The Immigrant Sex Workers Caught Up in ‘Operation Restore Roosevelt’

Advocates and defense attorneys said the majority of people facing charges for sex work under the city’s crackdown in Queens are immigrants, whose immigration proceedings and ability to find better jobs could be affected by their arrests.

At the end of October, María spent the night in a bar on Roosevelt Avenue with a group of friends to celebrate her 36th birthday. Shortly before the bar closed, her friends departed.

As María—who like other sex workers interviewed in this piece, asked to be identified by a pseudonym to speak freely without fear of jeopardizing her immigration case—waited for her roommate so they could head back home together, she wandered down 79th Street to kill time. It was late, and calm rested in the streets of Jackson Heights. 

Near the corner, two men approached her—dressed in plain clothes, one speaking to her in Spanish, according to María’s recounting of the incident. “Are you working?” the man asked. María said yes, not fully understanding the consequences of her words. He asked for her rate, and she told him.

“As soon as I said yes, the police car arrived in a matter of seconds,” María said. When the lights sliced through the darkness, she tried to leave but was stopped, arrested, and taken to the 115th Precinct. She was locked up until 8 a.m. the next day, she said.

Since Mayor Eric Adams launched Operation Restore Roosevelt in mid-October, dozens of sex workers have been arrested, fingerprinted, and locked up for hours at police precincts, according to attorneys and advocates who work with sex workers. Many are then released on a desk appearance ticket (DAT) for prostitution, a criminal charge that could affect their lives while the cases remain open. 

City Hall says that residents along Roosevelt Avenue have had problems with public safety, unlicensed street vendors, homelessness, prostitution, and illegal brothels, and that the operation is a “response to concerned communities.” 

“My children are exposed to everything that’s happening, the prostitution, the drugs, the crimes. We are trapped in our own homes,” one resident told the mayor at a community forum in the neighborhood at the end of 2023, according to a transcript of the event.

An NYPD spokesperson said the department will make enforcement data available upon completion of the three-month operation, which is expected to end next week. 

“The NYPD is in the middle of that 90-day operation, addressing a host of different concerns along Roosevelt Ave.,” an unnamed NYPD spokesperson said via email, and “we are also aware of community concerns and are addressing those concerns with a balanced approach.”

On Dec. 9, the mayor released data to support his community-oriented public safety strategies, listing thousands of summonses issued by agencies involved in the Operation Restore Roosevelt.

“Over 190 clients engaged and 10 clients placed in shelter by [Department of Homeless Services]; over 6,900 summonses issued across agencies, including over 3,500 quality-of-life summonses; over 172 building inspections; and 270 vendor inspections,” explains the press release.

While uniformed cops focus on chasing and ticketing unlicensed street vendors during the day, undercover cops cruise the streets at night, approaching suspected sex workers and offering money for sex, according to advocates, people charged with prostitution and their attorneys who spoke to City Limits.

And since under the law, all that is required to be guilty of prostitution is agreeing or offering “to engage in sexual activity with another person for a fee,” as in María’s case, agreeing is all it takes. “It’s kind of the functional equivalent of buy-and-bust in the drug context,” said Gina Mitchell, the attorney-in-charge of law reform and policy at Queens Defenders.

The mayor previously said the operation is “not about enforcement only,” saying it’s also about rooting out sex trafficking and providing sex workers with “the resources they need as they move from a life of on the street.”

However, advocates, attorneys, and three sex workers arrested and charged as part of the operation told City Limits that they were offered no services, except for those presented during court proceedings as part of the process to resolve the charges against them. 

When asked, a City Hall spokesperson said that while this is a “multi-agency” operation, this does not mean that there are officers from multiple agencies on the street at the same time working together, but that the agencies are doing their work in this area in a coordinated way. 

“This work is noticeably improving life in the neighborhood—so much so that community groups have publicly called for us to extend the operation—while offering vital services to vulnerable populations in hopes of improving their lives. This operation is still ongoing, and we are committed to making sure these crime and quality-of-life issues continue to improve,” a City Hall spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The spokesperson added that trafficking survivors are offered resources from the Mayor’s Office to End Gender Based Violence (one of a dozen agencies involved in the operation) and the NYPD’s Human Trafficking Squad, which has provided information to more than 100 people since July 2024.

The Mayor’s Office described initiatives such as human trafficking trainings for service providers and city agency staff, meetings to discuss anti-trafficking work, services and supports, and plans for potential ads on LinkNYC kiosks in the Jackson Heights and Roosevelt Avenue area, as well as a poster with resources for trafficking survivors. 

However, when it comes to adults who engage in consensual sex work, like María, no specific services are described unless the person is homeless and needs access to shelter.

According to Queens Defenders and Legal Aid Society, more than 90 percent of the people they represent on a prostitution charge (Penal Law 230.00) are Asian and Latino immigrants whose immigration proceedings and ability to find better jobs could be affected by their arrest.

However, the consequences of being arrested and the likelihood of being prosecuted varies from borough to borough.

The difference in being a sex worker in Queens

One late November morning, María went to Queens criminal court, where she was assigned a Spanish-language interpreter and a defense attorney who offered her two options: contest the charge and fight (which the attorney did not advise), or complete a five-session program with Garden of Hope, one of two organizations providing education programs through the Queens District Attorney’s office. 

Should she choose the latter, her case would be dismissed, as long as she presents proof of the course’s completion at her next court date. María thought about it in the bustling buzz of one of the court’s basement halls. 

The attorney asked what country she was from, and if she had an appointment in immigration court. María nodded: she had one coming up in 2025. The attorney then told María that an immigration attorney would come and review her case to make sure the charge would not affect her current immigration process. 

María said she arrived in New York City in June 2022 after leaving Ecuador, where gangs were demanding that she sell drugs and pay money to continue running the beauty salon she had opened. After just a couple of months in the city’s shelter system, María got a job at a bar on the weekends and moved out of shelter by renting a room, knowing that the income would not cover much more than the rent. And so she came to sex work out of necessity, she explained.

“I never did any of that in my country,” María said in Spanish. “I am a hairstylist. I had my own business.”

María said she has applied for asylum, but has not yet received her work permit. She has an immigration court date in March. 

When the assigned immigration attorney arrived, he told her that if she completes the education program and presents proof to the court, the prostitution charge will not affect her immigration case, because it will be sealed before her immigration court date.

In Queens, prostitution charges are not dismissed outright, as is the case in the vast majority of these cases in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where both district attorneys (DAs) pledged to do so in 2021.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office said that only a handful of cases have been prosecuted in total since the DA’s pledge, while the Manhattan DA’s office said that none were prosecuted from 2022 to 2024.

According to data obtained by The New Pride Agenda through a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request provided to City Limits, prosecutions of sex workers citywide are down from 2021. But in Queens, the disposition outcomes—the final result of a criminal case—vary.

In Queens, sex workers can either fight the case in court—which is not the advice of attorneys, since the police have evidence and the battle is uphill—or get an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, or ACD. This allows the case to be dismissed, as long as the defendant does not engage in criminal conduct for a given period, or if they complete an in-person or remote program with a community organization.

However, individuals taking an ACD or the program options, while avoiding a permanent criminal record, will still temporarily have their cases appear open during a background check—and timing is crucial.

If a background check is conducted during this period, it can affect their possibility of obtaining immigration status, work authorization, or better job opportunities, which is often the reason for sex work in the first place, attorneys explained.

Since María’s immigration court date does not fall in the period between her arrest and the court date to show proof of program completion, the criminal charges will not pop up for her in immigration court come March, attorneys explained.

Tarini Arogyaswamy, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s exploitation intervention project, said that when people accept an ACD, cases could be open for six months and show up in background checks during that time.

On the other hand, if the person completes a program with a community organization, their cases would be closed more quickly, in just a couple of months.

According to The New Pride Agenda’s FOIL data, which covers 2010 to September 2024—just before the Roosevelt operation was launched—those facing prostitution charges in Queens Criminal Court were mostly granted referrals to programs or ACDs, with only a few outright dismissals. Of the 181 people charged with prostitution during this period, data show that 151, or 83 percent, were referred to programs or received ACDs.

“Those arrested for prostitution are arraigned and connected with services if they no longer want to engage in prostitution,” a spokesperson for Queens DA said via email. “Services offered through our partner providers include safety planning, housing assistance, counseling and workforce development.” 

While Queens DA Melinda Katz promised to stop prosecuting sex workers while campaigning for election in 2019, data shows that her office is still bringing criminal charges against sex workers.

“Sex work remains a criminalized form of survival in New York State,” said Molly Cohen, project co-director for the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center.

According to the Queens DA’s office, more than 50 percent of people charged with prostitution accepted services in 2023, and 31 percent of those charged so far last year have accepted and/or completed services.

“Those arrested are arraigned and they are given an opportunity to access services,” a spokesperson for the Queens DA’s office said via email. “Many cases are adjourned in contemplation of dismissal. For those who chose to access services, the cases appear open while they are working towards completing the program.”

Garden of Hope and the Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program (SAVI), are currently receiving referrals from the Queens DA. They provide people with in-person and virtual sessions that include trauma therapy, crisis intervention, immigration assistance, legal advocacy, education, public benefits, job readiness, and medical and mental health services.

Neither organization responded to City Limits’ requests for comment on the programs by press time.

Both advocates working with this population and defense attorneys report an increase in the number of people charged with prostitution since the mayor’s Roosevelt Avenue operation began.

Both Jessica Guamán, director of Hope TGNC Latinx, and Bianey García, organizer for the Trans Immigrant Project of the advocacy group Make The Road New York, said they had each heard of nearly a dozen women arrested in November, just weeks after the operation began.

Abigail Swenstein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s exploitation intervention project, said that while her office does not represent every defendant in Queens and has not disaggregated all the cases, anecdotal data shows that there are about five times more prostitution-related cases overall since Restore Roosevelt began.

On the court billboard where María was listed, another person faced the same charge. María recognized her, saying the woman was in another cell at the precinct when she was arrested.

Sarah (a pseudonym), a 24-year-old migrant also from Ecuador, said her arrest was much like María’s: undercover police caught her on Roosevelt Avenue. Minutes after the attorneys presented María with her options, the same defense attorney explained the same choices to Sarah, who was sitting quietly on a bench in the hallway.

María entered the courtroom after accepting the defense attorney’s offer. In a matter of a few minutes, the judge offered her a five-session program, which she must complete and provide proof of at her next court date this month. In the hallway, she was advised not to be arrested again.

She received a conditional discharge and a notice to appear at her next court date in English, a language she does not speak. The notice explained that failure to appear in person may result in a warrant for her arrest.

Rights of transgender women in New York

On the way home, María said that she has been looking for jobs in all kinds of industries for months, but that when employers find out that she is a trans woman, what first seemed like a promising offer turns into a callback that never comes.

“I had heard that trans women’s rights were being defended in New York,” María said while explaining why she came to the city, where she had no family or friends. “There is a [Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act] GENDA law and supposedly we already have protection, but we do not.”

In 2019, the New York State Human Rights Law included gender identity or expression as a protected class, and the amendment is known as the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). 

However, a recent joint report by the New York State Department of Labor and the New York State Division of Human Rights (DHR), which enforces the GENDA law, found that employment discrimination based on gender identity is pervasive throughout the state. It’s also the leading cause of lower earnings and underemployment for transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary and gender expansive New Yorkers, according to the report.

DHR said that people  who experience gender identity discrimination may file a complaint, regardless of their immigration status, and reassured that it is against the law for employers to discriminate in hiring because of a person’s gender identity or expression. Those who file a complaint can seek the job they were denied, lost wages or other forms of monetary compensation as DHR investigates, prosecutes and adjudicates complaints of discrimination.

Advocates who work with the transgender population and the people City Limits spoke with described a lack of stable employment opportunities that would allow them to support themselves. For some, that means turning to sex work to survive.

Rosa (a pseudonym), who came from Ecuador and was also charged with prostitution in November, has not received a work permit and has been unable to find a job, which she attributed to her being transgender.  

“When they find out,” said Rosa, “they’re no longer interested.”

DHR complaints, determinations, and awards from 2019-2024

Fiscal Year 2019-20Fiscal Year 2020-21Fiscal Year 2021-22Fiscal Year 2022-23Fiscal Year 2023-24Fiscal Year 2024-25 (Year to Date)Complaints12783270514599400Probable Cause Determinations in Gender Identity Complaints*1236384070Awards in Gender Identity Complaints$125,340 in monetary damages to complainants. $20,000.00 in civil fines and penalties$45,000.00 in monetary damages to complainants$178,466 in monetary damages to complainants. $22,833 in attorney’s fees$72,375 in monetary damages to complainants. $5250.00 in attorney’s fees$176,305 in monetary damages to complainants. $6,525 in attorney’s fees$401,575 in monetary damages to complainants. $39,974 in attorney’s fees* This data represents probable cause determinations made in each designated fiscal year; it does not necessarily reflect the year that each underlying complaint was first filed (i.e. a complaint filed in FY2019-20 may have received a determination in FY2020-21 and would be counted within the FY2020-21 row below)

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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