Human trafficking in Texas is the illegal trade of human beings as it occurs in the state of Texas. It is a modern-day form of slavery and usually involves commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor, both domestic and agricultural.
Human trafficking is particularly relevant to Texas because of its close proximity to the U.S.–Mexican border, one of the most-crossed international borders in the world, and its extremely diverse population, especially in Houston. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, of the more than 50,000 people annually trafficked from foreign countries into the United States, a quarter enter the country through Texas. Additionally, at any given time, Texas contains around 25% of the trafficked persons in the United States, and almost a third of the calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline are from Texas. Texas is also a huge transit site for domestic trafficking, with around twenty percent of domestic trafficking victims traveling through Texas.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines sex trafficking as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center reported receiving 1,731 calls and emails in 2015 about human trafficking in Texas.
Overview
Definition
According to the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, human trafficking is "…the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs…". The transportation of children for exploitative purposes is also classified as human trafficking.
Human smuggling and human trafficking
Human smuggling is the movement of people from one country into another in exchange for monetary compensation. In this situation, both the smuggler and the person being smuggled are willingly participating in illegal border entry without proper documentation and are thus committing a crime against the country of entry. Both can be convicted of felony. However, human traffickers are committing crimes against the trafficked persons and use deception or threats to force the person into exploitative labor agreements. Only the trafficker can be convicted of felony; the trafficked person is not a criminal, but a victim. While human trafficking may, in some cases, involve smuggling the person across international borders, this is done against the will of the trafficked person through the use of threat, force, fraud, or any other kind of deception. It is important to acknowledge that, while both human smuggling and human trafficking are prevalent in Texas, they are treated as two completely different criminal acts by the law.
Current statistics
According to a 2011 study conducted by the Dallas Women's Foundation on the status of human trafficking in Dallas, Texas, "740 girls under the age of 18 were documented being marketed for sex during a 30-day period. 712 of these girls were being marketed through Internet classified web sites; 28 were being marketed through escort services." According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC), in 2014, there were 452 reported cases of human trafficking and 1,876 calls made to the center. Texas ranked second in the nation for number of tips to the NHTRC, with 2,236 calls, emails, or tip forms received by the center. Between January 1, 2007 and January 9, 2014, there were 709 human trafficking- related incidents and 176 suspects were arrested during this period. The Schapiro Group reports that, on a typical weekend night in Texas, 188 girls under the age of 18 are commercially sexually exploited through internet sex ads.
A 2016 study by the Institute on Domestic and Sexual Violence at the University of Texas at Austin estimated the prevalence of labor trafficking and minor sex trafficking victim prevalence to be 313,000 in the state of Texas. This study also estimated the industry to cost Texas at $6.6 billion.