EVANSTON — Former Evanston resident Jeremy McLean — who now calls Brooklyn, New York, his home — was in Evanston last week. McLean is a policy attorney in New York City and formerly worked at Workers Justice Center, based in Rochester, New York, representing low-wage workers and human trafficking victims. When the pandemic caused that office to shut down, McLean decided to come home to Evanston and work from the home of his parents, Bruce and Marian McLean.

Jeremy McLean visited the Herald to talk about his volunteer work with Survivor Alliance International, where he serves as president of the board of directors.

“One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this,” McLean said, “is nobody is safe from human trafficking regardless of your political beliefs. There are areas where we can come together and find common solutions.” 

After graduating from Evanston High School, McLean studied Spanish and biology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. He then served an LDS mission in Central America; he said that started him on a life-changing course. 

“When I saw what people in Panama have to do just to survive, it changed my life,” McLean said. “It’s been an interesting journey and my politics have diverged from mainstream Wyoming. I changed my focus to international studies in graduate school at Oklahoma State University and continued my studies, earning an International MBA in Mexico.”

McLean graduated from Syracuse College of Law (NY) in May of 2013 and has extensive international experience, having lived and studied in Mexico, Panama, Peru, Japan and Israel.

McLean has been actively involved in promoting low-wage worker rights as an outreach worker and staff attorney at the Worker Justice Center of New York, and as a worker and organizer with Rural Migrant Ministries. He has advocated for clients, focusing on agricultural and other low wage workers, through legal representation, rights education and efforts to train other advocates.

McLean has assisted clients in obtaining immigration remedies available to trafficking and other crime victims and in pursuing civil redress for those who have been trafficked or otherwise exploited.

His work recently involved traveling to Mexico and Honduras, trying to find the parents of children separated from them and incarcerated under the Trump administration. 

Because of this professional work, he was asked to serve on the board of directors for Survivors Alliance International. His paid employment and his volunteer work overlap significantly.

McLean explained that Survivors Alliance International (SAI) is a membership organization for survivors to help create a community and provide resources for survivors. The organization has offices in Washington, D.C. and in the U.K. He said most organizations focus on the extraction of people from sex or labor trafficking, but SAI focuses on what happens to the survivor after extraction.

“My first case at the justice center was about some food vendors that were found working at a fair in Syracuse. They were in a horrible situation; not being fed adequately, not being paid and were forced to work 16 to 20 hours a day,” McLean said. “It was [through] a government-run program but, due to lack of resources, there was no oversight. So, it falls on non-profits and small law firms to catch these kinds of cases.”

McLean gave another example of a young woman who was a victim of sex trafficking. He said there is a sex trafficking ring of “Romeo Pimps” in central Mexico that seduces women. A man romances a young girl to make her fall in love with him and then forces her into the sex trade with threats and punishments.

This particular young woman had a baby with her “Romeo,” and he would use the baby’s needs as a threat to get her to earn money, even convincing her to move to New York where she could make more money. She finally escaped from him but had no way to earn a living, so she continued as a sex worker. She was ultimately arrested and that is when she became a client of McLean’s.

Labor trafficking, McLean said, is a similar situation, as the employer has all the power and the victim is completely at the employer’s mercy. The employer will threaten them with deportation if they leave and can deny wages and punish workers, who are totally vulnerable.

“It is difficult for survivors to come out of those kinds of situations and get a fresh start,” McLean said. “My agency helped this particular woman with the criminal charges and helped her get her baby back from Mexico. Lots of attention is paid to getting people extracted from trafficking; but then what? That is where Survivors Alliance comes in and why I volunteer with them.”

McLean said there are government programs that try to help survivors, but what they really need is a community of support. He said we need to think holistically about why people get in these situations from the beginning to the end. What vulnerabilities make some people a target for predators? Traffickers look for any place where there is a big disparity economically — extreme poverty and people in need. 

SAI creates relationships and alliances with other groups that help; extractors, law firms and legal NGOs. McLean said it is important to build those alliances; for example, people who have worked in sex trade often have a record so they work with law firms to help them expunge their criminal history. 

Survivors find the Alliance groups in their country through partnership agencies and word of mouth.  McLean said they now have a large group organized in India as one example.  Recently, the organization held a World Congress and they have a world-wide membership. 

“I’ve never gone through anything remotely similar so we at SAI believe people who share common experiences are the best solution,” McLean said. “I can be empathetic but I can never truly understand. What I want to do is build these connections so survivors will feel like they have found support from people who have gone through a similar or the same experience.”