Once Upon a Time in El Barrio (Season 23, Episode 17)
Premise: When three girls from Velasco’s old parish in Juárez disappear in New York, SVU tracks a trafficking ring protected by a police captain.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 17
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Bureau Chief Phillip Baptiste (Teagle F. Bougere)
- Guest stars
- Brad William Henke as Captain Don Kubiak, Karina Ortiz as Detective Rosanny Chavez, Alexis Cruz as Father Daniel, Yanelisa as Lucía Benítez, Angel Rosario Jr. as Jorge Padilla
- Director
- Oscar René Lozoya II
- Writers
- Story: Bryan Goluboff & Kathy Dobie & Micharne Cloughley; Story & teleplay: Denis Hamill & Monet Hurst-Mendoza
Summary
“Once Upon a Time in El Barrio” opens as Lourdes Padilla, posing as a modeling agent, recruits teenage friends Valeria Acevedo, Maribel and Sofia in Juárez, Mexico, offering to work something out when Valeria cannot pay the $5,000 fee. In New York, Lourdes’s brother, Jorge, takes the girls’ papers, phones and money and forces pills on them, and Maribel is killed when she resists. With Rollins and Carisi away, Velasco brings Benson and Fin a call from Father Daniel, his parish priest in Juárez, who plays a voicemail from Valeria with Maribel screaming in the background. The call is traced to East Harlem, and a young woman’s badly burned body turns up on a vacant lot by the East River; Velasco identifies Maribel by her handmade silver cross.
Told to go home, Velasco instead poses as a customer on the streets of East Harlem and is arrested by undercover Det. Rosanny Chavez. Her commander at the 29th Precinct, Capt. Don Kubiak, holds Velasco until Benson vouches for him, and McGrath is unhappy. Chavez, a former community affairs officer, takes Benson and Velasco to Juana Ramirez, a bakery owner who has seen young women in motel maid uniforms led around by a bald man. At the motel a frightened girl, Lucía Benítez, flees from the police, but after Chavez goes back on her own, Lucía agrees to talk. As the two arrive at the bakery, a vehicle runs them down. Chavez dies after surgery, and the injured Lucía disappears.
Through Juana, Velasco finds Lucía at a clinic for undocumented patients with a broken arm. She names Lourdes and Jorge Padilla, says the other girls are about to be sold to another ring, and reveals that a police captain made the girls have sex with him, something she had told Chavez. During a task force meeting, a number Jorge has called repeatedly rings on Kubiak’s phone. Lucía picks him out of a lineup, and he calls her a girlfriend until he learns she is 15. To reach the girls, Benson and Bureau Chief Phillip Baptiste accept his help over objections from the squad.
Spoiler, the ending: With the squad listening, Kubiak calls Jorge, blames him for running Chavez down when she was only meant to be scared, and offers to drive the girls to a buyer in Buffalo, using his badge to get through any stop. At the handoff in Yonkers, Velasco poses as a buyer from Chihuahua. When Jorge brings out Valeria and the others and then tries to change the plan, the team moves in, Jorge realizes Kubiak has betrayed him, and the girls are freed. Velasco calls Father Daniel to tell him Valeria and Sofia are safe.
Why it stands out
- The episode fills in Velasco’s past: Father Daniel hid him in his church when he was in trouble with gangs in Juárez and helped his mother bring him to the United States.
- A detective from the 29th Precinct is killed helping SVU, and that precinct’s own captain turns out to be abusing the trafficked girls.
- Rollins and Carisi are away; Carisi has taken Rollins and her daughters to Orlando.