Misconceptions About Human Trafficking
Misconceptions About Human Trafficking
There are many misconceptions about human trafficking. Let’s clear up four of them here:
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Human trafficking and human smuggling are two different crimes.
- Human smuggling is the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation, or illegal entry of a person(s) across an international border, in violation of one or more countries' laws, either clandestinely or through deception, such as the use of fraudulent documents. People who are smuggled are complicit in the smuggling crime and are not necessarily victims. United States Attorney’s Office: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ut/immigration
- Human trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for purposes of commercial sex or forced labor. Trafficking does not need to involve the actual movement of the victim. People can be trafficked in their own cities. It is not necessary for the trafficker or victim to cross an international or state border. The person trafficked is a victim.
| Human Smuggling | Human Trafficking |
|---|---|
| Crime committed against a country. | Crime committed against a person. |
| Persons are free to leave or change jobs. | Persons are enslaved, subjected to restrictions, or had documents confiscated. |
| Persons who are smuggled are complicit in the smuggling crime and are not necessarily victims of the crime. | Persons who are trafficked are victims of a crime. |
| The person being smuggled is generally cooperating, voluntarily entering into an agreement with the smuggler. | Must contain an element of force, fraud, or coercion (actual, perceived, or implied), unless victim under 18 years of age is involved in commercial sex. |
| Facilitates the illegal entry of person(s) from one country into another. Always crosses an international border. | Does not need to involve the actual movement of the victim. There is no requirement to cross an international border.. |
Sometimes smuggling cases can turn into trafficking cases.
U.S. case of human smuggling that turned into human trafficking
The following summary is from the U.S. Department of Justice press release about U.S. v. Cadena:
“After illegally smuggling women and girls into the United States, Cadena-Sosa and other family members imposed a smuggling debt and used brutal physical force and violence, sexual assaults, and threats of death and bodily harm to the victims and their families to compel the victims to engage in prostitution 12 hours a day, six days a week and turn over the proceeds to the defendants to pay down the smuggling debts the defendants imposed.”
USA v. Cadena et al, Docket No. 2:98-cr-14015 (S.D. Fla. Mar 05, 1998), Court Docket (links to https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/mexican-national-sentenced-15-years-participating-brutal-family-run-sex-trafficking)
Although trafficking seems to be about movement, there is no requirement that international or state borders be crossed. A person can be trafficked in their own state, city, even the block they live on, or their own home. In one case, a DoD employee’s daughter was trafficked only blocks away from her own home.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) delineates a distinction between “severe forms of trafficking in persons” and sex trafficking. “Severe forms of trafficking” includes both sex trafficking and labor trafficking and requires force, fraud, or coercion. The TVPA refers to this as “severe forms of trafficking.” In the TVPA, sex trafficking is defined but not operationalized. *
*“Sex trafficking” means the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act. [22 USC § 7102(12)]
A minor is a person under the age of 18 years old. Minors are per se victims of sex trafficking. No force, fraud, or coercion is required. Any minor found in the commercial sex industry (prostitution, strip clubs, pornography) is a trafficking victim.