When the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division announced its seizure of CityXGuide.com and arrest of the site’s owner Wilhan Martono, ICE depicted the events as a victory in the battle against human trafficking, sex trafficking and child exploitation.
“This case is a harsh reminder of the ruthlessness of human traffickers and lengths to which they go, including victimizing women and children, to make a profit,” Ryan L. Spradlin, special agent in charge of HSI Dallas, said in a statement issued by HSI Dallas on June 19. “HSI maintains its unwavering commitment to investigate these heinous crimes, rescue victims, and prosecute the offenders to the fullest extent of the law.”
Sex workers and their advocates, however, see the seizure of the site through a very different lens.
“CityXGuide.com’s shutdown is only the latest step in the long history of targeting the entire sex trade in the name of trafficking while disregarding the impact on the very people these shutdowns pretend to protect,” said Phoenix Calida, Communications Director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA, in a statement released this week in conjunction with the sex worker collective Hacking//Hustling. “People in the sex trades need real resources, not expensive and media-friendly criminal prosecutions against ad sites used for harm reduction.”
In the joint statement, SWOP-USA and Hacking//Hustling noted that the arrest of Martono is the first time FOSTA/SESTA has been used in a criminal case. (While the law is widely seen as inspired by and directed at Backpage.com, as YNOT observed at the time, the prosecution of Backpage and its principals was undertaken before FOSTA/SESTA had been signed into law by President Donald Trump.)
Following the closure of Backpage, in one survey of sex workers, “72% of one study’s respondents reported increased financial insecurity and 36% reported increases in violence,” SWOP-USA and Hacking//Hustling said in their joint statement.
“The real reckless disregard for trafficking is the government’s takedown of another website used by low-income sex workers to reduce their vulnerability to violence,” the sex worker advocates added in their statement.
“When we are re-envisioning public safety, this is a perfect example of why we can’t exempt human trafficking,” said Lorelei Lee, a member of the Hacking//Hustling collective. “Instead of resources going to real investigations or victim support, you have six agencies spending time and resources reading ads and looking for the word ‘blow job.’”
The sex worker advocates closed their statement on the CityXGuide seizure by stating “now that we have seen the impact to be law enforcement’s increased targeting of the sex trade and a decrease in anti-trafficking efforts, we can only hope that lawmakers will re-think this approach and address exploitation, not waste resources.”
