Beyond The Press Release: Alaska's April 2026 Asian Spa Raids
What the charging documents actually say
On April 15, federal, state, and local law enforcement raided five Asian spas in Anchorage and Wasilla.
The press releases and press conference described a major sex trafficking operation, victims recovered, a trafficking ring dismantled.
But that’s not exactly what the charging documents say.
Instead, the alleged sex trafficking included arranging duos, giving rides from the airport, taking out the trash, paying to install a business sign, working the front desk, buying groceries, and managing businesses where consensual adult sex work allegedly occurred. Three sex workers are being held with either no bail or $100,000 bail.
I also found something that hasn’t been mentioned publicly.
Remember Operation Underground Railroad? Hang onto your wigs, because it’s getting scarier.
One charging document mentioned that the Alaska Attorney General’s Office began organizing a multi-agency task force targeting Asian spas about a year before the raids. The task force was called Operation Red Light.
That led me down a rabbit hole, but I didn’t end up in wonderland. One might say the Department of Justice got smaller and smaller and Tim Ballard’s racialized “rescue” fantasies got bigger and bigger.
The more I dug, the more it seemed like a big step towards nation wide privatized public policing. And did I mention the part where three sex workers are in jail charged with multiple counts of felony sex trafficking for working together and keeping each other safe?
Read all about it in my new report, Beyond the Press Release.
Read it here.
As always, thank you for supporting my independent research on sex work law and policy. Your subscriptions, shares, and donations make projects like this possible. Everything I publish stays free because I want it to be useful—to researchers, journalists, policymakers, sex workers, sex trafficking survivors, and anyone else trying to understand what's happening.
With love, solidarity, rage, and so many receipts,
Tara Burns
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