As defined by the US Department of Health and Human Services:

“Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Victims are young children, teenagers, men and women."

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines “Severe forms of Trafficking in Persons”  in these two ways:

• Sex Trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person forced to perform such an act is under the age of 18 years; or

• Labor Trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery. In both forms, the victim is an unwilling participant due to force, fraud or coercion.”

An estimated 18,000 victims of trafficking are brought to the United States every year.  Typically the poor and vulnerable are targeted for exploitation and are taken against their will or under false pretenses.  Of these trafficking victims, 80% are women and children.

Texas is the destination for 25% of all victims brought into the United States.  The majority of those find themselves in Houston.

Additionally, an estimated 200,000 - 600,000 men, women, and children are domestic victims of human trafficking.  This means that residents of the United States are also victimized in this fashion without ever leaving our country.