The Latino Face of Human Trafficking and Exploitation in the United States

News release from the Polaris Project:

There have always been people who are, for a variety of reasons, far more likely to fall prey to trafficking than others. Among those reasons – poverty, trauma, discrimination. But a new study shows that one of the greatest vulnerabilities a person can have for being trafficked in the United States is simply being Latino. And the economic upheaval of the pandemic may make that more true than ever. For the same conditions that make Latinos vulnerable in the best of times, are magnified today. 

The reason Latinos are so vulnerable to trafficking can be summed up in a word: Immigration. Immigrants are vulnerable to trafficking by virtue of their status as either undocumented or beholden to certain employers if they are here on temporary work visas. And immigrants to the U.S. are likely to come from Latin America. 

This fact, which seems more pertinent today than ever, is why we dug into the numbers and created The Latino Face of Trafficking and Exploitation in the United States. 

Besides the geographic proximity of Latin American and Caribbean countries to the United States, the statistics reported by the Trafficking Hotline reveal that 77% of confirmed Latin Americans and Caribbeans are easy targets for traffickers. The remaining 23% are victims of sex trafficking or a combination of sex and labor trafficking. It is no surprise that the number one industry that most victimizes these immigrants is agriculture and that almost six out of ten possible victims from Latin America and the Caribbean come from Mexico.

The full version of this report is currently available here in Spanish. An Executive Summary in English is also available here. If you want more information about this project or have a question, please send an email to rflores@polarisproject.org.

KJ