About trafficking

1. Trafficking consists of transporting someone into a situation of exploitation. This can include forced labor, marriage, prostitution, and organ removal. This kind of exploitation is known by a few different names such as “human trafficking,” “trafficking of persons,” and “modern slavery”. 

2. Aprocomently between 20 million and 40 million people internationally are victoms in modern slavery today. Assessing the full scope of human trafficking is difficult because so cases so many cases are unknown, something the United Nations refers to as “the hidden figure of crime.”

3. Estimates suggest that, world wide, only about .04% survivors of human trafficking cases are identified, meaning that the majority of cases of human trafficking go undetected. The numbers that we know of are already so high.

4. Human trafficking earns global profits of roughly $150 billion a year for traffickers, $99 billion of which comes from commercial sexual exploitation. That is a sickening amount of money made off of innocent people.

5. Globally, an estimated 71% of enslaved people are women and girls, while men and boys account for 29%.

6. Estimates show that about 50,000 people are trafficked into the US each year, most often from Mexico and the Philippines.

7. In 2018, over half (51.6%) of the criminal trafficking cases active in the US were sex trafficking cases involving only children.

8. Reports say that a large number of child sex trafficking survivors in the US were at some point in the foster care system. 

9. Advocates report a growing trend of traffickers using online social media platforms to lure targets.

10. The average age a child enters the sex trade in the US is 12 to 14    years old. Many victims are runaway girls who were sexually abused as children.

11. In 2018, The National Human Trafficking Hotline received more calls from California than any other state in the US, followed by Texas and Florida.