The post No Vacancy: Closing the Door on Labor Trafficking in the Hospitality Industry first appeared on Polaris.

Fortunately, the U.S. government is beginning to recognize this inequality. In October 2022, it launched the H-2B Worker Protection Taskforce, a major acknowledgement that these visa holders face numerous human and labor rights violations in the U.S., including labor trafficking — a concern that Polaris has persistently brought to light. 

Through operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline, Polaris has heard from hundreds of workers in diverse industries covered under the H-2B program, including construction, meatpacking, amusement parks, hospitality, landscaping, and forestry. Many have had their wages stolen or withheld, supposedly to pay back costs for travel to the U.S. or basic needs. This debt bondage, along with other force, fraud, and coercion, keep workers in exploitative situations. For example, 68% of H-2B trafficking victims reported threats of deportation or immigration consequences if they failed to comply with employers’ demands.

After a year of dedicated advocacy work with coalition partners, Polaris is encouraged by the progress reflected in the H-2B Worker Protection Taskforce’s recent report, which identified the following needed actions: 

• Deferred action to support legal claims: The U.S. government should protect workers involved in labor disputes with their employers by guaranteeing deferred action and allowing workers to remain in the country during an investigation. This could reduce the fear of retaliation that discourages workers from pursuing their rights.

• Creation of a data hub: Having easy access to relevant data on H-2 workers is key in combating labor abuses and holding companies accountable for complying with the rule of law. As a first step toward leveraging existing data, the Department of State will publish anonymized data on a quarterly basis to inform outreach and advocacy efforts.

• Improved recruitment monitoring system: To reduce vulnerability, especially to debt bondage, a better monitoring system would enable the Department of Labor to inspect every aspect of the recruitment process and ensure that common but illegal recruitment fees are not being charged. 

• Outreach and education on worker rights: Under proposed measures, labor and human rights organizations would be able to visit workers in employer-provided housing, which is currently prohibited. The Department of Labor also created a helpful tool for migrant workers, which provides important information about rights and other resources to workers in English and Spanish.

These provisions will help mitigate H-2B workers’ vulnerabilities and empower them to secure their rights and pursue safe, justly compensated work in the U.S. Although much remains to be done in fighting labor exploitation and trafficking, the Taskforce’s efforts are a significant stride in the right direction.

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Polaris has played our part in these successes, sitting on local coalitions, providing testimony, writing letters, and filing slips in support of survivor-centered policies. But this work needs all partners at the table to be successful — and we invite you to join the movement. 

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From coast to coast, anti-trafficking advocates are joining with worker rights and prison reform partners to prevent labor trafficking. 

In the District of Columbia, the Domestic Worker Employment Rights Amendment Act of 2022 — known as the DC Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights — will be implemented in 2024 after the DC Council fully funded the effort in next year’s budget. 

Before this law, house cleaners, nannies, home health aides, and other domestic workers were excluded from the District’s Human Rights Act prohibiting discrimination based on race, sex, gender, national origin, and other traits. Without protection, DC’s domestic workers — mostly women of color and immigrants — have been vulnerable to threats, harassment, and exploitation.

The new act includes domestic workers under the Human Rights Act and occupational health and safety laws. It also requires written agreements between employers and domestic workers, and gives workers information on their rights through a new outreach and education program.

Meanwhile, Nevada and California advocates are working to end a different exception. Sixteen states — along with the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — still allow forced labor as a punishment for a crime. Incarcerated individuals can be mandated to work and paid little to nothing, essentially leaving them without resources to provide for their families or give back to their communities.

But momentum for change is growing: Seven states have recently eliminated this language that exploits institutionalized labor from their constitutions, and Nevada hopes to follow suit. This year, they passed a joint resolution to remove the exception, which will go before voters in 2024. Similar steps are being taken in neighboring California, with the introduction of the End The Slavery in California Act. 

How can you help? If you’re in DC, Nevada, or California, join local efforts to ensure these efforts reach their goals. At the federal level, show your support for a National Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights and the Abolition Amendment to the Constitution, reintroduced this year ahead of Juneteenth.

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The post Prioritizing Survivor-Centered State Policies: The Fight for Fair Labor first appeared on Polaris.

Survivors of human trafficking should be the main character of any human trafficking story, not a supporting actor. We must trust survivors, listen to their stories, and center both. 

Named after the North Star, an historical symbol of freedom, Polaris leads a survivor-centered, data-informed, and justice and equity-driven movement to end human trafficking. Since 2007, Polaris has operated the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline, connecting victims and survivors to support and services, and helping communities hold traffickers accountable. 

Eliminating human trafficking is a challenge that requires support from all corners of the world, and we welcome everyone who wishes to join the movement. The film Sound of Freedom is a Hollywood depiction based on one person’s stories. It should be seen as exactly that — not a comprehensive view of human trafficking nor a model of how to best end human trafficking. There are many additional perspectives and stories that complete the picture. Polaris has spent two decades listening to survivors. The knowledge that has been shared with us comes from many communities and individuals who are impacted differently, and it is their lived experiences that inform Polaris’s work.

Through our work, Polaris has built the largest known dataset on human trafficking in North America. The data and expertise gained from two decades of working on trafficking situations in real-time helps us to partner with service providers and law enforcement; support survivors on their healing journeys; and address the vulnerabilities that enable the business of stealing freedom for profit.  

Polaris continues to believe that the true heroes in the anti-trafficking movement have been and will always be survivors of sex and labor trafficking. We think the focus of the movement should remain on those with lived experience. 

Polaris’s first priority is to listen to victims and survivors, act based on their recommendations and expertise, and support their empowerment and paths to freedom. While not everyone uses this approach, we know it to be the only approach that provides survivors the support they need, keeps them safe, and truly works towards ending human trafficking.

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The post Responding to Sound of Freedom: Hollywood Needs to Center Survivors and Their Voices first appeared on Polaris.

For survivors of human trafficking, breaking free from the exploiter is often just the beginning of a long, hard journey. Most need longer-term support to truly heal from the physical, emotional, and mental traumas they have experienced, long after their exploitation has ended. 

Sadly, few can find it. 

Data from the inaugural National Survivor Study (NSS), the largest and most comprehensive survey of survivors of human trafficking in the United States to date, suggests that long-term healing and recovery options for survivors are few and far between. 

Survivors’ Long-Term Health Needs

Several of the top reported needs by survivors were health related, including access to trauma-informed behavioral and mental health services. Even long after exiting, nearly 40% of survivors had not been able to find appropriate behavioral and mental health help. Another top need was managing chronic or long-lasting health issues, reported by 30% of survivors. 

“It takes years and years to reassemble a life”

Health issues resulting from trafficking often lead to financial challenges. One survivor shared, “I had to spend my entire retirement and more and go into debt to get proper treatment. Getting treatment buried me alive.” Medical debt can be completely outside of survivor control, as one survivor shared, “I have over $40,000 in medical debt from being IVC’d [involuntarily committed].” A choice between receiving necessary health care and keeping food on the table is a choice no one, especially a trafficking survivor, should ever have to make. 

Medical Debt is Just the Beginning

Traffickers abuse the financial system both for financial gain and to assert control over the people they exploit. This often results in large sums of debt and poor credit for survivors. Support in repaying debt as a result of abuse is one of survivors’ most persistent long-term needs, with 34% reporting a need for this assistance at the time of the study. As one participant put it, “Because of fraud from trafficker [I] am in debt that they created so [I] could not leave.” 

“My exploiter put me in a lot of debt, totaled cars attached to loans/insurance. I wasn’t able to pay off payday loans that he forced me to take out in my ‘good credit standing name’ for almost 6 years after I left”

Survivors’ credit scores are also deeply affected by financial abuse. At the time of the survey, 31% of survivors still needed credit repair. While the passage of the Debt Bondage Repair Act (DBRA) has made credit repair for trafficking survivors possible for the first time, early comments from survivors indicate the process is time-consuming and very complex. As a result, the credit repair process for survivors of trafficking has yet to be widely utilized.  

Pivoting Towards the Future

Survivors have told us that the way recovery support in the US is provided is not working. We must listen to survivors, and respond by changing how and what services are delivered. The NSS showed us that affordable or free mental and behavioral health services are critical not only for achieving good physical and mental health after trafficking, but also financial health. Debt and bad credit is keeping survivors trapped in insecurity, and the existing relief services are not effective. As one survivor shared, “this financial hole which continues to drag me into a mental and emotional black hole.”

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The post Still Looking: Survivors Need Long-Term Solutions first appeared on Polaris.

Wearing tight jeans is not an invitation to a sexual encounter. Indeed, nothing a person does, says, or wears makes that person in any way responsible for their own harassment, assault, or other victimization – including trafficking. 

That’s the short version of the message of Denim Day, an internationally-recognized day to support survivors of sexual violence and bring awareness to the issue of victim-blaming. Human trafficking survivors know this issue all too well. Many are dealing with criminal records that are the direct result of their having been victimized and forced into committing crimes by a trafficker – a very tangible form of victim-blaming. But the mental health and emotional aspects of being treated as if you are at fault for your own sexual assault are equally damaging to people who have experienced trafficking and the manipulations traffickers deploy so expertly to make victims believe they are making their own choices. 

Victim-blaming relies on the perception that the person had a choice – that they made a wrong decision that led to their trafficking situation. But human trafficking is never the victim’s fault. It can show up in any number of scenarios, including supposedly therapeutic environments or when interacting with law enforcement. It often looks like questioning what a survivor could have, or should have, done differently to “prevent” their trafficking situation – such as not engaging in commercial sex, having irregular immigration status, or accepting a job that turns out to be a trafficking scam.  

The tendency to blame the victim in scary situations is challenging to address legislatively because it is often an unconscious decision or choice –  a way to psychologically separate ourselves from them and maintain the view that bad things don’t happen to good people. Telling yourself that the victim must have done something wrong may be self-protective. 

Unfortunately, what protects one person’s emotional well-being can have an extremely harmful, real world effect on others. This is particularly true when trafficking survivors are blamed for their own victimization. This social stigma and the fear of not being believed may prevent them from seeking help or resources after they leave their situation. The internalization of that blame could make survivors think they did do something wrong, and they might not see themselves as deserving of help.

This potential tragedy is compounded by the fact that people who are blamed for their abuse report greater distress, increased depression, worsened symptoms of anxiety, and more complicated post-traumatic stress disorder. Holding survivors responsible for the exploitation they endured or insinuating that they had a choice in being trafficked is unfair. It’s time to change the culture around victim-blaming. YOU can help by examining your own thoughts and reactions to victims of these crimes. Challenge yourself and your friends to recognize the harm this blame has on survivors and stop viewing survivors as responsible for their trafficking situations.

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The post The Impact of Victim-Blaming on Human Trafficking Survivors first appeared on Polaris.

For most Americans, it’s normal to assume that your employer will treat you with dignity and respect, regardless of the industry. It’s not radical to expect safe and fair working conditions. 

But that’s not always the case if you are a foreign worker with a temporary work visa, like the H-2A or H-2B. In 2021, more than 250,000 workers were granted work permits through the H-2A visa program, which brings essential migrant workers into the US agriculture sector. Almost 90% were Mexican nationals. 

These visa holders accept seasonal employment in the US, hoping that they will receive fair wages and be treated with the same dignity expected by the national workforce. But labor violations, back wages, and poor working conditions are all too frequent according to media reports and Polaris’s own experience operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline and other survivor-centered programs. 

Polaris has been raising public awareness of exploitative conditions under temporary work visa programs. We have been calling out the lack of accountability for bad employers who find loopholes and take advantage of workers who desperately need jobs to provide for their families and communities. 

Now Polaris is calling for the financial resources to ensure the Department of Labor (DOL) can fulfill its mandate to protect workers and enforce labor law. The DOL has made it clear that they do not have the funding to monitor employers and ensure safe and humane conditions for workers, including those with H-2A visas. The numbers testify to the need: In 2018 there was only one labor inspector for every 175,000 workers. 

The DOL is asking for $2.3 billion from the US administration for its worker protection agencies and efforts. In support of this request, Polaris and our partners Justice in Motion and the National Employment Law Project ask the Committee of Appropriations to approve the following items in the 2024 budget:

• $340.953 million to restore and strengthen the Wage and Hour Division’s (WHD’s) enforcement capacity, an increase of $67.678 million and 389 full-time equivalent (FTE) personnel. 
• $25.968 million to bolster WHD efforts in key areas like protecting the rights and wages of essential workers, ensuring prevailing wage protections, and combating child labor.
• $2.5 million to help enforce protections of temporary foreign workers and expand outreach efforts alongside the rise in worker visa programs.
• $199.641 million across general and trust funds to adequately resource the Office of the Solicitor to enforce labor and employment laws and keep pace with the DOL’s urgent enforcement agenda.

Without enough inspectors, outreach staff, and other resources at the DOL, we will continue to read about child labor in meat packing industries, back wages owed to workers, and other violations. Budget cuts will endanger workers, leaving them vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. But we can prevent these situations by properly and fully funding the right offices to ensure foreign workers are treated with dignity, fairness, and respect while working in the US. You can help make this happen by contacting your Congress members today. 

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The post The Fight for Fair Work Needs Full Funding for the Department of Labor first appeared on Polaris.

UPDATED APRIL 2025

Many survivors of human trafficking are also survivors of sexual abuse.

During April’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we are exploring the intersection of sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Human trafficking is defined as the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor against their will. Sexual abuse can be a method of control that traffickers use – in both sex and labor trafficking situations. We looked at contacts to the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline from 2015 through 2022 and examined the number of victims who experienced sexual abuse as a method of control during their trafficking situation. In situations where force, fraud, or coercion was known, we found that:

• 18% of all the victims who experienced combined sex & labor trafficking experienced sexual abuse as a method of control (826 victims).
• 11% of all sex trafficking victims experienced sexual abuse as a method of control (5,892 victims).

From January 2020 through November 2022, we found that 10% of sex trafficking victims who contacted the National Human Trafficking Hotline experienced sexual abuse (6,909 victims), either prior to their trafficking experience or as a method of control during the trafficking experience.

Sexual abuse is also a factor that can make people more vulnerable to human trafficking. Someone who has past experiences of sexual abuse, violence, or trauma could be lured in and taken advantage of by a trafficker who is exploiting their need for something like protection or love. Of the contacts made to the Trafficking Hotline from 2015 to 2021 where a risk factor or vulnerability was known, we found that:

• 4% of all the victims who experienced combined sex & labor trafficking experienced sexual abuse prior to their trafficking situation (107 victims).
• 6% of all sex trafficking victims experienced sexual abuse prior to their trafficking experience (1,590 victims).

There is also a correlation between child sexual abuse and human trafficking. Polaris recently conducted and published the National Survivor Study, a research project designed to shed light on the experiences of human trafficking survivors in the U.S. When researching the conditions that make people vulnerable to trafficking the study found that 84 percent of participants experienced sexual abuse at some point in their childhood.

Sexual abuse and human trafficking are not isolated issues. The correlation between sexual abuse and human trafficking is disturbing and alarming, but not surprising. Sexual abuse can be a vulnerability that traffickers exploit and a way for traffickers to assert control over victims. Human trafficking cannot be left out of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and sexual assault cannot be excluded from the conversation about human trafficking.

Resources

National Human Trafficking Hotline: Call 1-888-373-7888 or text 233733
National Sexual Assault Hotline: Call 800-656-HOPE (4673)
Resources for survivors of sexual assault (National Sexual Violence Resource Center)

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The post Sexual Assault Awareness Month: How Does Human Trafficking Fit In? first appeared on Polaris.

When workers call the National Human Trafficking Hotline to report abuses at their workplaces, one of the most common methods of control they mention is threats of deportation. In fact, between 2018 and 2020, nearly 6 out of every 10 H-2A visa holders that reported their trafficking situation to the Trafficking Hotline said they were being threatened with immigration consequences if they complain about the exploitative working conditions.

With these new guidelines, noncitizen workers can submit a “Deferred Action” request and an application for “Employer Authorization” in a new centralized intake office, a step that halts any deportation proceedings and provides temporary immigration protections. This is a clear message to employers that use threats of deportation as a way to control foreign workers. At the same time, it offers an important incentive for workers to feel more protected when they see or experience violations of their labor rights. 

Polaris has highlighted the importance of effectively protecting noncitizens workers against trafficking and exploitation, and some of the unique vulnerabilities that they experience: isolation, remote work sites, dependency of the employer for housing and transportation, low English proficiency, lack of access to support networks, just to mention a few of them. These new guidelines could benefit vulnerable workers in many industries across the country, regardless of their status, which is an important development toward empowering foreign workers. The connection with appropriate legal services remains essential and for isolated workers, this is a real challenge.

The new guidelines work hand in hand with two other important announcements that also can contribute to empower workers to report violations to their rights. First, in July 2022, the Department of Labor (DOL) released a document to provide workers with “guidance on how to seek the department’s support for their requests to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration-related prosecutorial discretion.” Another tool for immigrant workers is the new guidance from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that makes it easier for them to safely participate in investigations without fearing for their immigration status. Polaris is pleased to see DHS and DOL taking these critical steps — and we will keep working towards a labor environment free of trafficking and exploitation. 

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