Human Trafficking in America: What “Taken” Doesn’t Tell You

By Abigail Scanga Blackburn

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/

Human trafficking, otherwise known as modern slavery[1], has been oversimplified and sensationalized in the media.[2] Taken, a popular movie starring Liam Neeson, depicts a terrifying drama where a former CIA agent races around the globe to find his kidnapped daughter and rescue her from the clutches of an international human sex trafficking ring.[3] While Taken and other such movies are highly entertaining and slightly terrifying, they create a picture of human trafficking that ignores the reality of how trafficking victims in America become victims.[4]

Two primary types of human trafficking exist in the United States: sex trafficking and forced labor.[5]  These crimes involve traffickers who exploit their victims for either sex or labor through the use of force, fraud, or coercion.[6]  Anyone can become a victim of trafficking.[7]  Victims can be both foreign nationals and native born Americans and come from a variety of backgrounds in regards to gender, age, and race.[8]  Rather than depicting the diverse victims of trafficking and the different ways traffickers lure victims, the media instead focuses on white, Western women who are kidnapped and violently forced into trafficking.[9]  While human trafficking can involve the kidnapping of women, many traffickers employ more subtle methods to lure unsuspecting and vulnerable people into trafficking.[10]

Federal statutes that criminalize human trafficking recognize these more subtle acts by traffickers.[11]  A person who exploits the labor of another person by using threats of force, threats of immigration deportation, or a coercive scheme is a trafficker.[12]   Labor traffickers often tell their originally willing recruits that they must repay a debt to the trafficker before receiving pay for their labor.[13]  Rather than using force to keep the laborers working, some traffickers will take the victims’ passports hostage or threaten to report undocumented workers to immigration if they do not comply.[14]  For sex trafficking, a person who uses any force, fraud, or coercion to recruit a victim to engage in a commercial sex act is a trafficker—no kidnapping required.[15]  The statute also criminalizes those who “patronize[] or solicit[]” a person for commercial sex, meaning that the sex buyers themselves can be considered traffickers that lure victims.[16]  Additionally, minors who are asked to perform commercial sex acts, even without any force, fraud, or coercion, are victims of trafficking.[17]

The reality that the statutory language acknowledges is that traffickers entice their victims in a variety of ways.[18]  Some traffickers trick their victims by befriending them or promising love, but later pressure the victims into performing commercial sex acts.[19]  Others recruit people for a job, only to then subject the victims to forced labor by using coercion.[20]  Traffickers can even be parents who sell their children for sex right out of their own homes.[21]  None of these methods of obtaining victims are often highlighted in popular media tackling human trafficking issues, but all are methods that traffickers use to subtly exploit their victims.[22]  The victims in these situations may not even realize that they are victims of trafficking and then place the blame on themselves for getting into such a situation.[23]

To help victims of trafficking, we must understand the methods traffickers use to target their victims.[24] We may not be able to stop the unexpected kidnapping, but we can keep our eyes open for victims who are being trafficked by their partners or parents.  While popular media about human trafficking can be informative, citizens need to be aware that media does not always capture a victim’s true experience.[25] By understanding what acts the law criminalizes, we can better find and assist the trafficking victims living amongst us.

 

If you suspect that someone is a victim of human trafficking or want more information and resources, please call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.

 

[1] What is Modern Slavery?, U.S. Dep’t of State, https://www.state.gov/what-is-modern-slavery/ (last visited Aug. 28, 2022).

[2] Silvia Rodríguez-López, (De)Constructing Stereotypes: Media Representations, Social Perceptions, and Legal Responses to Human Trafficking, 4 J. Hum. Trafficking 61, 61 (2018).

[3] Taken (Twentieth Century Fox 2008).

[4]  See Carrie N. Baker, An Intersectional Analysis of Sex Trafficking Films, 12 Meridians 208, 223 (2014) (noting that media can spark “moral outrage” but can also “obscure the realities” of trafficking).

[5] About Human Trafficking, U.S. Dep’t of State, https://www.state.gov/humantrafficking-about-human-trafficking/#human_trafficking_U_S (last visited Aug. 28, 2022).

[6] 22 U.S.C. § 7102.  Specifically, the statute defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as:

(A) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or

(B) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

[7] Identifying Victims of Human Trafficking: Fact Sheet, Dep’t of Health and Human Services, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/orr/fact_sheet_identifying_victims_of_human_trafficking.pdf (last visited Aug. 28, 2022)

[8] Identifying Victims of Human Trafficking: Fact Sheet, supra note 7 (explaining who is a victim of trafficking); National Human Trafficking Hotline Data Report, National Human Trafficking Hotline, https://humantraffickinghotline.org/sites/default/files/National %20Report%20For%202020.pdf (noting the statistics and demographics of victims identified by the national hotline in 2020).

[9] Rodríguez-López, supra note 2, at 68.

[10] Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2020, UNODC 14 (2021).

[11] See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1589, 1591 (explaining that a trafficker that uses threats of harm, abuses the legal process, and other such means violates the statute).

[12] 18 U.S.C. § 1589.

[13] Labor Trafficking: Fact Sheet, Dep’t of Health and Human Services, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/orr/fact_sheet_labor_trafficking_english.pdf (last visited Sept. 28, 2022).

[14] Id.

[15] 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(1).

[16] Id.

[17] See 18 U.S.C. § 1591 (criminalizing sex trafficking of children and sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion).

[18] What is Human Trafficking?, Dep’t Homeland Sec. Blue Campaign, https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/what-human-trafficking#:~:text=Traffickers%20might%20use%20violence%2C%20manipulation,human%20trafficking%20a%20hidden%20crime. (last visited Sept. 18, 2022).

[19] Id.

[20] Id.

[21] Jody Raphael, Parents as Pimps: Survivor Accounts of Trafficking Children in the United States, 4 Dignity, no. 4, 2020, at 1, 1.

[22] Rodríguez-López, supra note 2, at 68.

[23] Understand Human Trafficking, Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Ctr., https://www.ovcttac.gov/taskforceguide/eguide/1-understanding-human-trafficking/ (last visited Sept. 19, 2022).

[24] 10 Ways You Can Help End Trafficking, Dep’t Health & Human Services (Dec. 16, 2019), https://www.acf.hhs.gov/otip/about/ways-endtrafficking.

[25] See Baker, supra note 4, at 224 (explaining that movies can educate their viewers as well as mislead them).