Transgender people exist within the perfect storm of vulnerabilities that human traffickers use to exploit them. For example, trans people often lack familial support, are harassed for simply being who they are or supporting others like them, and experience rejection from services and opportunities – like housing and medical care. Traffickers take advantage of these needs and vulnerabilities and exploit them to maintain control over their victims. Research has even found that LGBTQ+ youth are significantly more likely to be sex trafficked than their straight counterparts.

My name is Ms. Mercy Gray (she/her) of the Bulaceño and Kapampangan peoples from the Philippine Islands. I am a survivor of much violence: colonization, domestic violence, assault, kidnapping, sexual assault, gang-based violence, human trafficking, and as an indigenous transgender woman living in America. This is my story.

As a child, I was groomed with narcotics and trafficked for sex at the age of 14 out of the states of Washington, Oregon, and Nevada. I first experienced houselessness at the age of 15 and survived in the commercial sex trade for ten years after that.

I first met my trafficker as a young scrawny gay boy from a military family living in a military town. I come from a conservative Texan Catholic background and met my trafficker while in the closet. Whether I wanted to be or not, I was, and remain 2SLGBTQIA+ (Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/ Questioning, Intersex, Asexual). The lack of awareness and discussion about these communities played a role in making me more vulnerable to trafficking and led me to look for answers from exploitative adults on the internet when I was only 10 years old. Having been molested earlier in my life and becoming sexually active at that age, I had lots of questions that many grown men had answers to. In searching for answers about my experience and identity, I met and was groomed by my 32-year-old trafficker.

Later on in my life, after nearly two decades of finding myself in the aftermath of being trafficked and finding all my own resources to heal from it, I began medically transitioning my gender. Despite 10 years of experience in social work and a bachelor’s degree, I found myself facing the same employment issues many other transgender people face: discrimination with a sudden new inability for gainful employment. I quickly went from working a permanent, full-time government job in law enforcement, making $37.00/hr, to needing to sell sex to survive and using the substances I was groomed to use as a child. I quickly found myself feeling 14 again. Scared, in the back of some strange man’s car, it didn’t matter how loud I could scream – no help would come for me.

Quicker yet, I found myself without access to the gender-affirming care medications, providers, and surgeries I needed and had already established. I met an older woman who said she would help me and provide me with the hormones I needed. Out of necessity, I found myself sleeping on her floor – next to a stripper pole and massage table. But these street hormones made me incredibly ill, causing a serious infection that left permanent damage and scarring on my body.

I began to need this woman to survive. I experienced a refusal of medical care and prescription access and was treated disrespectfully and poorly by medical professionals – an experience common to many transgender and gender non-conforming people. As a result of my dysphoria, recent trauma from my boyfriend at the time, and a lifetime of abuse, I resorted again to the narcotics I had been groomed to consume as a child for the purposes of sexual acts for items of value. This woman quickly had a solution for this too, providing me with men to sleep with, narcotics to do so, and fake promises of job and other opportunities.

This is what it looks like to become a statistic. Despite my education, career, and the tremendous work I had put in to overcome my childhood trauma, the discrimination I experienced pursuing my gender identity caused me to fall into a bad way.

This is the story of so many transgender survivors across America – total systems failure. We face stark discrimination on all fronts. One U.S. Transgender Survey found that 50% of transgender women had traded sex for income. Despite this, transgender survivors are often excluded from programs that exist to help human trafficking survivors. In my experience, many housing programs, medical services, and first-response resources either do not accept transgender people or are not culturally responsive and trauma-informed to any 2SLGBTQIA+ person.

Facing discrimination on multiple fronts, 2SLGBTQIA+ people are both vulnerable to trafficking and face barriers when seeking assistance of any kind. Support systems and inclusive policies are needed to reduce this community’s vulnerability to traffickers and increase our access to services after exiting our trafficking situations. Without basic needs being met, 2SLGBTQIA+ people face a greater risk of returning to trafficking situations.

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The post The 2SLGBTQIA+ Community Needs More Support Systems and Inclusive Policies to Reduce Vulnerabilities to Trafficking first appeared on Polaris.

For San Diego, one of our initial focus cities under the initiative, we created this action guide with and for local stakeholders to help prevent trafficking of the local LGBTQ+ community.

The post Action Guide: Trafficking Prevention for LGBTQ+ Communities in San Diego first appeared on Polaris.

That’s the conclusion a diverse collection of San Diego social service, government, advocacy and other leaders came to after Polaris convened research and discussions to determine what services were most urgently needed there to make a significant dent in the volume of sex trafficking in the area.

The next step, of course, is making it happen. That is not going to be easy, but a group of leaders in the San Diego community, brought together by Polaris for just this purpose, says they are committed to making this safer space a reality.

The details and specifics matter, local leaders explained. San Diego has a well-known and active center that provides services, programming and a sense of connection for many in the area’s LGBTQ+ community. But this center is in a part of town that is predominantly white, and not necessarily easily accessible for folks in the Black community. A new center, in another location, could more easily focus on meeting the unique needs of Black members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Creating a new, supportive LGBTQ+ gathering place geared specifically to Black people has long had a place on the “wish list” of members of San Diego’s active, volunteer Black LGBTQ Coalition, explained Paige Coe, who leads community outreach for the group. The team had not necessarily focused on the project as important in the context of preventing sex trafficking, however.

But as leaders in San Diego outside of the traditional anti trafficking field came together, they began to recognize the significant overlaps between existing community needs and the vulnerabilities of the young people in particular who most often wound up in trafficking situations.

The Polaris team then reached out to government and political leaders in the community to explain how a safe, affirming community center built and run by and for Black, LGBTQ+ could lead to a demonstrable reduction in sex trafficking in San Diego. They found significant buy-in from the corners of the city that matter. Now, that wish-list item is one step closer to becoming a reality. We’ll keep you posted as we support the powerful leaders in San Diego to build a positive, intentional space for some of the most vulnerable young people in the community and help keep all of San Diego a little bit safer.

The post Preventing Sex Trafficking By Creating Community first appeared on Polaris.

So it will come as no surprise that people who identify as LGBTQ+ are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking. For these are, unfortunately, the realities facing this community – just as they have long been for people facing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. And we know that traffickers operate by preying on vulnerable people – stepping in to fill a need they can’t get elsewhere then tricking or coercing their victims into labor or commercial sex.

Strong legal protections – such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – can help by holding people accountable for the very tangible outcomes of discrimination. But that law does not cover discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Indeed, while some progress has been made through the courts, there is no federal law that explicitly provides nondiscrimination protections for people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. This is a problem with real consequences – including for our work to prevent and combat human trafficking.

Legislation before the U.S. Senate right now would revamp our nation’s threadbare system of protections for LGBTQ+ Americans. The Equality Act (H.R.5/S.393) would add explicit protections in federal law preventing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity for:

• Employment
• Housing
• Credit
• Education
• Public spaces and services like retail stores and banks
• Federally funded programs like shelters and community health centers
• Jury service

Expanding legal protections like these to LGBTQ+ people can help break down barriers to opportunity – ending unfair systems that put people in the sights of traffickers.

The House of Representatives passed the Equality Act in March 2021 with a bipartisan vote. Now, it’s up to the Senate to make it law – contact your U.S. Senators today.

The post Reducing Vulnerabilities to Human Trafficking with the Equality Act first appeared on Polaris.

This January, Human Trafficking Awareness Month, Polaris and United Way are reflecting on how these compounding crises are having a profound impact on human trafficking across the United States.

What we have long understood, but are seeing now more clearly than ever, is that human trafficking doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is the end result of a range of other persistent injustices and inequities in our society and our economy.  

Data shows that the vast majority of trafficking victims identified in the United States are people who have historically faced discrimination and its political, social and economic consequences: People of color, indigenous communities, immigrants and people who identify as LGBTQ+ are disproportionately victimized. People living in poverty, or foster care, or are struggling with addiction, trauma, abuse or unstable housing, are all at comparatively higher risk for trafficking.  

What ties all these disparate groups of people and experiences together is that there is something they need, sometimes desperately. Survivors have taught us that traffickers expertly seek out people whose specific need they can fill – or pretend to fill. Sometimes they dangle material support – a good job, a safe place to stay, drugs. Often what they offer is less tangible but just as vital – the illusion of love, belonging, safety or acceptance.   

Preventing human trafficking at the scale of the problem means changing the underlying systems – the inequities and injustices we mentioned above – that make people vulnerable and therefore make trafficking possible. It requires moving beyond solutions that rely entirely on law enforcement. Prosecuting traffickers and seeking justice for survivors is vital, but it is not enough in and of itself to end trafficking. 

The laws and systems that need changing are not necessarily related to criminal justice. They are not necessarily specific to trafficking. They are eviction moratoria that keep people from being thrown out of their homes in the midst of a pandemic and the ensuing economic upheaval. They are changes to the foster care system to better protect youth who are aging out, and to the immigration system so that people are not so easily controlled by threats of deportation.  They are public procurement rules to ensure taxpayer funds for landscaping and construction do not contribute to forced labor and they are systems that ensure everyone can earn a living wage – a real living wage. 

We also must never forget the important work of ensuring survivors can find safety, and the supports and opportunities they deserve to rebuild their lives. This work is nowhere near done and must continue to be prioritized with survivors at the helm.   

For more than a decade, Polaris has operated the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline and that work has allowed us to build the largest known data set on trafficking in the United States. What we have learned from that data and from survivors informs our 10-year strategy, which is aimed at dismantling, repairing, in some cases upending, the systems where we think the biggest change can be made to help the greatest number. We are working to leverage the reach and power of financial systems to disrupt trafficking, build power for migrant workers in the system of recruiting workers for U.S. farms, and expanding the services available to vulnerable people to prevent sex trafficking before it happens. 

For more than 125 years, United Way has evolved to meet the needs of the times. United Way advances the common good in communities across the world. Our credo is to fight for the health, education and financial stability of every person in every community.  The Center on Human Trafficking & Slavery does this by strengthening and expanding programs and services that support and protect our most vulnerable populations. Learn more here. 

That is why, this January, Polaris and United Way are joining forces to say:

• Fighting racism is fighting human trafficking. 
• Upholding LGBTQ+ equality is fighting human trafficking. 
• Providing safe and affordable housing is fighting human trafficking.  
• Protecting workers rights is fighting human trafficking. 

The best defenses against human trafficking are healthy families and strong communities. Because human trafficking doesn’t happen in a vacuum, our response can’t either. As we embark on a new year, join us in the fight to dismantle the systems that allow human trafficking to exist in the first place. Click here to share graphics on social media.

This blog post is co-authored by: 

Mara Vanderslice Kelly, Executive Director of the United Way Center on Human Trafficking & Slavery

Catherine Chen, Chief Executive Officer, Polaris

The post Human Trafficking Does Not Happen in a Vacuum first appeared on Polaris.

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In the first case, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This decision will dramatically expand workplace protections as more than half of states lack state-level laws protecting LGBTQ+ people from being hired or fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Protections from employment discrimination for the LGBTQ+ community will help increase job stability for a vulnerable group. Transgender people in particular face immense discrimination, including in the job market. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, more than 1 in 4 transgender people have lost a job due to bias and more than 3 in 4 have experienced some form of workplace discrimination. Twenty percent have had to turn to the informal economy for work, including selling sex and drugs. Workplace discrimination, along with many other obstacles, can make transgender individuals susceptible to exploitation as a means of survival. Legal protections, like those determined by the Supreme Court this month, help break down formal barriers to opportunity. However, workplace protections are only one step – without nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community that extends to housing, education, credit, and more, our data shows that these communities remain disproportionately at risk of trafficking.

Just three days later, the Court ruled 5-4 that the U.S. administration acted improperly in terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. Established by the Department of Homeland Security in 2012, DACA gives undocumented young people who were brought to this country as children the opportunity to work and go to school in the United States without the threat of deportation. The Court did not rule on the legality of DACA itself, and the administration does have other avenues to end the program. Permanent protections will require action by Congress. However, the decision provides additional protections to DACA recipients in the short-term.

Policies within the U.S. immigration system can help protect people from potential vulnerabilities, or they can increase those vulnerabilities. For the past eight years, DACA has provided legal authorization for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant youth, allowing them to study, work, and contribute to their communities and our country without fear of deportation. The Supreme Court’s decision has the effect, at least in the short-term, of allowing DACA recipients to continue to support themselves and their families without losing status or being deported. This is important because immigration status is a key vulnerability for human trafficking, used by traffickers to keep people under their control and deterring people from coming forward to seek help.

While we don’t know exactly how these two decisions by the Supreme Court will have an impact on specific sex and labor trafficking situations, both court cases extend protections to groups who might otherwise be at high risk. Advancing legal frameworks that provide equal protections and minimize marginalization are crucial to addressing the vulnerabilities that lead to trafficking in the first place.

The post How the New Supreme Court Rulings Affect Human Trafficking first appeared on Polaris.

Technically, it’s true. Anyone can become a victim of sex and labor trafficking. But it’s also more complicated than that. In reality, the odds of people in trafficking situations being “in your backyard,” actually depends a lot on the neighborhood where your backyard is located and on the economic wellbeing of your neighbors. That’s true today, and it will be even more true, most likely, when this pandemic finally passes. Here’s why:

We know that human trafficking thrives on chaos and desperation in communities already ravaged by ills including addiction and poverty. So while we do not – and cannot – know exactly how the pandemic will affect sex and labor trafficking in America, we can be pretty sure that those communities will be even more vulnerable to violence, abuse, and exploitation in the wake of this massive, worldwide economic and social disruption. 

As layoffs continue with no end in sight, accumulated or generational wealth – savings, homeownership – will be the difference between those who struggle through but eventually recover from the economic devastation of this crisis and those who spiral ever further into poverty.  

How this will work in a labor trafficking context is pretty clear. People will take jobs that may be exploitative, off-the-books; less than minimum wage, with no legal or health protections. For people in dire economic straits, or without legal documentation to work in this country, traffickers will find ways to keep them trapped in these situations.

Sex trafficking is no different. 

Let’s say you are working an hourly job that keeps you just above the poverty line. You likely have no significant savings. Maybe you are a single parent. Then COVID-19 comes along. The quarantine cost you your job and unemployment has you underwater for rent, struggling to buy food, diapers – all of your basic needs. Friends and family can’t help. They are in the same boat. After the quarantine lifts, you apply for every job out there, but you never get a single call or email back. The competition is just too great. Everyone is as desperate as you are.

Then, finally, you get a break – at least you think you do. Someone you vaguely know says they have a way you can make some money. Maybe it’s something you wouldn’t normally do for work, something you are not comfortable with, but it will only be once or twice, or only for a little while. You have lines you won’t cross at first – no touching, no kissing, or only with a condom, but the person “helping” you pushes – subtly at first – then less so. That person takes a big cut of the money and urges you to do whatever it takes to make more. 

Maybe there are threats to you or your child. Maybe there are promises that hold out the only hope you’ve had for a while. Maybe it’s a mixture of both. Maybe there is violence. 

This is sex trafficking in the United States and COVID-19 has just made you a target.

Trafficking, Like Health Disparities, Already Targets Marginalized Groups

Data from service providers and the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline has consistently shown that groups who experience marginalization by race, income, gender identity, sexual orientation, and immigration status are more likely to be exploited through sex and labor trafficking. 

All available evidence suggests that these same people will become even more vulnerable in the wake of this crisis. The median African American family has 41 times less wealth than the median white family. African American homeownership last year reached a historic low – nearly 30 percent below the rate of white homeownership. 

Latino families have 22 times less wealth than the average white family. A March 23rd CUNY survey found that 41% of New York City Latinos said either they or someone else in their household had lost their jobs in the last two weeks. 

According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one in five LGBTQ+ people lived in poverty and 40 percent of homeless youth identified as LGBTQ+ before COVID-19. Less wealth translates directly into less of a cushion to weather a layoff. HRC research also showed LGBTQ+ workers in the United States are more likely to work jobs highly affected by quarantine orders compared to their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts. 

Lack of health care will only make matters worse. Despite gains in health insurance coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act, African Americans and Latinos still lag behind whites. Racial disparities are already beginning to surface regarding COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States. The bills for those who survive will begin to mount quickly, adding to the economic disaster. 

Targeted COVID-19 Response Can Decrease Trafficking Risk

Understanding how marginalized communities are likely to face greater risk than ever can be the first step toward formulating policy responses that reach and protect the right people. That’s always been the case and it is more urgent today than ever.

Financial service benefits targeted towards vulnerable communities could make a significant difference in preventing the COVID-19 epidemic from turning into a trafficking epidemic. Policies like rent moratoria that stabilize existing housing and vouchers to provide emergency access to short term housing will alleviate tremendous pressure for potential victims and their families. Job incentives for employers to hire in vulnerable communities at living wages will allow people to safely access the resources they need. 

Overall, making sure your city, state, and federal lawmakers know supporting the economy in smart, targeted ways that support vulnerable people will help head off another kind of preventable epidemic – human trafficking. 

The post COVID-19 May Increase Human Trafficking in Vulnerable Communities first appeared on Polaris.

For too many LGBTQ+ youth in the United States, these questions are real, right now, tonight, tomorrow night, and the next. Indeed, research shows that 40 percent of homeless youth in this country identify as LGBTQ+.

June is national Pride Month in the United States – a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and recognize those who fought for equal rights for gender and sexual minorities. That’s tremendously valuable but as June comes to a close, it is also important to remember that legal rights only go so far, and for many people, particularly children and young people, the social consequences of identifying as LGBTQ+, are still devastating.

Research shows that 40 percent of homeless youth in the United States identify as LGBTQ+. Ninety-one percent of those youth in similar situations in another study reported having been approached by someone offering them a way to earn income that was too good to be true – a sign of trafficking.

This is no accident. Traffickers target runaway and homeless youth. They hang out at bus stations, train stations, and malls, looking for minors that seem lost or alone. They pose as romantic partners, or as parental figures, showing interest in the person’s story and trauma, showering them with attention and expensive gifts, and presenting as one of the few people in the person’s life that accepts them with their true sexuality or gender.

For the young person, it is profoundly difficult to reject both the material support – food, clothing, and shelter – these predators offer, and equally hard to see through the pose of providing a family structure to replace the one that rejected them –  often complete with brothers and sisters in the same situation as them. All they have to do is earn their keep. All they have to do is to bring in money for the family. All they have to do is recruit new family members. All they have to do is please their guardian and do whatever they say.

While sex trafficking is prevalent, an increasingly common trend in LGBTQ+ trafficking cases is traffickers forcing or coercing victims into performing illicit activities such as participating in the illegal drug trade. This is the most prevalent type of labor trafficking among homeless youth as youth are less likely to be implicated by the police. Traffickers often introduce drug use or manipulate existent drug use among their victims as a means to coerce victims to continue to work for them. Not only does this involvement in illicit activities act as a form of coercion in the situation, but also as a barrier for youth reaching out for help because they feel unsafe going to the police or to a social worker.

Understanding the problem and collaborating with service providers focused on this population is a key step in mitigating the problem. The field needs to train personnel on how to identify destructive behaviors they are seeing or involvement in uncharacteristic activities as symptoms of exploitation, and not criminality. The social services field as a whole needs to create a safety net for youth experiencing rejection, homelessness, and abuse.

Better still, is keeping these young people from feeling the pain in the first place, and seeking support outside their homes because they are not getting what they need from within. Acceptance, unconditional love, and consistent support of a person coming out as LGBTQ+ is ultimately the most important factor in keeping them safe.

Polaris has many more resources for the LGBTQ+ community, services providers, law enforcement, and others looking to support them. Stay informed! If you’d like to help make an impact on the lives of human trafficking victims and survivors join our Grassroots Network.

The post Acceptance and Love is Needed for LGBTQ+ Youth first appeared on Polaris.

Since our inception, we have worked on a variety of projects: we helped establish inclusive gender categories for the National Hotline, worked with our Human Resources department to establish Polaris’s gender neutral dress code, and instituted a template for pronouns in staff email signatures. These organizational-focused projects help create a culture of inclusion within our organization to focus and guide our work.

We continue to enhance and maintain staff knowledge and competency by the development of an internal protocol for Hotline Advocates to better serve our callers who identify as transgender and gender non-conforming. This resource gives guidance on definitions and terms, best practices and appropriate language, and ways to advocate with and for LGBTQI+ victims when working with service providers and family or friends. In conjunction with this protocol, we organized and co-facilitated an LGBTQI+ competency training for hotline staff with the expertise and assistance of a trainer from the DC Center for the LGBT Community.

One ongoing and long-term project of the GSRM is tracking hotline cases involving LGBTQI+ identifying victims and survivors in the effort to understand and improve internal response to these individuals. We working to expand this project towards monitoring these cases so we can better evaluate both gaps and positive trends in service provision for LGBTQI+ victims and survivors of trafficking.

Most recently, two GSRM members participated in a video conference call with government officials, service providers, and LGBTQI+ organizations in the Philippines discussing international efforts toward assisting LGBTQI+ youth victims of trafficking. We shared our thoughts on prevention and policy goals, as well as best practices toward inclusive service provision and data collection.

We’ve made a lot of progress on the Hotline and at Polaris, but we have a lot of work left to do. Over the next few years, we will be working hard to foster and strengthen relationships with local and national LGBTQI+ organizations and service providers to provide technical assistance, grow a network of organizations who understand the specific vulnerabilities and needs of the community, and to get the word out to LGBTQI+ victims and survivors that we are here to assist, and here to listen.

The post Introducing the Gender, Sexual, and Romantic Minorities Working Group first appeared on Polaris.