Human trafficking refers to inhuman acts of using force or threats in recruiting, transporting, harboring or receiving human beings for exploitation. The trafficked persons are victims meant to be exploited in various different ways such as for purposes of forced sex work, domestic servitude, factory laborers and agricultural work. The paper summarizes the act of human trafficking and the policies the U.S government has put across in fighting the crime. Victims undergo inhuman torture and this affects their normal lives and how they socialize with other people. It discusses the matter of human trafficking as addressed by the government.
Human trafficking is ranked third among the underground businesses and reportedly the fastest rising worldwide prearranged crime that attracts huge revenues. The most targeted groups are women and children that account for 80% of those trafficked with half of them being young girls under 18 years of age (Feehs, & Richmond, 2018). According to reports outlining cases of victims seeking justice in 2017, the majority of human trafficking cases by the federal are criminal sex trafficking cases accounting for 84.4% of the cases while the rest comprised of other forms of human trafficking. Out of 783 active cases, 55.6% involved children as victims of criminal sex trafficking and the rest 44.6% comprises of the other criminal sex trafficking, forced labor trafficking among others (Feehs, & Richmond, 2018).
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The act of trafficking is found to be facilitated majorly by the internet as indicated by federal states. They found that most documented court cases show that 72.3% of sex trafficked victims were lured into the trap through internet advertisements (Feehs, & Richmond, 2018). This implies that the internet provides a fertile ground for the cartels to perpetuate their heinous activities of trafficking human beings. Apart from the internet platforms, the other channels of trafficking include trafficking at massage parlors, bars, and other social places.
The engagement of the government in fighting human trafficking has taken an active course. Specifically, the US government has been on the forefront in the quest to fight human trafficking by enacting the Federal Anti-trafficking Laws. President Trump signed new anti-sex-trafficking legislation to a law which has led to the recent shutdown of the Backpage.com, a platform that has been facilitating the trade (Dias, 2018). This is one of the major step by the U.S government to combat the crime of human trafficking in the recent past. The law allows the authority to seizure Internet-based crimes involving human trafficking. The law is intended to give prosecutors strong tools to seize sites as well as suspending their liability protections on the internet regarding the content of their sites in the future.
The policies against trafficking of persons also include passing of Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 including the several amendments made to cover the issue of trafficking of persons. The act was meant to fight the trading of persons for commercial sex business as well as involuntary labor among other purposes. Moreover, the act reauthorized federal programs on the prevention of violence against women among other trafficking purposes. The act has undergone few amendments including that of 2003 which introduced 15 agencies under The President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (PITF) which was created by the TVPA Act of 2000 (Roby, Turley & Cloward, 2008). The agencies include the Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of Treasury, and the Department of Defense among others.
The agencies work on different grounds to assist victims of trafficking as well as punish perpetrators. For example, the Department of Defense ensures that those in force have the required skills and equipment to combat the crime. Department of Treasury ensures dissemination of financial support through financial institutions to victims while the Department of State engages other governments and organizations at international level at implementation and development of strategies to end the modern-day slavery (Roby, Turley & Cloward, 2008).
The TVPA has also enabled the victims to apply for T-visas or have a continued presence status in the U.S for a period of three years while waiting for justice to done and thereafter applying for permanent residence. In addition to the Continued or T-visa, according to Roby, Turley, and Cloward (2008), victims who undergo severe effects of trafficking benefits from the laid policies as they receive Temporal Assistance to needy families, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Supplemental Security Income among others.
In conclusion, it is evident that human trafficking is an offense and a human rights violation. The perpetrators of the act are nowadays using the internet as a platform to execute their criminal activities. As there are agencies assigned the responsibilities of fighting the crime, the methods used to end or minimize the practices should be dynamic to cater for changes in the trends the perpetrators are employing in conducting their inhuman acts. Therefore, it is up to the agencies under the PITF to find means of accessing the internet –based sites involved in trafficking of persons and shut them down as a majority of the perpetrators are found to use the internet. The agencies need to arrest perpetrators and ensure they revitalize the victims with considerable amounts of moral and financial support to reimburse them to their normal lives. Strict penalties would also discourage the alleged from using websites to conduct the crime.
References
Dias, E. (2018). Trump Signs Bill Amid Momentum to Crack Down on Trafficking. New York Times . Retrieved on 3 October 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/us/backpage-sex-trafficking.html
Feehs, K. E. & Richmond, J. C. (2018). 2017 federal human trafficking report. Human Trafficking Institute . Retrieved on 3 October 2018, from https://www.traffickingmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2017-Federal-Human-Trafficking-Report-WEB-Low-Res.pdf
Roby, J. L., Turley, J., & Cloward, J. G. (2008). U.S. Response to Human Trafficking: Is it enough? Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 6 (4), 508-525. doi: 10.1080/15362940802480241
