Through the Static

By Hannah Saunders

After Bothell Police raided five Asian-owned massage parlors on April 14, citing suspected prostitution and fire safety concerns, the Massage Parlor Organizing Project (MPOP) in Seattle is speaking out and has written a demand letter for greater protections. The five parlors have since been ordered to close. 

The police said they received several community complaints about possible prostitution and have placed anti-human trafficking flyers on the fronts of the businesses. But MPOP Seattle stated that the real, destructive fires are state violence, like police and ICE raids, carceral anti-trafficking measures, inaccessibility to massage parlor licensing, and little worker protections and rights. 

“Fighting trafficking is not police violence, displacing workers, shutting down immigrant businesses, and leaving a flyer as a bandaid for a bullet wound. The REAL anti-trafficking solution is supporting workers through WORKER RIGHTS & IMMIGRANT RIGHTS,” MPOP Seattle said. “We can fight the conditions that create exploitation & trafficking through outreach among massage workers to understand their lived experiences, needs, and how to meet them; creating and conducting labor/workplace safety rights and education; [and] create safe and affordable housing.”

MPOP Seattle launched the Safety Not Stigma campaign to support migrant massage workers and highlighted how Asian massage workers are excluded from the licensing system through racist barriers, including a lack of language translators. The group noted that the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB) is responsible for the licensing process. 

“FSMTB has explicitly stated that they share licensee and applicant information with DHS, FBI, and law enforcement. Workers should not be criminalized for the intentional denial of language-accessible licensure. Asian massage workers deserve alternative, culturally competent certification pathways,” according to the letter. 

Those who use carceral systems to combat anti-trafficking go after unlicensed massage parlors as “evidence” of human trafficking, which leads to raids, arrests, displacement from homes and work, and the seizure of finances and belongings to “rescue” workers. The letter is also demanding that Governor Bob Ferguson cease sharing Department of Licensing data with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). 

“His use of anti-trafficking as a rationale to reject community demands and continue sharing data with CBP once again demonstrates how powerful actors use anti-trafficking as a cover to expand policing and ICE attacks on immigrants,” the MPOP Seattle letter states. 

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