Human Trafficking

Trafficking is a crime of exploitation. At IBC, we are taking action ourselves and partnering with organizations to end human trafficking.

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery that affects both Americans and foreigners. Women and children are most at risk. Texas has become a hub for the international crime because of its interstate highways, bus stations, airports, shopping malls, large number of sexually oriented businesses, as well as its shared border with Mexico.

According to Texas-based advocacy group Children At Risk, it is estimated that one out of every three kids on the street is lured into sex trafficking within the first 48 hours away from home, indicating that at a minimum, 2,000 youth, age 10-16, are at risk of being trafficked in or from Dallas/Fort Worth each year.

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" ("commercial" meaning, the giving or receiving of anything of value - i.e. money, drugs, shelter, food, clothes, etc. - to any person in exchange for a sex act). The law further defines severe forms of sex trafficking as "a commercial sex act induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such acts has not attained 18 years of age." In other words, by our human trafficking laws, any child found in a commercial sex act has been "trafficked" by definition. 

There are many cases of homeless youth in our city engaging in "survival sex" to secure food, housing, transportation, and other items just to survive on the streets. In the absence of a trafficker/pimp selling the youth, the perpetrator paying for the sex act with food, a bed, or a ride becomes by definition "the trafficker" and the situation is defined as "sex trafficking." Most importantly, the child is defined as a "victim" of domestic minor sex trafficking. 

Despite the connotations of the word, trafficking does not require proof of physical movement of the person. Thus, a person can be a victim of sex trafficking without ever leaving his/her home. Trafficking is a crime of exploitation.

Minor sex trafficking is a burgeoning criminal enterprise in America. Gangs are turning to prostituting minors as a less risky source of revenue than drug trafficking or other crimes. Traffickers of foreign victims into the U.S. are finding local, American children easier to recruit and sell without the difficulties of crossing borders. Local communities are being adversely affected with the loss of hundreds of thousands of children to this victimization.

Source: Taken from the Shared Hope International report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking.

We have partnered with these nonprofits in the work of ending human trafficking.