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Research Paper: Human Trafficking in the US

Kylie Patrick

Anderson University CRJ 101

Professor Mantrese Dodson

14 November 2021
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What is Human Trafficking?

We have all heard of the horror stories about people, especially young females, being

kidnapped and forced into situations and places they do not want to be. Human Trafficking is

another way of saying slavery; by definition, slavery is the state and the condition of being a

slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person who treats that slave as

their property (Oxford, 2021). When thinking about the history of slavery in America, racism

plays a vital role, but in today’s slavery, race does not play as large of a role as one might think.

Another thing that people may immediately think of is agricultural work, and although this is

true, another “severe forms of trafficking in persons” would be sex trafficking; in which a

commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion or in which the person induced to

perform such an act is under 18 (ACLU, 2021, para. 2).

Forced labor is defined in Title 18 and 19 of the United States code. Title 18

encompasses the activities that are involved in order to legally obtain labor from a person

including physical and psychological crimes. Title 18 also mentions that even if the person had

initially consented to some form of labor to the person, that does not mean the person cannot be

considered a victim and the offender prosecuted. Title 19 is the ‘sales’ side of human trafficking.

Basically what Title 19 is for, is to prohibit the import and export of goods produced from the

result of even the slightest form of forced labor. Although there are laws in place in order to tear

down the human trafficking corruption diseasing the world today, traffickers still commit and

often get away with their crimes.

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Traffickers

Human trafficking comes in many forms that can be ultimately terrifying, but what is

even scarier are how traffickers have been able to hide their crimes in plain sight. Human
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traffickers have no respect for the people they commit their crimes against. They solely aim to

profit by tricking or forcing other people to do things that go against their wishes. “Traffickers

can be strangers, acquaintances, or even family members, and they prey on the vulnerable and on

those seeking opportunities to build for themselves a brighter future” (USDOS, 2021, para. 10).

There are some extreme cases, like in the United States’ history of slavery, where immigrants are

sold, abducted, or kidnapped by the traffickers and forced into this modern day form of slavery.

Physical abuse, psychological abuse, and abuse of legal processes are a few various

tactics that traffickers use to coerce individuals into labor against their will. Trafficked victims

are often beaten and brutalized, raped and sexually abused, and also frequently are deprived of

adequate food, shelter and sleep (ACLU, 2021, para. 17). Psychological abuse consists of threats,

deprivation of resources, and isolation from family and other victims. By abusing the legal

process traffickers gain control of important documents their victims possess and threaten them

with arrest or deportation.

The Victims and Where They Go

Millions of women, men and children around the world are subjected to forced labor,

domestic servitude, or the sex trade at the hands of human traffickers (ICE, 2021, para. 26).

Around the world women and children are more likely to be taken advantage of due to multiple

occurrences that affect women in larger numbers than with men. an estimated 80 percent of

trafficking victims worldwide are women and children (ACLU, 2021, para.11). The majority of

human trafficking victims within the United States are immigrants, most of them being

immigrant women. Informal economy is the part of our economy that is not taxed or monitored

by the government (Oxford, 2021).

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Although human trafficking is a worldwide endemic, there are services that the United

States’ government has available to the survivors of the trafficking of persons. The TVPA,

otherwise known as the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, provides

surviving victims of trafficking the same services and benefits available to refugees in the United

States. There are other government funded programs and services that trafficking victims are

able to take advantage of to help them readjust to a normal life.

Human Trafficking Today

Post-Covid 19 most people would assume that human trafficking around the world would

have decreased due to the closings of numeritave forms of travel, but there is evidence of an

increase in the number of people at risk for trafficking of persons. COVID-19 generated

conditions that increased the number of people who experienced vulnerabilities to human

trafficking and interrupted existing and planned anti-trafficking interventions (Blinken et al.,

2021, para. 10). Lockdown not only made it more possible for traffickers to gain access to more

victims, but it also caused forms of PTSD to show up in the lives of survivors. All-in-all, there

are extreme cases of people being victimized, for example there have been reports in the United

States of landlords forcing their tenants to have sex with them when they were unable to pay

rent. Examples of trafficking are very present in todays’ society and thankfully there are law

enforcement divisions set up to stop, prevent, and help those victimized by human trafficking.
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References

ACLU. (2021). Human trafficking: Modern enslavement of immigrant women in the United

States. American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved October 5, 2021, from

https://www.aclu.org/other/human-trafficking-modern-enslavement-immigrant-women-u

nited-states.

Blinken, A., & Johnstone, K. (2021, September 14). 2021 trafficking in persons report - united

states department of state. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved November 12, 2021,from

https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-trafficking-in-persons-report/.

ICE. (2021, October 5). Human trafficking victim shares story. ICE. Retrieved October 10, 2021,

from https://www.ice.gov/features/human-trafficking-victim-shares-story.

The Oxford English dictionary: Oxford languages. The Oxford English Dictionary | Oxford

Languages. (2021). Retrieved November 11, 2021, from

https://languages.oup.com/research/oxford-english-dictionary/.

USDOS. (2021, January 10). About human trafficking - united states department of state. U.S.

Department of State. Retrieved October 8, 2021, from

https://www.state.gov/humantrafficking-about-human-trafficking/.