When it comes to trafficking, no one is excluded from being a trafficker. We have seen cases where biological, foster, or stepparents and other guardians exploit their own children. This case involved a mother trafficking her 14-year-old daughter who was disabled. Traffickers identify vulnerabilities and groom their victims and living with a disability is one of the many vulnerabilities a trafficker may target to exploit an individual.
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Read about the case here: https://www.komu.com/.../article_a90368cf-91df-5026-9850...

Myth: Only undocumented foreign nationals get trafficked in the United States.
TRUTH: Foreign nationals who are living and working legally in the United States and US citizens can also be victims of human trafficking.

The Polaris team analyzed 32,000 cases of human trafficking to develop a classification system that categories human trafficking into 25 types. The two types most prevalent for labor trafficking were domestic work and travelling sales crews.
For domestic work, in the 289 cases in which information regarding visa possession was collected, 108 individuals were undocumented while 181 had some type of visa or refugee status. Polaris also reports that in most of the cases they analyzed involving travelling sales crews, the majority of victims/survivors are US citizens.

Myth: Human trafficking only happens in illegal or underground industries.
TRUTH: Human trafficking has been reported in many industries. According to a Polaris study, there is a prevalence of labor trafficking in domestic work, restaurants and food services, agriculture, construction, commercial cleaning companies, health care, and more.

Learn more at the links below:
Polaris Project - Myths, Facts and Statistics
Polaris - Typology of Modern Slavery Summary 

Think labor trafficking is only a problem in developing countries? Think again.

Labor trafficking affects victims all over the world, including in developed countries like the United States. Victims are often hidden from view in behind-the-scenes jobs common in industries like agriculture. For this reason, it can be much more difficult to identify labor trafficking victims than sex trafficking victims.
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The FBI in Chicago is an important partner on our task force. For more information about the FBI's efforts to fight trafficking through a collaborative, multi-agency approach, visit https://www.fbi.gov/inves.../violent-crime/human-trafficking

Most of us enjoy a good movie. Movies tell stories that draw us in and they can be even more compelling when they contain content that is true to life.

Sometimes films attempt to shine light on important issues. However, when it comes to human trafficking, this can result in the perpetuation of stereotypical imagery and tropes that can lead to false beliefs about what trafficking is really like.
Check out this short post that talks about the myths movies can reinforce and the realities of trafficking:
https://www.stopthetraffik.org/movies/

In the movie American Honey, Sasha Lane acts as Star, an adolescent girl from a troubled home who runs away with a traveling sales crew that drives across the American Midwest selling subscriptions door to door. As she finds her place in this group of teenagers, one of whom is Jake, played by Shia Labeouf, Star is quickly swept up in the group's lifestyle of hard partying nights, petty crime and young love. Though this film’s focus is not human trafficking, it portrays a very common way individuals, especially youth, are groomed and drawn into trafficking situations.

Immigrant workers, whether undocumented or visa holders, who are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 infection already due to untreated chronic health conditions and poorer nutritional status, may be at additional risk of exposure due to labor exploitation or trafficking in industries considered "essential" such as farm, construction or factory labor.

Last November, a county in Minneapolis saw its first ever labor trafficking case, which involved the construction industry, go to trial. Read about it here: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/11/18/contractor-ricardo-batres-pleads-guilty-in-rare-labor-trafficking-case

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