Since 2000, the United Nations and  the U.S. Department of State have worked together to initiate the international battle against human trafficking through the UN's three internationally enacted Palermo Protocols and the U.S. Trafficking Victim's Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000. The Palermo Protocols supplement the findings of the 2000 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and provide three protocols to prevent, suppress, and punish human trafficking with emphasis on protection of women and children. The TVPA signed in 2000 for the first time provided funding and a mission to combat human trafficking, especially that involving the sex trade, slavery, and involuntary servitude. It also reauthorized various federal programs to prevent violence against women.

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The 2016 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report says 65.3 million people—one in every 113 people on the planet—are vulnerable to human trafficking. Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth are among the top major human-trafficking centers in the U.S. Ports, international airports, large urban areas, farms, construction sites, and boats or ships are key areas where human trafficking begins or occurs, but trafficking can happen anywhere, even in a domestic household or in a small local business. 

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Nations have been divided into three primary tiers: Tier 1 countries actively involved in the fight against human trafficking, Tier 2 countries failing to fully meet TVPA minimum
standards but making significant efforts to meet the standards, and Tier 3 nations failing to meet TVPA minimum standards and making no significant efforts to do so.

 

Despite our active status as a Tier 1 nation actively countering human trafficking, we also are a human trafficking destination country because we have both the demand and the resources to acquire a large supply of trafficked people for enslavement. Trafficked people are seldom seen, but can be found everywhere--on the Internet, in publicly operated businesses of all types, in restaurants, on the street, and working as domestic employees in private homes. It happens even in well-heeled suburbia, as well as in the seedy sides of every city, where we know that it happens.

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People in Tier 1 countries often lure victims from Tier 2 and Tier 3 nations suffering from poverty, war, civil unrest, and displacement. Many seemingly legitimate companies or U.S. citizens advertise for personnel abroad, hoping to hire people for extremely low wages or no wages. When they find a victim ready to travel to the U.S., a smuggler may meet them, arrange their lodging, and then take control of their identifying documents. The job may not be as advertised. Most of them have little money to care for themselves or walk away from the job. They may be told they owe huge sums of money for their transit and lodging, which is a means of defrauding or manipulating them into debt bondage.  In some nations, it remains legal to send people to jail for debts, so the person may believe they have to work for free to avoid going to jail. Of course, that is not the case in the U.S.

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Types of businesses where traffickers may be found include drug and sex trades, information technology (some H1B visa holders), construction, hotel and spa industries, industrial businesses, restaurants, and private homes or daycare centers where domestic help is needed. Private home domestics sometimes also are required to provide sexual favors besides maintaining the home or caring for children.

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Others are children lured away from school or another public place and then forced into sex trade. Some are runaways caught in a cycle of neglect or abuse at home or in the public foster care system that is not working for them. In some cases, foster care has become a revolving door to the sex trade. They runaway and then find themselves with no resources, totally dependent on captors for survival. Some are purposely addicted to drugs to manipulate them, or they are broken mentally or physically. Help us give them a hand up and better role models to help them re-enter normal life.