Enter Polaris’s corporate hospitality partners — and generous individuals from across the country. When local shelters aren’t an option, partnerships like these enable us to use donated hotel points to make reservations for victims and survivors, bridging the gap in available housing. Thus far in 2022, points donations have helped house 37 people and a service dog, giving them a safe space to take the next step on their journey toward healing and freedom.

The Current Shelter Crisis

Hotel points have been invaluable during the pandemic. For those in trafficking situations, COVID-19 made it even harder to leave, given early lockdowns and loss of shelters and safety net services. Among survivors who had already left situations of trafficking, many found themselves back in crisis, jeopardizing their hard-won emotional healing and economic growth.

Polaris quickly saw this reflected in Trafficking Hotline contacts. Early data analysis determined that crisis cases needing assistance within 24 hours surged more than 40%, and emergency shelter requests nearly doubled, mirroring what service providers across the country were seeing in their communities. Meanwhile, already-limited shelter space was stretched even thinner with COVID restrictions, with some sites closing down altogether.

Today, we may be emerging from the acute phase of the pandemic, but the safety net has not recovered. Service providers are calling Polaris directly for their clients, and the Trafficking Hotline continues to receive more calls requesting hotel stays. And the stays are growing longer: Before the pandemic, victims and survivors generally spent about two to three days in hotels before moving into longer-term programs — they are now waiting about five to seven and as many as ten days for something to open up. And even then, they may have to stay in general shelters, which are not always the most supportive for their situations.

How You Can Help

With victims and survivors needing safe shelter options more than ever before, Polaris is redoubling our efforts to find them resources — and you can help us meet their needs.

If you’re a member of Choice Privileges, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, or Wyndham Rewards, click here to learn how you can donate your points to support victims and survivors in need of emergency shelter. Polaris can use points from these loyalty programs to book stays, and some even allow the conversion of points into monetary donations for Polaris’s work.

If you’re an employee at a hospitality company and are interested in working with Polaris, please contact corporateengagement@polarisproject.org to explore partnership opportunities.

Through your generosity, Polaris can continue to bridge gaps in safe shelter for victims and survivors through the Trafficking Hotline, as we also work to strengthen safety nets and prevent trafficking from happening in the first place.

Thank You to All Our Corporate Hospitality Partners

Stop human trafficking today

Help fix the broken systems that make trafficking possible so we can prevent it from happening in the first place.

Make a Gift

The post Building a Bridge to Safety first appeared on Polaris.

But an analysis of data from the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline suggests that while we theoretically recognized these workers as vital to our nation’s well-being, we did not at the same time protect them from significant trafficking and abuse.

Indeed, an already bad situation appears to have gotten worse as a result of the pandemic.

That’s just one of the findings from an analysis comparing Trafficking Hotline data from the period when most states had some kind of shelter-in-place orders to a similar time before the pandemic. The analysis also confirmed the growing challenge of sex trafficking that is mostly perpetrated online.

Agriculture workers who come to the United States on legal, temporary work visas known as H-2As have long been over-represented as a proportion of labor trafficking victims we learn about on the Trafficking Hotline.

During the pandemic, things got worse. While most forms of trafficking appeared to slow down – likely a result of a dramatic decrease in overall economic activity – trafficking on farms of H-2A workers did not.

Part of the problem is that the mechanisms for trafficking are built into the H-2A program. Specifically: There is virtually no oversight of the recruitment process, which generally takes place in Mexico. That means many workers pay illegal recruitment fees which places them in debt and many others are lied to about the wages and working conditions in the United States.

Additionally, workers are only legally in this country if they are employed by the business that sponsored their visas. That system gives traffickers a powerful weapon to use against a worker who complains about wages or working conditions: threats of deportation.

The pandemic appeared to exacerbate these systemic problems, further tipping the balance of power away from workers and making them that much more vulnerable than ever to trafficking.

• The daily number of labor trafficking and exploitation situations reported to the Trafficking Hotline that had at least one victim on an H-2A visa doubled for the 6-month period during the pandemic.
• During the pandemic, more than one third of victims on H-2A visas reported being denied medical care, despite their classification as essential workers. Various studies have found that Latinos in general and farmworkers in particular were disproportionately likely to become seriously ill or die of COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.

Sex trafficking overall during the shelter in place period appears to have continued unabated but shifted venues – from street-based prostitution, escorts, or brothels to online pornography, webcamming and the like.

This is important because the victim profiles for these types of trafficking are slightly different, which has implications for response.

Overall, it’s important to note that none of these figures can be seen as evidence that trafficking increased or decreased during the pandemic. What we do know – and this analysis drives home – is that trafficking is a dynamic crime that will morph to fit the circumstances. That makes it even more difficult to reduce trafficking through law enforcement alone and argues for strategies that are based on prevention rather than response.

The post Human Trafficking During a Pandemic: What We Can Learn From a Snapshot in Time first appeared on Polaris.

The post Sexual Exploitation During the Pandemic first appeared on Polaris.

There was a more than 70% increase in reported likely labor trafficking victims who held H-2A visas that authorizes the work of migrant agricultural workers in the United States. In addition to other abuses, one-third of these individuals complained about being denied medical attention, while they were deemed essential by the United States Government.

The post Labor Exploitation and Trafficking of Agricultural Workers During the Pandemic first appeared on Polaris.

On COVID-19, we now have hard numbers thanks to a recent New York Times article that shows people of color, particularly Latinos and African Americans, are becoming infected with the virus at three times the rate of their white neighbors. 

In human trafficking, the data is much less definitive. We have some numbers from specific jurisdictions. For example, we know that in Louisiana, Black girls account for nearly 49 percent of child sex trafficking victims, though Black girls comprise approximately 19 percent of Louisiana’s youth population and in King County, Washington, 84 percent of child sex trafficking victims are Black while Black children and adults together only comprise 7% of the general population. Similarly, we have strong evidence from the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline that Latinos are disproportionately represented among human trafficking victims and survivors in general, and labor trafficking survivors in particular. 

But we lack credible, nationwide numbers we need to prove that while it is true that anyone can become a victim of human trafficking, people of color are disproportionately victimized by both sex and labor trafficking.

The underlying system at play in both these arenas is racism and its manifestation as discrimination – particularly, but not solely, economic discrimination. 

Racism has fueled policies that stunted the economic opportunity and upward mobility of people of color in the United States for generations. For example, homeownership is a primary driver of family wealth in this country, but racist “redlining,” kept Black families out of majority-white neighborhoods that might have grown in value by keeping them from getting mortgages. The resulting poverty, and the unequal protection of people of color under the law, are key risk factors in determining who gets trafficked and who gets COVID-19. 

Sex and labor traffickers take advantage of economic need to lure people into situations and trap them there. They promise decent jobs that wind up being nightmares, or convince people who have been cut off from other avenues of economic opportunity that selling sex is the way to a better future.

As for COVID-19, while nearly half of Black and Latino workers – 43 percent – have jobs in the service or production sectors that require them to be physically present – and not always socially distant – at work during the pandemic. And few are in a position to quit those jobs out of concern for their health. As this recent CDC look at COVID-19 cases among meat and poultry workers shows, the people in these jobs are often virtually trapped by economic circumstances. By comparison, only about 25 percent of white people hold service and production jobs. That means far more white people can stay home – and stay safe -than Latinos or Blacks and still keep their jobs. 

While the economic fallout of racism is the most direct connection between why people of color are more likely to be trafficked, and/or get COVID-19 than their white neighbors, it is not the only reason. 

Attitudes and stereotypes about Black people (particularly women and girls) make it so that they are more vulnerable to sex trafficking but less likely to be identified or seen as victims. 

Studies have shown how systemic racism has led to far less access to health care and far more health problems in communities of color – particularly but not only low-income communities of color. The problems – underlying conditions – appear to be among the deciding factors on whether infection by COVID-19 is fatal or not. And many jobs that are directly descendant from historical slavery and typically performed by people of color – such as domestic work – have been purposefully left out of most of the nation’s major labor protections. 

Similarly, stereotypes or myths about Black people that are prevalent in the healthcare field make it so they’re less likely to receive the same level of care as white people, leading to underlying conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 and perhaps less effective treatment once they come down with the virus.

As the work to dismantle racist structures policies and practices continues, we have an opportunity to simultaneously bring down the systems that enable sex and labor trafficking to victimize Black and Latino people. That means access to equal economic protections – whether you are in a  job that allows you to work remotely, or are an essentially delivery worker, or legal, temporary farm worker. It also means expanded access to social services and safety nets, to educational and training opportunities, healthy food, safe homes, and more.  

The post Racial Disparities, COVID-19, and Human Trafficking first appeared on Polaris.

As the global pandemic stretches on, the U.S. government is making changes to work visa programs aimed at ensuring there are enough workers on the ground in this country to keep Americans fed and our economy functioning. On its face, the most significant change seems like a positive for these workers, who have never been more essential. But dig just a bit deeper and the reality is that the new rules create new pathways for abuse in a program already rife with opportunities for exploitation and labor trafficking.

The largest of the temporary work visa programs are H-2A, which brings men and women from other countries into the United States to work in agriculture and H-2B, which hires foreign workers temporarily for other manual labor jobs such as seafood and meat processing, cleaning, construction, working in carnivals and fairs and landscaping.  The programs are designed to fill jobs U.S.-based employers claim they cannot fill with workers already in the country. 

Among the most dangerous aspects of the H-2A and H-2B visa programs is that the workers who hold these visas are tied to the specific employer whose name is on their particular paperwork. Should they choose to leave that one employer, they lose their legal immigration status. This system gives employers inordinate power over workers – power that data shows is often used to abuse and exploit. All a trafficker needs to do to exert control is threaten to have a worker deported. 

Workers know that deportation means they will most likely be held in deplorable (and now COVID-ridden) detention facilities, and be ineligible to return to the United States ever again – which in turn means for many, the opportunity to create a better future for their loved ones will disappear. The result is that year after year data from the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline shows that workers on temporary H-2A and H-2B visas are disproportionately represented amongst trafficking victims and survivors. Between 2015 and 2019, the Trafficking Hotline reported more than 3,600 survivors of human trafficking who were legally working in the U.S. Approximately 87% of these individuals held H-2A and H-2B visas. 

Polaris and our partners are fighting to change this system and to replace it with one that allows workers the basic right to change employers without fear of retribution or deportation. 

The temporary rule changes put in place because of COVID-19 appear to allow for at least some degree of portability for these visas, which seems encouraging – until you delve into the details. Under the temporary rule change, workers who have completed the terms of their original visas – generally not longer than three years – can stay in the United States and take a new, short-term position with a new employer. 

Unfortunately, that temporary rule change does not put even the bare minimum of protections in place to ensure this portability does not become yet another tool for human traffickers who can with little or no oversight essentially trade human beings amongst themselves. 

If that sounds exaggerated, consider this: 

There is nothing to help workers get the information they need to make decisions about whether to take new jobs with new employers – no public announcement portal, no job boards, no information about wages they might be paid or the work they might be doing. Indeed, there is nothing specified that workers are even told that they are eligible for an extended stay or a new job. All the information rests with employers. And so, of course, does all the power.

Unscrupulous employers and would-be traffickers can threaten workers with impunity, can insist they go to jobs that pay less than what they would willingly take, or require work they do not want to do. If the worker says “no” to any offer, the worker presumably has to then leave the country immediately.

The rule change does not clarify which of the alphabet soup of government agencies involved are responsible for oversight of these extended visas and the 400,000 guest workers in our country who may receive them. 

Indeed, the rule change explicitly states that it is in place to “benefit U.S. agricultural employers and provide stability to the U.S. food supply chain,” and quite blatantly does not consider the interests of workers at all. That is the kind of language and the kinds of programs that embolden traffickers. 

The United States has officially said that agriculture workers are officially essential during the pandemic. But the very fact that these programs exist at all shows how badly we need temporary workers from overseas to keep our economy running pandemic or not. Let’s protect the people who put food on our tables and grocery store shelves and make our economy work for everyone. This program could truly be a win-win, but it could also be a boon for traffickers. It’s up to us.

The post Labor Trafficking Red Flags in Latest Work Visa Program Changes first appeared on Polaris.

A medida que la pandemia se continúa extendiendo, el gobierno de los Estados Unidos está realizando cambios en las regulaciones a las visas temporales de trabajo con el objetivo de asegurar suficientes trabajadores disponibles para las distintas industrias afectadas, sobre todo aquellas que se consideran escenciales para mantener alimentos en las mesas de las familias estadounidenses y la economía a flote. De manera superficial, el cambio más significativo parece ser positivo para estos trabajadores que nunca antes han sido tan escenciales como ahora. Pero al profundizar en los detalles, la realidad es que las nuevas reglas crean condiciones para abusos en un programa que ya estaba plagado de oportunidades de explotación y trata de personas. 

Los programas más grandes de visas temporales son el H-2A, el cual trae a los Estados Unidos hombres y mujeres de otros países para que trabajen en agricultura, y el H-2B, el cual contrata mano de obra extranjera de forma temporal para otros tipos de trabajo no relacionados con agricultura, como procesamiento de carnes, limpieza, construcción, ferias y carnavales, jardinería, entre otras. Estos programas están diseñados para conseguir fuerza laboral que las industrias estadounidenses aseguran no poder llenar con mano de obra local. 

Entre los aspectos más peligrosos de las visas H-2A y H-2B es que sus portadores están atados al empleador que originalmente les procesó la documentación. En caso de que decidan dejar a ese empleador, pierden inmediatamente su estado migratorio. El sistema les da a los empleadores un poder desmesurado sobre los trabajadores, poder que nuestros datos demuestran es utilizado con frecuencia para abusar y explotar. Todo lo que los tratantes necesitan para ejercer control es amenazar a los trabajadores con ser deportados. 

Los trabajadores saben que la deportación significa ser detenidos en centros de detención deplorables y además ser inelegibles para retornar a Estados Unidos, lo que a su vez implica para desaparecen, para muchos, las oportunidades de buscar un mejor futuro económico para sus familias. El resultado es que año con año los datos de la Línea Nacional contra la Trata de Personas muestran que trabajadores con visas temporales H-2A y H-2B están desproporcionalmente representados entre víctimas y sobrevivientes de trata. De hecho, la Línea contra la Trata reporta a más de 3,600 sobrevivientes con visas de trabajo en Estados Unidos. Aproximadamente el 87% de estos individuos tiene visas H-2A o H-2B. 

Polaris y nuestros aliados estamos en una lucha constante por cambiar este sistema y reemplazarlo con uno que permita a los trabajadores el derecho básico de cambiar de empleador sin miedo a deportación u otro tipo de represalias. 

Los cambios temporales debido al COVID-19 parecieran permitir cierto grado de portabilidad de las visas, lo cual parece alentador, hasta que se lee la “letra pequeña”. Bajo este cambio en las reglas, los trabajadores que hayan completado el término de sus visas orginales, generalmente por no más de tres años, pueden permanecer en Estados Unidos y tomar y nuevo trabajo temporal con un nuevo empleador. 

Desafortunadamente, el cambio a la regla ni siquiera establece un mínimo de protecciones para garantizar que la portabilidad no se convierta en otra herramienta para los tratantes, quienes podrían, con muy poca o nula vigilancia, esencialmente comerciar entre ellos con seres humanos. 

Si eso suena exagerado, hay que considerar esto: 

No existe ningún mecanismo que ayude a que los trabajadores obtengan suficiente información que necesitan para tomar decisiones sobre si deben o no aceptar nuevos trabajos con nuevos empleadores – no existe un portal de anuncios, bolsas de trabajo en línea, no hay información sobre salarios ni sobre el tipo de trabajo que estarían haciendo con su nuevo empleador. Toda la información recae en el empleador y, con ello, todo el poder. 

Empleadores sin escrúpulos y potenciales tratantes pueden emenazar de forma impune a los trabajadores, pueden insistir en que vayan a trabajos que pagan menos de lo que estarían dispuestos a aceptar, o incluso solicitar que realicen trabajos que no quieren hacer. Si el empleado dice “no” a alguna oferta, tiene presumiblemente que dejar el país de inmediato. 

Los cambios en estos programas de visas no clarifican cuál de todas las agencias gubernamentales involucradas es responsable por supervisar la extensión de estas visas y los alrededor de 400,000 trabajadores temporales en nuestro país que las estarían recibiendo. 

De hecho, el cambio a las regulaciones establece explícitamente que su objetivo es “beneficiar a los empleadores agrícolas de Estados Unidos y proveer estabilidad a la cadena alimenticia en Estados Unidos”, y descaradamente no considera en absoluto los intereses de los trabajadores. Ese es el tipo de lenguaje y el tipo de programas que envalentonan a los tratantes. 

Estados Unidos ha dicho de forma oficial que los trabajadores agrícolas son esenciales durante la pandemia. Pero el solo hecho de que estos programas existan muestra qué tanto necesitamos a trabajadores temporales del extranjero para sostener nuestra economía con o sin pandemia. Protejamos a las personas que ponen comida en nuestras mesas y en los estantes de los supermercados, y hagamos que nuestra economía funcione para todos. Estos programas podrían verdaderamente ser un ganar-ganar, pero también podrían ser una bendición para los tratantes. Depende de nosotros. 

The post Alerta de trata laboral en los últimos cambios en visas temporales de trabajo first appeared on Polaris.

The analysis looks at three distinct time periods for the purpose of comparison:

• Pre-shelter-in-place 2019: April 1st -April 30th, 2019
• Pre-shelter-in-place 2020: Feb 14th – March 15th, 2020
• Post-shelter-in-place 2020: April 1st – April 30th, 2020

The number of crisis trafficking cases handled by the Trafficking Hotline increased by more than 40 percent in the month following the shelter-in-place orders compared to the prior month (from approximately 60 in a 30 day period to 90). Crisis cases are those in which some assistance – such as shelter, transportation, or law enforcement involvement – is needed within 24 hours.

The number of situations in which people needed immediate emergency shelter nearly doubled (from around 29 cases in Feb. 14th – March 15th, 2020 to 54 in April 2020).

The data is alarming, if not unexpected. 

“Sex and labor trafficking don’t happen in a vacuum but are the end results of a range of other problems – poverty and systemic inequity, to name just a few,” said Nancy McGuire Choi, interim CEO of Polaris. “The economic upheaval, the fact that people are essentially trapped with their abusers, the desperate straits so many find themselves in, are conditions where trafficking thrives. As society heads toward recovery we must target help to those who are most vulnerable,” Choi said.

Data from the Trafficking Hotline is not a definitive source of exactly how much human trafficking is occurring in North America at any time, and the findings of a single month are, of course, just that – a single month. Additionally, it is important to note that this analysis is only an exploration of correlation and findings and not proof that changes are caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trafficking Hotline exists to assist victims and survivors of human trafficking and questions are asked only for the purpose of providing that assistance; therefore there will be measurement variations in every situation. Finally, the data from 2020 has not been through Polaris’s review process yet and may change. For more details please click here. 

The post Human Trafficking During the COVID-19 Pandemic first appeared on Polaris.

The post Crisis in Human Trafficking During the Pandemic first appeared on Polaris.

“A case came across my desk this week – the desk that now sits just one set of double doors away from my own little family. A survivor called who’d recently given birth. She was still in the hospital and hoped to find assistance for herself and her two-day old newborn. She needed diapers, a safe place to stay, maybe some formula, too. The preferred organization in the area is out of supplies. No one is taking in new clients. Closing my eyes I remember what it feels like to be two days post-birth. I hear my littles safely playing in the next room. I snap back to the present and remember; I’m at home, yes, but this is work. This is my job. Make a plan. Execute the plan. Don’t dwell on the closet full of diapers upstairs.”

Since mid-March, the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline has moved from a generic D.C. office building to dozens of basement apartments, rowhouse bedrooms, suburban cul de sacs and walk-in closets turned offices. That in itself is pretty extraordinary, but it also makes an incredibly emotionally challenging job even tougher. From their own couches and kitchens, Trafficking Hotline staff are facing constricted resources, soaring vulnerabilities – and they are doing so without their peers to physically turn to for support. They are doing so with, as one Trafficking Hotline professional shared with us, their own families just on the other side of the door. 

While the Trafficking Hotline team has been working with service provider partners to ensure that our systems are kept up to date and reflect changes as they happen, they have to do even more thinking on their feet than usual. More service providers are suddenly full or unable to accept new clients and the Trafficking Hotline advocates have had to do a lot of thoughtful safety planning and brainstorming with people who are reaching out and need support. As one member of the team put it, “in these extraordinary circumstances, we’re having to be extraordinarily creative to meet the most basic needs of people who call us.”

All this, of course, without an easily collaborative environment, with staff working out of the same room, so they can offer support to a colleague who is dealing with a difficult situation. Now that Trafficking Hotline staff are working out of their own individual spaces, they have to be more proactive about asking for support when they need it and supervisors have to more frequently check-in. The lack of separation between work and home has also proved to be challenging. In this time of social distancing, Trafficking Hotline staff have learned that they need to find their own way to keep an emotional distance between their personal life and their work life.

Despite the challenges and uncertainty of our new circumstances, the Trafficking Hotline team remains passionate about and dedicated to the mission. They are prepared to adapt and deal with whatever comes their way. 

The post Working on the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline During the COVID-19 Pandemic first appeared on Polaris.