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FBI
Human
Trafficking: Raising Awareness of a Devastating Crime
January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, and
the FBI’s efforts to combat trafficking—part of the overall U.S.
government effort—will continue unabated in 2016.
The Bureau has two entities that conduct human trafficking
investigations: Our Civil Rights Unit coordinates trafficking
investigations involving both adult and juvenile foreign nationals who
are forced or coerced into slave labor or sex trafficking, as well as
adult victims of domestic sex trafficking; and our Violent Crimes
Against Children Section coordinates investigations involving children
under the age of 18 being sexually exploited domestically for
commercial gain and those involving child sex tourism.
More recently, we have formed partnerships with federal prosecutors and
other federal, state, and local partners in investigating and
prosecuting human trafficking offenders and assisting trafficking
victims in the Bakken oil field area of North Dakota and Montana. And
to combat the exploitation of foreign nationals, the FBI works with our
law enforcement partners at the Departments of Homeland Security,
Labor, and State to go after traffickers who prey on the
vulnerabilities of people seeking a better life. These victims are
forced to work in poor, unsafe conditions where they are exploited for
prostitution, domestic servitude, migrant farm labor, or restaurant and
service industry jobs.
The Bureau also continues to run Operation Cross Country (OCC), a
national multi-agency law enforcement operation dedicated to the
identification and recovery of child victims of commercial sexual
exploitation and the identification and arrest of individuals and
criminal enterprises responsible for their exploitation. This past
October, during our ninth OCC, the FBI and its partners recovered
approximately 150 child victims and arrested approximately 150 pimps,
which brought the total number of recovered child victims to more than
750 and the criminals responsible to more than 1,000 since OCC began.
Also last year, Bureau worked closely with Canadian authorities on
their own version of OCC called Operation Northern Spotlight.
The FBI, however, goes beyond investigating those who exploit victims
of trafficking. The Bureau’s Office for Victim Assistance (OVA) and its
153 victim specialists located throughout our field offices work with
non-governmental agencies and local law enforcement advocates to advise
human trafficking survivors of their rights as crime victims and also
to ensure that basic needs such as food, shelter, medical care, mental
health care, and clothing are taken care of. Our victim specialists
provide assistance and information regarding legal services,
immigration relief, housing, employment, education, and job training,
and they also work with U.S. Attorneys’ offices and often local
district attorney’s offices during the prosecutive phases of cases.
Additionally, OVA employs 11 full-time child/adolescent forensic
interviewers who are available to conduct interviews of younger victims
as well as adult victims in complex cases or when there’s a special
need.
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