Camilla, 26, reapplied a coat of clear lip gloss, a gesture not only of seduction but nervousness, while pacing around the 94th Street corner along Roosevelt Avenue, where the NYPD has recently stepped up its presence since Mayor Eric Adams announced Operation Restore Roosevelt on Oct. 15 to address alleged public-safety and quality-of-life concerns. 

The 90-day targeted operation aims to address unlicensed street vendors, prostitution, and shoplifting in Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and Corona along a nearly two-mile stretch from 74th Street to 111th Street through the deployment of hundreds of city police officers and state troopers. 

The NYPD is running the 15-agency operation that includes the FDNY, MTA, Parks, Department of Buildings, Department of Sanitation, Department of ­Transportation, Queens DA, Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, and the New York State Police.

Many sex workers and activist organizations argue the measures risk over-policing and targeting the community’s most vulnerable members, including street vendors, sex workers and undocumented people. 

“We already know the police racially [profile] for, you know, all ranges of issues,” says Samantha Majic, an associate professor of political science at John Jay College where her research focuses on the politics surrounding sex work. “So why wouldn’t it be the same for sex work?” 

Though she fears getting arrested, Camilla said she turned to sex work through a friend in a desperate bid to earn money while waiting for her work-authorization documents. Camilla arrived in New York City from Venezuela around a year ago, and lives in a Bronx migrant shelter with her husband and six-year-old son.

“I just run away to wherever and hide on another street,” Camilla told The Indypendent. “I wait for the police to leave, then come out again.” 

Neighborhood Critics

On Oct. 6, the Let’s Improve Roosevelt Ave Coalition held a well-attended rally led by former state senator Hiram ­Monserrate — a former cop-turned-state senator who was expelled from the legislature in 2009 after being convicted of domestic-violence assault for slashing his girlfriend in the face. The coalition’s demands included a larger police presence, crackdown on organized crime groups and more anti-human trafficking efforts. 

One of the protesters, Rosario Colladio, who has lived in Jackson Heights for 40 years, said she feels uncomfortable by the presence of female sex workers along Roosevelt Avenue and hopes to move out of the neighborhood. 

“I used to go to the Yankees Stadium,” Colladio said. “I come back here at one o’clock, and I’m not scared, nobody bothered me, but now, I don’t go anymore to the Yankees Stadium because I’m scared to walk on Roosevelt Avenue.” 

Illeana Vega, a member of the Latin/African American Chaplain Association, a religious organization that serves as an intermediary between trafficking victims and law enforcement, who was present at the rally said that there was a noticeably higher number of sex workers in the neighborhood. 

“It’s more visible now, which is pretty alarming that it’s not hidden,” Vega said. “There’s also been an increase with the migrant situation, so many traffickers are coming in and have a debt to pay back, at least $50,000 each to pay back their traffickers, so they are sold straight into sex trafficking, which is a huge commodity.” 

‘An Overblown Response’

However, many advocacy groups including immigration-justice group Make the Road New York, one of the largest in the neighborhood, say that the city and state’s action “is both an overblown and potentially dangerous response,” in an Oct. 23 press release. 

Sex workers and activists at an Oct. 22 Make the Road rally said they believe the issue is not as dire as the mayor and others that are pro-Operation Roosevelt Ave claim it to be, and that the policing will target sex workers and immigrants in the community just trying to make ends meet.

“Operation Restore Roosevelt is a horrible policing campaign that has escalated policing and indiscriminately targeted some of the most vulnerable members of our community,” said Make the Road activist Maxima ­Rodas. “This so-called quality of life operation targets sex workers, street vendors and migrant communities who live in this neighborhood. This is a racist and anti-immigrant attack [on] our communities.” 

Meredith Dank, director of the Human Exploitation and Resilience program at New York University, said that most individuals along Roosevelt Avenue are engaging in sex work for voluntary reasons, but are often assumed to be there due to trafficking or coercion. 

“There’s a push to try to show evidence of sex trafficking, and when there isn’t, it’s a very different reaction towards the individuals,” Dank said. 

Ariella Moscowitz is the director of communications for Decriminalizing Sex Work, a nationwide non-profit organization. “When there might be a proliferation of consensual, adult sex workplaces, the immediate go-to for people who don’t like that, for whatever reason, is to assume that exploitation and trafficking is taking place,” Moscowitz said. “There is more police involvement, and all these issues that further this cycle of violence.” 

Only 15% of sex clients are non-white, but they are far more likely to be arrested, according to data from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. A 2020 ProPublica investigation showed that the vast majority of customers are white, but the NYPD arrested three times as many alleged patrons in Black and Latino neighborhoods. 

Nicole Teyuca, a program coordinator at Translatinx Network, a national nonprofit that supports transgender communities, previously engaged in sex work when she arrived in New York City from Mexico in the 1980s. At the time, stop-and-frisk policies under former mayor Rudy Guliani allowed police officers to detain and search people under dubious pretexts. 

“They didn’t ask you for your pronouns, they called you ‘sir,’” Teyuca said. “Sometimes they wanted you to remove your wig and undress you; that period of time had a lot of transphobia and intolerance.”

For many sex workers, the policing operation today is another layer in the harassment they have historically faced. 

“I’ve been a victim of violence and so have many of my sisters,” Mariana Bermudez, a transgender Latina sex worker with clients in Jackson Heights, said. “The only way to live in peace and calmness is to legalize sex work.”

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