Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is a crime where traffickers financially benefit by exploiting victims for labor or sex. They might use force, deception, manipulation, or threats to control victims.

Sex Trafficking

Victims are forced, tricked, or pressured into doing sexual acts for money. Sex traffickers often choose vulnerable targets and then use violence, threats, lies, or debt to control them and keep them in the sex trade so the trafficker can make money. 

Labor Trafficking

Victims are forced, tricked, or pressured into unsafe and illegal working conditions. It can include being trapped by false debt, forced to work against their will, or children being made to work when they shouldn’t be. The traffickers gains all the profit from the labor.

Questions to Identify Trafficking

  • Do you feel trapped in your job / situation?

  • Is someone keeping your identity or travel documents?

  • Do you have a debt to your employer that you can’t pay with your wages?

  • Is someone pressuring you to have sex with other people?

  • Are you forced to do things that are illegal?

Risk Factors

  • Sexual abuse  

  • Physical abuse  

  • Abusive relationship 

  • Neglect  

  • Runaway/Homelessness  

  • Identification as LGBTQIA+  

  • Mental health  

  • Unaddressed trauma  

  • Disability 

  • Poverty / Financial hardships  

  • Substance use  

  • Exposure to violence 

  •  Proximity to borders  

  • Adult sex industry 

Individual sitting in the door frame of a dirty, rundown house.

Actions-Means Purpose

The A-M-P Model

At a minimum, one element from each column must be present to establish a potential situation of human trafficking.

Action

  • Induce  

  • Recruits  

  • Harbors

  • Transports

  • Provides

  • Obtains 

Means

  • Force 

  • Fraud 

  • Coercion   

  • Minors induced into commercial sex are human trafficking victims regardless force, fraud, or coercion. 

Purpose

  • Commercial Sex  (Sex Trafficking)  

  • Labor/Services (Labor Trafficking) 

Force, Fraud, or Coercion

Force

  • Causing serious harm

  • Physical restraint

  • Substance use

  • Rape

Fraud

  • False promises  

  • Fraudulent schemes

  • Deceitful behavior 

  • Debt bondage 

Coercion

  • Threats to harm

  • Withholding documents

  • Psychological abuse

  • Manipulation  

  • Emotional trauma 

Minors induced into commercial sex are human trafficking victims regardless force, fraud, or coercion.

Other Forms of Violence