The Bahamas is a smuggling route. It has been that for centuries. We live at the doorstep of the wealthiest country in the world, under which is a relatively poor region. Just under us is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (Haiti). We smuggle drugs. We smuggle guns. We smuggle people.
While drug and gun prosecutions are common in The Bahamas, human smuggling cases are not. Consequently, the sentence handed down to a Jamaican recently was of significance.
Chevaneese Sasha Gay Hall, 24, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for forcing two Jamaican women into the sex trade. She is the first person in The Bahamas to be convicted of human trafficking.
Senior Justice Jon Isaacs sentenced her to 15 years on four counts of trafficking in persons and seven years in prison on two counts of unlawfully withholding the victims' passports. The sentences run concurrently.
Prosecutors said Hall recruited two women to work for her prostitution ring in January 2013.
The women, who were recruited separately, testified that they met Hall in Jamaica and she convinced them that she could get them jobs. One said she was promised a job as a bartender; the other said she was promised a job as a masseuse. However, Hall seized their passports once they came to the country and told them they would have to prostitute themselves.
The women said they were closely managed and only left their apartment in Grand Bahama for jobs. However, the sex ring unraveled when one of the women escaped and alerted police.
We should continue to push these investigations and prosecutions. Human trafficking is rightly described as modern day slavery. Ruthless smugglers take the few dollars possessed by the desperate, taking them across dangerous routes - sometimes killing them along the way - to destinations often apart from what was promised. Many smuggled people end up in places where they are not paid, where they do not have freedom of movement, where they have to sell their bodies for sex to avoid violent reprisals.
The government and our law enforcement agencies should especially seek prosecutions when it comes to the trafficking of Haitians to The Bahamas. Thousands of people from Haiti are brought here each year via organized smuggling operations. Breaking these criminal networks would help us gain some control over the flow of people from that country.
The recently released U.S. Department of State 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report noted the problem with the trafficking of people from Haiti: "Migrant workers are especially vulnerable to involuntary servitude in The Bahamas, particularly the thousands of Haitians who arrive in The Bahamas largely voluntarily to work as domestic employees and laborers."
The police and prosecutors who brought this case forward should be commended. They should also be encouraged to expand the fight against this abhorrent practice in order to protect the vulnerable.

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