recognizing red flags, and helping our clients react to existing laws designed to deter, detect, and report human trafficking. Below, we outline the scope of human trafficking, examine legislation enacted to combat human trafficking, and discuss some of the challenges faced by companies subject to new compliance requirements.

Definition and Scope of Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is slavery, the trade in human beings. It involves recruiting, transporting, harboring or receiving human beings, by the use of force, threats of force, fraud, or other forms of coercion, including the abuse of power or a position of vulnerability. Human beings are trafficked for purposes of sexual exploitation, forced labor, or even for the removal of organs. Per the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) website:

Human trafficking is one of
the most heinous crimes that
ICE investigates. In its worst
manifestation, human trafficking
is akin to modern-day slavery. Victims
pay to be illegally transported into the
United States only to find themselves in
the thrall of traffickers. They are forced into
prostitution, involuntary labor and other forms
of servitude to repay debts—often entry in the
United States. In certain cases, the victims are mere
children. They find themselves surrounded by an unfa-
miliar culture and language without identification docu-
ments, fearing for their lives and the lives of their families.

The global scope of human trafficking is startling; according to the U.S. State Department, some 27 million people globally are victims of human trafficking at any one time. 1 Apart from the drug trade, human trafficking is the world’s fastest growing criminal enterprise and, at an estimated $32 billion, the world’s second most profitable (tied with arms dealing). 2

It is not a “somewhere else” problem, i.e., a crime that happens in other countries, but could not possibly take place in the U.S. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that, during the period from January 2008 to June 2010, federally funded task forces opened some 2,500 human trafficking investigations. Facts underlying individual prosecutions provide even more chilling evidence, such as those detailed below, each drawn from the University of Michigan Law School Human Trafficking Database, which contains 146 cases from the U.S., the largest number of human trafficking cases reported and tracked in the database:

■ ■ ■ Three brothers held four teenage girls from Mexico captive and forced them to prostitute themselves in the New York City and Mexico. They promised them marriage, but then they beat them into submission, to earn money through prostitution; 3

■ ■ ■ A Florida man was convicted after selling drugs to young women to get them addicted, then forcing them into prostitution by threatening to confiscate their drugs and cause them to suffer withdrawal. 4