On November 15, Polaris Project hosted the first ever National State Legislators Conference Call on Human Trafficking. More than 40 legislators from 26 states joined a conference call and webinar put together by Polaris Project to collaborate, share ideas, and advocate for anti-trafficking legislation. Each state has taken its own approach to combatting human trafficking and the purpose of the call was to give legislators an opportunity to learn more from each other on what has worked and the challenges others have confronted in successfully carrying anti-trafficking legislation.

Executive Director and CEO Bradley Myles provided an introductory statement on the need for strong local action against trafficking. Then, legislators that worked closely with Polaris Project offered their insight and guidance to veteran and freshmen legislators on how to pass anti-trafficking legislation. [Read more →]

Capitol Rotunda, Harrisburg

October 18, 2011 at 3:00 p.m.

30 victims, held in debt bondage. Sexual and physical violence used to force them to work long hours at very little or no pay. You may think that you would never come across this type of crime, but in Pennsylvania, these 30 labor trafficking victims were working in plain sight at stores like Walmart, Kmart, Safeway, and Target. These stores hired contractors to clean, and were unaware of the horrific conditions that their cleaners were working under. This is just one of many human trafficking situations that have emerged out of Pennsylvania in recent years, and a reason why PA Senator Daylin Leach yesterday hosted a press conference in the Harrisburg Capitol Rotunda calling for legislation that requires the posting of the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) hotline number.

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The release of the TIP Report highlights the necessity of passing the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). On June 29, 2011, Senators Leahy, Kerry, and Brown introduced the 2011 TVPRA bill, building on the momentum of the TIP Report release a few days earlier. [Read more →]

The U.S. State Department’s Annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report was released on Monday, June 27, 2011. It is compiled each year to analyze 184 governments’ efforts to combat human trafficking within their own borders. Governments are ranked into one of three tiers based on their attempts to meet the “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” in Section 108 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).  It is useful as a tool for diplomatic pressure and incentives, a map of trafficking streams and trends, and an update on status quo practices and implementation of anti-trafficking efforts globally. [Read more →]

The victims were expected to stand and braid hair for eight to 14 hours a day, six to seven days a week for no pay. As many customers walked in and out of these salons in Newark and East Orange, New Jersey, none of them identified these women as victims of human trafficking. In September 2007, federal agents arrested three people for the trafficking of at least 20 young women from Togo who were forced to work without pay in two hair braiding salons. According to authorities, the traffickers were able to smuggle the women into the United States by manipulating a lottery program that makes immigrant visas available to people from countries, such as Togo, with low rates of immigration to the U.S. [Read more →]

Victims of human trafficking rarely see their controllers brought to justice. However, there are cases where justice is served. In one rare, but highly satisfying instance, Maximino Mondragon and eight of his co-conspirators were sentenced to 13 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.7 million in damages to his victims. The group was convicted of bringing dozens of women and girls from Latin America into the U.S. and forcing them to work and engage in commercial sex at Cantina bars throughout Houston, TX. While the outcome of this case is unfortunately unusual, the details of Mondragon’s crime are sadly all too common. [Read more →]

Slavery in agriculture has a long history in America.  It was perceived as a vital component of the economy during colonial years and nearly caused the disintegration of the United States during the Civil War.  The first abolitionists worked tirelessly to demonstrate that the economic sustainability of this young country was not dependent on slave labor, and that the people subjected to slavery were not, fundamentally, deserving of that treatment. [Read more →]

Human trafficking is a crime that largely goes unnoticed. When it’s reported, there are often news stories about sex trafficking rings in big cities, or police raids where hundreds of migrant workers are discovered being forced to work on farms. There’s not as much news about another type of human trafficking that goes on quietly everyday in regular neighborhoods, just like yours. [Read more →]

At a nail salon in a strip mall located in the suburbs of your city, a customer holds out her hands for a young nail technician. In a matter of minutes, the technician magically transforms drab nails into a bright, polished manicure. While the majority of nail salons function just like this, there are many that serve as fronts for illicit activities such as human trafficking, where women are made to work without getting paid or engage in commercial sex through methods of force, fraud, or coercion. [Read more →]

When I was in London last April, I walked into a local convenience store for a chocolate fix to help relieve some jet lag.  I browsed through options for chocolate, looking for bars that I wouldn’t necessarily find back home in the United States.  My scanning stopped when my eyes fixed on a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar that looked like this:

Here were my immediate thoughts:  Cadbury?  Fair trade?  When did this happen?  This is so exciting! Oh, but why don’t I see the little Fair Trade logo on the Cadbury eggs?

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