Reflecting on National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month

By Tracy Russo

January 31, 2010 - January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. If you suspect an act of human trafficking in your area, you can report a tip to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline at 1-888-373-7888. This national, toll free hotline is available to answer calls from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.

President Barack Obama proclaimed January 2010 as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. During January, the President urged all Americans to, “educate themselves about all forms of modern slavery and the signs and consequences of human trafficking.”

Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice are deeply committed to combating all forms of modern slavery and trafficking in persons. In coordination with federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, as well as and nongovernmental organizations we investigate and prosecute human traffickers and provide comprehensive assistance to victims.

In 2009, the Department’s Civil Rights Division, in partnership with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, brought a record number of human trafficking cases, including the highest number of labor trafficking cases ever brought in a single year. These cases involve the use of force, threats of force, or other forms of coercion to compel labor or services, including commercial sex acts, from victims.

One case involved the trafficking of two young girls, including a 13 year-old, from rural Mexico to Tennessee with the intent of forcing them into prostitution. In December a woman from Tennessee was sentenced to 190 months in prison on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. Her co-defendant was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2008. Both pleaded guilty and admitted to fraudulently luring the two young girls. The multi-agency investigation and federal prosecution resulted in the successful conviction of 11 defendants.

Earlier this month, the Civil Rights Division secured guilty pleas from two defendants in a forced labor case in Hawaii. Farm co-owners pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit forced labor. The men admitted to conspiring with one another and others to hold 44 Thai agricultural workers in service at their farm through a scheme of debts, threats of harm and restraint. They each face up to five years in prison for their roles in the labor trafficking scheme.

Through the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Sections, as well as the U.S. Attorneys’ Office, the Department investigates and prosecutes American citizens who contribute to the sex trafficking of children abroad by engaging in a practice known as “child sex tourism,” where individuals travel abroad and pay to have sex with children. One such child sex tourist admitted that he had repeatedly traveled to the Philippines where he made two young girls sign a contract to be his “sex slave.” In another case resulting in a guilty plea, an American child sex tourist admitted he traveled to Thailand each year from 2000 to 2002 to sexually abuse children. While there, he paid for unfettered access to children, brought items to facilitate their sexual abuse, and then sexually abused the children at will, sometimes photographing and videotaping the activity.

In addition to prosecuting cases that directly involve human trafficking, the Department is continuing its efforts to disrupt trafficking by prosecuting human smuggling rings. The Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section, working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), targets human smuggling networks that are known to transport people under dangerous conditions or where patterns of egregious migrant abuse is evident. Dismantling smuggling networks and disrupting the routes used by traffickers contributes to the overall efforts to end the scourge of trafficking.

Another one of the ways the Department works to combat human trafficking and support victims is through its Office of Justice Programs (OJP). OJP provides funding support, training, and technical assistance to 39 anti-human trafficking law enforcement task forces and 39 nongovernmental victim service organizations throughout the United States. This dual approach entails a victim-centered approach for identifying, rescuing, and providing timely, comprehensive assistance to victims of human trafficking who are foreign nationals—including both female and male victims of sex and labor trafficking.

Since 2003, OJP’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) has provided funding to nongovernmental victim service organizations to support the needs of trafficking victims. Those needs often include shelter/housing, sustenance, medical and dental care, mental health treatment, nterpretation/translation services, legal and immigration services, literacy education, and more. OVC partnered with OJP’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) in 2004 to support the anti-human trafficking task force model around the country. Each task force includes, but is not limited to, representation from local or territorial, state, and federal law enforcement prosecutorial agencies (including the FBI, ICE, and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices), and an OVC-funded trafficking victim service provider organization.

In December 2009, OVC launched a 3-year demonstration project, in three sites, to provide comprehensive services to domestic minor victims of human trafficking in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. They will develop programs to serve female and male victims of sex and labor trafficking who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. The types of assistance provided to these victims are similar to those provided to victims who are foreign nationals; however, services are geared toward the unique circumstances of U.S. citizens who are under 18 years old.

Also in December 2009, OVC and BJA hosted the first Regional Training Forum in Tampa, Florida, for the South and Southeast regions of the U.S. The Forum provided an opportunity for the BJA task forces and the OVC service providers to receive training, discuss case information, share intelligence, and network with other law enforcement and victim service providers in the region.

According to one attendee, the Forum included “one of the best active intelligence exchanges I have attended with law enforcement in a long time…in part because this was a regional training, where patterns and cases were seen crossing into each other’s backyards.” Additional forums will take place around the U.S. in 2010.

In May 2010, the Department will host its fourth National Conference on Human Trafficking in Arlington, Virginia. Approximately 600 federal, state, and local law enforcement officers, prosecutors, victim service providers, and other professionals will be invited to attend this event. We will address the complexities of human trafficking, facilitate the sharing of promising practices, and support the development of evidence-based strategies to combat slavery and human trafficking in the U.S.

For more information on both the Department of Justice and the Federal Government’s efforts to combat trafficking, please see the Attorney General’s Annual Report to Congress and Assessment of U.S. Government Activities to Combat Trafficking in Persons, released in June 2009. This report is compiled and released annually.

As President Obama states in his proclamation, “Together, we can and must end this most serious, ongoing criminal civil rights violation.”

If you suspect an act of human trafficking in your area, you can report a tip to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline at 1-888-373-7888. This national, toll free hotline is available to answer calls from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.