Attorneys at The Legal Aid Society are shedding light on New York City’s continual targeting of massage businesses – despite the commitment in recent years of local district attorneys and the NYPD to reduce the policing of sex workers and massage businesses, as reported by The Guardian.

Raids continue to occur in New York, advocates say, putting vulnerable massage workers – many of them undocumented immigrants – in legal trouble, potentially exposing them to arrest and potential deportation.

“From the outside, it looks like the district attorney’s office and different judges have made these great statements of support, saying they don’t want to be policing and arresting [sex workers],” said Queens staff attorney Cate Carbonaro. “But right now, as we speak, I’m still getting new cases of Asian women arrested in massage businesses.”

While the NYPD usually chalks massage business raids up to “community complaints,” Leigh Latimer, head of the Exploitation Intervention Project at The Legal Aid Society, considers other factors that may be driving the crackdown.

“I would ask a prosecutor why a particular massage parlor, why was this type of policing, and it was always about community complaints,” she said. “I was unsatisfied with that answer, let me put it that way.”