A State Department official Monday called the trafficking of humans for labor and prostitution "modern-day slavery" and urged the United States to remain vigilant in its prosecution of crimes that afflict millions of unreported victims annually.
Luis CdeBaca, director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, spoke at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies about the department’s 2013 report on human trafficking.
The report found that only about 40,000 human trafficking victims were identified last year. Researchers estimate that as many as 27 million men, women, and children are victims at any given time.
Although the report ranks the United States as a Tier One country—meaning that it complies with the enforcement standards in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act—as many as 17,500 people are believed to be trafficked into the United States each year, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Some experts estimate that 100,000 children are victims of trafficking in the United States.
Nine 7-Eleven store owners and managers were indicted last month for allegedly employing more than 50 illegal immigrants at New York and Virginia convenience stores.
"Tier One countries—and I include the United States in this—should not be walking around fat and sassy and proud of what they’ve done on human trafficking," CdeBaca said.
"The challenge is how many trafficking victims are out there right now that you don’t know about."
The Department of Justice secured a total of 138 convictions in forced labor and sex trafficking cases last year, fewer than the 151 convictions in 2011. Investigations of suspects also decreased in trafficking-related cases, dropping from more than 900 in 2011 to more than 753 last year, according to the State Department report.
Enforcement efforts are significantly more lax in Tier Three countries such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, CdeBaca said.
Officials in those countries are reticent to label the crimes as trafficking, he said, and victims are either unaware or do not have access to resources such as deportation relief, rehabilitation, and job training.
CdeBaca also called on foreign governments to share some of the burden for combating trafficking. Congress authorized $191.3 million for global and domestic anti-trafficking programs for 2011.
"We’re doing this for pennies on the dollar," he said.
Countries like Japan, which once balked at international scrutiny of its prostitution practices but is now among the strictest prosecutors of trafficking, prove that the anti-trafficking movement can become a global one, CdeBaca added.
"We’re looking at a cultural change as much as we’re looking at a policy change," he said.