In 2005, HB 2696 amended Texas Occupations Code Chapter 455, which defines and provides regulatory guidance for “massage establishments.” Texas legislature’s attempt to curb the rise Yet, the State of Texas has been attempting to cut them off by regulating them as licit massage establishments. They also engage in a wide variety of other organized criminal activity from sex and labor trafficking to money laundering, document fraud, and tax evasion. In order to obtain licenses, IMBs work with fraudulent massage schools, known as “diploma mills,” which offer diplomas for a fee in order for the women to be able to take their licensing exams without ever having received formal training. They pay a debt to their trafficker for the arrangement of their visa and travel documents and are told that massage licenses and apartment leases will be taken care of. The women are often recruited to the United States under false pretenses that they can make thousands of dollars per month.
17) and that the average age range is from 35 to 55 years old. One report on IMBs states that the “vast majority of women reported to have been trafficked in IMBs are from China” (p. 56).Īlthough data on the total numbers of IMBs in Texas is not available prior to 2016, estimates reveal that in a four-year span from 2016 to 2020, there has been a 100% increase from 510 to 1,082 (see Figure 1).
The rise of illicit massage businesses in TexasĪ 2014 study stated: “The number of erotic massage parlors is increasing in the United States (from 4,197 in 2011 to 4,790 in 2013), and they are proliferating beyond the West and East coasts where the majority of them are clustered” (p. The legislative and regulatory environment has not stemmed the growth of the illicit massage industry, but it has made it more and more difficult for massage therapists to run their businesses and do their jobs. Suspected illicit massage business (courtesy)