in the United States

Nicole Bode:

Young prostitutes ply their trade on streets of border town Tijuana, Mexico. Many will make as much as $250 each day selling sex.

Hundreds of young women stand with their backs pressed up against a graffiti-covered concrete wall on a side street in Tijuana. Leering men swarm around the girls, some as young as 8, as a chill wind blows across their exposed skin, bound tightly inside leather bustiers, miniskirts and schoolgirl uniforms.

Before the night is over, the girls of "Zona Rosa" - a notorious red-light district just a few blocks from the main tourist drag in this Mexican border town - will make as much as $250 each by selling sex.

It's cold-blooded sexual slavery - forced prostitution that began when they were kidnapped from their small towns in Mexico and Central America and smuggled through a dangerous corridor that leads into the United States.

After they work their apprenticeships in Tijuana, many of the girls end up as sexual servants in New York's illegal brothels.

"I've been in this business for 30 years - it's much more prevalent now than it was then," said federal agent Martin Ficke, who oversees the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's New York division.

"They are coming from everywhere," Ficke said. "(They) are brought to the U.S. under false pretenses and they are forced to work as prostitutes against their will."

As many as 17,500 sex slaves are smuggled into the United States each year, according to the latest federal statistics.

One out of every three people trafficked into New York is forced into prostitution, according to Safe Horizon, a Manhattan-based human rights organization.

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