Research Findings Temporarily Resolve Disputes
The true intensity of the problem remains unknown since trafficking often goes undetected and unreported due to its covert nature, the reluctance of victims who feel vulnerable and fear reprisals to turn to the authorities for help, mis- conceptions about its definition, and a lack of awareness about it in some localities (Polaris Project, 2014b).
The first set of reasonably accurate statistics about the profiles of victims in human trafficking cases was derived from those federal task forces that collected “high-quality” data about their investigations during the period of 2008– 2010. A little over 525 confirmed victims were located in about 390 cases. Most of the investigations concerned sex trafficking rather than labor trafficking. In the sex trafficking cases, the overwhelming proportion of victims were female (94 percent). Also, the vast majority were younger than 25 years old (87 percent) and U.S. citizens (83 percent). As for the victims’ race and ethnicity, more were black (40 percent) and white (26 percent) than Hispanic or Asian. In the labor trafficking cases, most of the victims were over 24 years of age (62 percent), and more were males (32 percent), Hispanics (63 percent), and Asians (17 percent). None were U.S. citizens (Banks and Kyckkelhahn, 2011).
A portrait of the problem was drawn from nearly 1,500 individuals who considered themselves to be caught up in sex and labor trafficking and who directly contacted a hotline for victims during the five-year period from 2007 to 2012. The most common complaints about sex trafficking involved prostitutes controlled by pimps. The majority of these pimps recruited these young women in social settings by feigning romantic interest, by promising them that they would earn enough to enjoy the material comforts they longed for, and by discouraging them from having casual sex “for free.” Then they pressured them to perform sex acts at hotels, motels, truck stops, brothels, and streets for customers solicited through online advertisements. Most of the complaints about labor trafficking came from women from foreign nations stuck doing domestic work in the Northeast as well as in southern Florida and southern California, and from migrant farm workers. Minors were more likely to be exploited sexu- ally than through unpaid labor. Callers reported that they most often became trapped because of lies, false promises, and debts (Polaris Project, 2013).
Victimologists want to discover why many individuals caught up in these oppressive situations do not run to the authorities for help. In other words, what can be done to increase the reporting rate? Exactly how do the traffickers lure or deceive their targets (presumably through false promises of a better life and ploys about legitimate jobs); how do they recruit children (perhaps by capitalizing on their innocence and
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naïveté, sometimes with parental complicity); and how do they dominate and intimidate those who find themselves trapped into involuntary servitude, even when chances to escape their predicament repeatedly arise? Are victims immobilized because their exploiters confiscate all their documents, take advantage of language barriers, threaten reprisals against loved ones at home in the source country, and scare them about deportation if they dare seek help? Perhaps some individuals who enter the country improperly and toil mightily don’t perceive themselves to be trafficking victims—they don’t realize that exploitive relationships that might be acceptable back home may fall under the heading of trafficking here. Whether these explana- tions are sufficient, relevant, and comprehensive needs to be further researched by directly interviewing victims who have been extracted, perhaps unwillingly, from their perilous life- styles (see George, 2003; Landesman, 2004; Bureau of Public Affairs, 2005; Glaberson, 2005; Saunders, 2005; Rieger, 2007; Uy, 2011; and Dank, 2014).
The murder of several border crossers in Arizona by smugglers (called “coyotes”) holding them hostage in frus- trated attempts to extort more money from their families back home indicated the depth of the perils victims face (Fulginiti, 2008). A surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America across the nation’s southern border during 2014 raised the specter of homeless youth ripe for sexual
exploitation (Hulse, 2014). Furthermore, studies based on surveys completed by municipal and county police depart- ments have concluded that most of these law enforcement agencies lacked sufficient policies and adequate training to accurately identify trafficking victims and successfully investigate their cases (Wilson, Walsh, and Kleuber, 2006; Farrell et al., 2010; and George, 2012).
The FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have compiled lists of behaviors and situations to help investigators from the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and state and local law enforce- ment and child protection agencies, to better recognize traf- ficking victims if they encounter them in their daily duties. Officers and concerned members of the general public should be on the lookout for the potential signs of being trafficked for the purpose of exploitation in the sex trade or for debt peonage. These clues appear in Table 2.1.
Whether the problem is growing or subsiding and whether specific government assistance and rescue efforts are effective remain subjects of controversy that require addi- tional research. This is why the plight of trafficking victims within the United States can be considered to have arrived at Stage 4 of the rediscovery process.