Hidden Victims Evaluating Protections for Undocumented Victims of Human Trafficking

December 2005
by Alexandra Webber and David Shirk

Below is the executive summary for this publication. Read the complete report.

In the United States, human traffickers most frequently exploit the desperation of undocumented immigrants as a means of obtaining victims. Until recently, their lack of legal status precluded undocumented trafficking victims from receiving government protections typically available to other crime victims and kept them from remaining in the United States to assist in the prosecution of their abusers. To address this problem, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). Under this law, undocumented immigrants who are victims of “severe” forms of human trafficking may be eligible for temporary non-immigration status and a limited number of public benefits. Despite the legal innovations of the TVPA, the number of people who have actually received protection under the law is relatively low, especially when compared to estimates of how many trafficking victims are in the United States. However, ultimately, the main problem is that there is insufficient evidence regarding the actual number of qualifying cases of “severe” human trafficking in the United States.

Among the findings in this report:

• Estimates of the number of trafficking victims vary widely. In 2004 and 2005, the U.S. Department of State calculated that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year. However, in 2000 the U.S. government estimated that 45,000 to 50,000 women and children alone are trafficked into the country annually.

• A survey of 131 reported incidents of human trafficking in the United States between 1998 and 2003 revealed that 46 percent involved forced sexual exploitation, while the remaining 54 percent involved forced labor exploitation.

• In the four-year period from March 2001 to mid-May 2005, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) certified a total of only 752 trafficking victims and only 491 received T-visas—the most critical protection provided under the TVPA.

• The large discrepancy between the number of trafficking victims estimated to be present in the United States and the total number of victims receiving protection under the TVPA is the result of several factors: (1) the imperfect nature of trafficking estimates; (2) misidentification of victims by law enforcement; (3) the conditional nature of victim protections; and (4) overly restrictive eligibility requirements for the T-visa.