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,Servin, Argentina, Kimberly Brouwer, Leah Gordon, Teresita Rocha-Jimenez, and Hugo Staines. "Vulnerability Factors and Pathways Leading to Underage Entry into Sex Work in Two Mexican–US Border Cities." Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk 6, no. 1 (2015): 1-17. and its extremely diverse population, especially in Houston.Center for Public Policy Studies. "Texas Human Trafficking Fact Sheet." (2013). Accessed November 15, 2015. 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.Butler, Cheryl. "Sex Slavery in the Lone Star State: Does the Texas Human Trafficking Legislation of 2011 Protect Minors?" Akron Law Review 45 (2012): 843-85. 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 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…".Chacon, Jennifer. "Misery and Mypoia: Understanding the Failures of U.S. Efforts to Stop Human Trafficking." Fordham Law Review 74, no. 6 (2006): 2977-3040. 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.Svitlana, Batsyukova. "Human Trafficking and Human Smuggling: Similar Nature, Different Concepts." Studies of Changing Societies: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Focus 1, no. 1 (2012): 39-49. 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.""Hundreds of Young Girls Are Victimized in Texas Sex Trade Each MonthDallas Women's Foundation." Texas Non Profits. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. <http://txnp.org/Article/?ArticleID=12913>. 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." National Human Trafficking Resource Center. 2015. Accessed November 19, 2015. 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.Texas Department of Public Safety. "Assessing the Threat of Human Trafficking in Texas." (2014). Accessed November 14, 2915. 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.
Types of trafficking Forced labor Labor trafficking plays a large role in Texas' economy, but still fails to receive sufficient attention in anti-trafficking legislation. The number of instances of labor trafficking has increased with the growing globalization of trade and the accompanying desire to increase profits by minimizing labor costs. Because internationally trafficked forced laborers are not protected by Texas state law, employers are not bound to compliance with baseline occupational standards, such as minimum wage and benefits.
Trafficked persons are employed in a variety of industries, including restaurants, farms, hotel housekeeping, and manufacturing plants, and are given minimal compensation for employment. Labor trafficking schemes are perpetrated by both smaller family operations and by large organized crime, and these perpetrators are often from the same country of origin as their victims. In many cases, forced laborers are international migrants promised work and a visa, but upon arrival are forced to pay off smuggling debts through employment.
Domestic servitude Domestic servitude is the forced employment of someone as a maid or nanny, and victims are often migrant women who come from low-wage communities in their home countries.Srikantiah, Jayashri. "Perfect Victims and Real Survivors: The Iconic Victim in Domestic Human Trafficking Law." Boston University Law Review 87, no. 157 (2007): 157-211. Perpetrators are usually married couples from the same country of origin as the trafficked person,Armendariz, Noel-Busch, Maura Nsonwu, and Lauri Heffro. "Understanding Human Trafficking: Development of Typologies of Traffickers PHASE II." First Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking, 2009, 1-12. and are usually not involved in organized criminal networks,Schaffner, Jessica. "Optimal Deterrence: A Law and Economics Assessment of Sex and Labor Trafficking Law in the United States." Houston Law Review 51, no. 5 (2014): 1519-548. making it more difficult to identify instances of this type of trafficking. Perpetrators of domestic servitude are often well-respected members of their communities and lead otherwise normal lives. Countries and areas with large middle-class and upper middle-class populations, such as Texas, are commonly the destinations of this type of trafficking.
It is important to make the distinction between legally employed domestic workers and illegally employed domestic servants. While legally employed domestic house workers are fairly compensated for their work in accordance with national wage laws, domestic servants are typically forced to work extremely long hours for little to no monetary compensation, and psychological and physical means are employed to limit their mobility and freedom. In addition, deportation threats are often used to discourage internationally trafficked persons from seeking help.
Food services Texas serves as a hub to traffic victims to Chinese restaurants to other parts of the United States. In one case, the Hong Li Enterprise and Texas Job Agency out of Houston charged workers $300-$630 a person for transportation, job placement and housing fees. In 2014, authorities arrested the owners of Asian Garden Chinese Restaurant as part of a major human trafficking ring in San Marcos.Chinese Restaurant in San Marcos Linked to Human Trafficking Ring
Forced prostitution Forced prostitution affects primarily women and children, who come from both domestic and international sources. Internationally trafficked persons are often from developing countries with inadequate legal frameworks to protect citizens from sex trafficking. Perpetrators are typically large- scale crime rings and are often involved in other illegal activities. One common scheme used to lure victims from poor, rural areas exploits romance as a coercion method, where pimps conceal their identities as traffickers and deceive women into thinking they are being courted. They are then transported to America under the impression that they will be marrying their trafficker, at which point they are then forced into prostitution. Clients are often of the same ethnicity as the forced prostitutes, and are usually targeted through fliers or word of mouth in their own ethnic communities.
In Texas, many brothels are run behind the front of a legal business, such as restaurants or massage parlors, and sex trafficking victims are often forced to work in these businesses as well. For example, in 2005, Maximino "El Chimino" Mondragon was convicted of running a Houston sex ring involving around 120 women trafficked illegally from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. These women were forced to work in Mondragon's cantina-front brothel as both waitresses and prostitutes, and were forced to use sexual favors to entice men to purchase drinks from the bar.
Residential brothels, often housed in apartment complexes, are another venue employed by sex traffickers for prostitution. Because residential brothels make forced prostitution schemes easier to conceal, and because they permit less- inhibited movement of traffickers and victims between cities, they are becoming increasingly more prevalent. Services offering delivery of sex trafficking victims to hotels, clients' homes, or other locations, are also becoming increasingly popular for many of the same reasons.
Demographics of trafficked persons
General characteristics