Trafficking Victims
Approximately 600,000 to 800,000 victims annually are trafficked across international borders worldwide, and between 14,500 and 17,500 of those victims are trafficked into the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of State. These estimates include women, men and children. Victims are generally trafficked into the U.S. from Asia, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe. Many victims trafficked into the United States do not speak and understand English and are therefore isolated and unable to communicate with service providers, law enforcement and others who might be able to help them.
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How Victims are Trafficked
Many victims of trafficking are exploited for purposes of commercial sex, including prostitution, stripping, pornography and live-sex shows. However, trafficking also takes place as labor exploitation, such as domestic servitude, sweatshop factories, or migrant agricultural work. Traffickers use force, fraud and coercion to compel women, men and children to engage in these activities.
Force involves the use of rape, beatings and confinement to control victims. Forceful violence is used especially during the early stages of victimization, known as the ‘seasoning process’, which is used to break victim’s resistance to make them easier to control.
Fraud often involves false offers that induce people into trafficking situations. For example, women and children will reply to advertisements promising jobs as waitresses, maids and dancers in other countries and are then trafficked for purposes of prostitution once they arrive at their destinations.
Coercion involves threats of serious harm to, or physical restraint of, any person; any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; or the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.
Trafficking Information
Victims of trafficking are often subjected to debt-bondage, usually in the context of paying off transportation fees into the destination countries. Traffickers often threaten victims with injury or death, or the safety of the victims´ family back home. Traffickers commonly take away the victims´ travel documents and isolate them to make escape more difficult.
Victims do not realize that their debts are often legally unenforceable and, in any event, that it is illegal for traffickers to dictate how they have to pay off their debts. In many cases, the victims are trapped into a cycle of debt because they have to pay for all living expenses in addition to the initial transportation expenses. Fines for not meeting daily quotas of service or “bad” behavior are also used by some trafficking operations to increase debt. Most trafficked victims rarely see the money they are supposedly earning and may not even know the specific amount of their debt. Even if the victims sense that debt-bondage is unjust, it is difficult for them to find help because of language, social, and physical barriers that keep them from obtaining assistance.
Trafficking vs. Smuggling
| Human Trafficking | Migrant Smuggling |
|---|---|
| Victims either do not consent to their situations, or if they initially consent, that consent is rendered meaningless by the actions of the traffickers. | Migrant smuggling includes those who consent to being smuggled. |
| Ongoing exploitation of victims to generate illicit profits for the traffickers. | Smuggling is a breach of the integrity of a nation´s borders. |
| Trafficking need not entail the physical movement of a person (but must entail the exploitation of the person for labor or commercial sex). | Smuggling is always transnational. |
↑ 1 - ″Exploitation″ - rather than trafficking - may be a more accurate description because the crime involves making people perform labor or commercial sex against their will.
↑ 2 - As defined by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the term ′commercial sex act′ means any sex act, on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.