No, this isn't about DeShawn Watson or Robert Kraft. It's a local story right here in my hometown:
A Tacoma man suspected of sex trafficking is listed as the owner of as many as 13 massage parlors across the state, including four in Kennewick. Linhui Yan, 60, is the owner of the Clearwater Avenue storefront raided by Kennewick police and federal agents Wednesday morning, according to court documents. It’s unclear if the other three businesses are still operating. The Clearwater Avenue business was targeted for a search after a visit by an undercover officer in February, according to the documents. He said he was greeted by a woman who at first gave him a massage and then offered sex acts. It was part of a 7-month investigation led by the Wenatchee-based Columbia River Drug Task Force.
Investigators believe they trafficked in women from outside of the country, who were required to live inside the business storefront and Yan would bring them weeks-worth of groceries at a time to live on.
Read more at: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/loc ... rylink=cpy
There's more in that article about the conditions the women were forced to work in.
I'm not sure why it took this long to bust this guy. For decades, it's been a well known fact that many, if not most, massage parlors are nothing more than a front for prostitution. There's tons of blatant red flags that a moron could see, including explicit ads on the internet and way more massage parlors than what normal business could support as there's at least 10 of them in the Clearwater corridor here in Kennewick.
The big issue here is human trafficking and forced prostitution. I can understand closing a blind eye to the prostitution aspect. After all, the cops have more to do than pursuing misdemeanor crimes involving consensual sex. But common sense would lead one to suspect that the women were brought into the country and forced to work in these rub-and-tug joints. Most of the women are Asian, many not able to speak passable English. Aren't they supposed to have a license to practice? How did they get into the country? They certainly didn't swim the Rio Grande.
Rather than worrying about illegal immigrants that work in the fields trying to earn enough money to send back to their families or these folks that are running away from the drug gangs in Central America, our border control efforts need to be more focused on human trafficking. Rather than spending billions on Trump's hideous border wall, we need focus our efforts on ports of entry.