Our PartnersThe CCHTTF is a multi-disciplinary task force that brings social services, law enforcement, legal services, healthcare providers, and governmental agencies together to combat labor and sex trafficking.
Our Core Team facilitates the collaborative agreement that funds and establishes the task force. The Steering Committee is for key stakeholders in the local anti-trafficking community. |
Core Team Agencies
Steering Committee Member Agencies
Salvation Army STOP-IT Program
Updated: February 2023
The Salvation Army STOP-IT Program provides comprehensive case management services to all victims of human trafficking and is co-leader of the Cook County Human Trafficking Task Force. STOP-IT works directly with suspected trafficked persons no matter their age, race, gender, immigration status or sexual orientation. STOP-IT works with adults and minors, sex and labor trafficking survivors, domestic (US citizens and lawful permanent residents) and foreign national (documented and undocumented). STOP-IT also operates a drop-in center, contact the hotline to learn more.
24 Hour Hotline: (877) 606-3158
General Email Address: [email protected]
Legal Aid Chicago's Trafficking Survivor Assistance Program
Updated: February 2023
Legal Aid Chicago is the largest provider of free civil legal services in the Chicago area, with practice groups focusing on housing, family law, public benefits, consumer law, and immigrants and workers’ rights. Within Legal Aid Chicago, the Trafficking Survivors Assistance Program (TSAP) provides comprehensive and holistic free civil legal services to people throughout Illinois who have experienced human trafficking; this includes immigration representation, civil litigation for wages, name changes, victim advocacy, etc.
Website: www.legalaidchicago.org
General Phone Number: (800) 445-9025
General Email Address: [email protected]
National Immigrant Justice Center
Updated: March 2023
Heartland Alliance's National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) is dedicated to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for all immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. NIJC provides direct legal services to and advocates for these populations through policy reform, impact litigation, and public education. Since its founding three decades ago, NIJC has been unique in blending individual client advocacy with broad-based systemic change. NIJC provide immigration legal services to survivors of labor and sex trafficking through its Counter-Trafficking Project and other projects.
For more information, please visit our website at https://immigrantjustice.org/.
The Freedom From Trafficking Program at Heartland Human Care Services
Updated: February 2023
Freedom from Trafficking (FFT) is a community-based program of Heartland Human Care Services that envisions a world free of human trafficking and full of opportunity. Freedom from Trafficking offers intensive case management services, emergency and transitional housing, and mental health support to survivors of human trafficking in the Chicagoland area.
For Community Partners:
Updated: February 2023
Freedom from Trafficking (FFT) is a community-based program of Heartland Human Care Services that envisions a world free of human trafficking and full of opportunity. Freedom from Trafficking offers intensive case management services, emergency and transitional housing, and mental health support to survivors of human trafficking in the Chicagoland area.
For Community Partners:
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U.S. Department of Labor - Wage and Hour Division
Updated: March 2023
The Wage and Hour Division mission is to promote and achieve compliance with labor standards to protect and enhance the welfare of the nation's workforce.
Laws Administered and Enforced
The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) enforces federal minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. WHD also enforces the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, wage garnishment provisions of the Consumer Credit Protection Act, and a number of employment standards and worker protections as provided in several immigration related statutes. Additionally, WHD administers and enforces the prevailing wage requirements of the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts and the Service Contract Act and other statutes applicable to federal contracts for construction and for the provision of goods and services.
The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights
Updated: March 2023
The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights is a national non-profit organization committed to advancing the rights and best interests of immigrant children according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and state and federal law. We do so through three different programs:
- Child Advocate Program: Pursuant to federal law, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services appoints Child Advocates to unaccompanied and separated immigrant children in federal juvenile immigration detention centers in Chicago and across the country. The role of the Child Advocate is to identify and advocate for the best interests of individual children and ensure that all decisions about them—including custody, placement, reunification with family, permanency, and repatriation—take into consideration their best interests.
- Technical Assistance Program: This program offers trauma-informed and culturally sensitive case consultations, mentorship, resources, and trainings to attorneys and service providers working with immigrant children involved in state child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Our goal is to increase the capacity of advocates and service providers working directly with immigrant children to identify challenges they face and to know how to address them or who to ask for help in addressing them. In doing so, we strive to amplify the voices of immigrant children and youth, to support their placement in community-based settings outside of government custody, to preserve their familial bonds and cultural ties, and to advocate for their long-term safety and well-being.
- Policy Program: Our Policy Program works to incorporate the best interests of the child standard into practice, policy, and immigration law. Federal law does not explicitly require immigration officials to consider the best interests mandate of immigrant children, which leads to family separation, detention, unfair court hearings, and the repatriation of children to danger—even when there is evidence the child will be harmed upon return. We advocate directly with federal agencies, work with Congressional offices, participate in litigation, author reports, and implement communications strategies with the goal of completely reimagining the system for unaccompanied children.