“Make the call, save lives!” is the slogan of Truckers Against Trafficking, an initiative of the anti-trafficking group Chapter 61 Ministries. Their mission is to rally the trucking industry to put an end to human trafficking along America’s highways and at truck stops and rest areas.
The call they are talking about is to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC), 888-373-7888. This national toll-free hotline fields calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year-round.
Human trafficking is a growing, but largely unfamiliar, problem in the United States. Polaris Project (www.polarisproject.org), an anti-trafficking nonprofit organization that manages the NHTRC, defines it as “a form of modern-day slavery.”
Bradley Myles, the executive director and CEO of Polaris Project, says, “I think when we go up to 10 random strangers on the street and say, ‘Have you heard of the issue of human trafficking?’ the majority of people wouldn’t really know what it is or what it involves.”
Victims of human trafficking are illegally transported against their will for purposes such as commercial sex, agricultural work or housekeeping. They are often abused or threatened with violence. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services identifies human trafficking as the second largest criminal industry in the world (after illegal drugs), as well as the fastest growing.
Due to the shadowy nature of human trafficking, the exact number of victims in the United States is unknown. Lyn Thompson, who started Truckers Against Trafficking with her four daughters, says, “The best statistics tell us that approximately 300,000 American girls are trafficked each year, about 100,000 of those into sex trafficking.”
Myles says that his organization has learned about more than 4,000 trafficking victims since the hotline began in 2007. Based on that figure, he says, “I think it’s safe to say that we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of potential victims in the United States.”
While anyone can be a victim of trafficking, women and children, both American and from outside the United States, are more likely to be exploited. Runaways are especially vulnerable. Victims are sometimes forced to dress in an older fashion to disguise their age; often they are not much older than teenagers.
In 2008 the FBI’s Innocence Lost initiative conducted “Operation Cross Country,” a sting that targeted criminals involved in trafficking children for prostitution. The operation netted 389 arrests and rescued 21 children.
There is no single profile of a human trafficker. They range from individuals working locally to gangs in urban areas to international criminal syndicates. Thompson cites one example she learned about through her work with Truckers Against Trafficking. “There was a story about a young girl on the East Coast who went to her girlfriend’s house to spend the night and the father slipped something in some water that he gave her and then beat her up and started selling her out,” she says.
Traffickers see their victims as income-generating property, rather than human beings. Unlike drugs, people can be sold over and over again, generating easy profits. “The traffickers go to great lengths to prevent the victims from being identified, discovered and helped,” says Myles. “The traffickers use dozens of different control mechanisms: violence and threats and lies and moving the victims around the country and confiscating their documents.”
The interstate highway system is used to transport the human cargo. “Traffickers move girls on large circuits that cover numerous states,” says Thompson. “They do that so that the girls are completely disoriented. They don’t know where they are or anything around them, which helps them to not try and escape. They also want to move them so that they can’t build any kind of a relationship with the people who use them or buy them.”
“We know that they [traffickers] are moving victims using the major highways: the I-95 corridor along the East Coast and the I-5 corridor along the West Coast and all the different horizontal highways like 10 and 20 and 30 and 40,” says Myles. Many trafficking victims end up at truck stops where they are forced to sell themselves.
Truckers Against Trafficking
Recognizing the key role professional truck drivers could play to help victims of trafficking, Chapter 61 Ministries began the Truckers Against Trafficking project in March 2009 “to educate, equip, empower and mobilize all aspects and members of the trucking industry to fight human trafficking as part of their regular jobs,” according to their website.
Thompson says, “Truckers are alone on highways and traffickers use them. So they’re all up and down those highways and it just seemed like if the trucking industry was aware of it that they would fight it. If we could equip them with some education and some tools to help them in that fight they would be able to take it on in their own territory.”
The initiative began an awareness campaign. Thompson wrote to organizations like the American Trucking Associations, the Truckload Carriers Association and state trucking associations “to try to make them aware of the issue of human trafficking and how the trucking industry could play a real critical part in helping stop that,” she says.
Their website, www.truckersagainsttrafficking.com, sponsored by the Christian Truckers Network, was launched in March 2009. They also created posters, wallet cards and a training video – available on the Truckers Against Trafficking website – that address the issues related to trucking and trafficking. The initiative members plan to distribute the training video to trucking companies, driving schools and truck stops. They hope it will be incorporated into driver orientation and training programs.
Making the Call
The simplest yet most important thing a professional truck driver can do if he or she sees something suspicious is call the NHTRC hotline. Says Myles, “One of the ways that a lot of human trafficking cases break in the United States is when a community member notices something and decides to do something about it.
“The hotline offers this single, 24-hour, anonymous, confidential outlet that’s run by a nonprofit. It’s not necessarily a call to law enforcement yet. It’s not a call to the immigration authorities.”
Since the hotline went into operation in December 2007 it has received calls from all 50 states. “We’ve really seen an explosion of interest and calls steadily for the past three years,” says Myles.
Every Truckers Against Trafficking wallet card lists the NHTRC hotline number. Professional truck drivers are beginning to make the call. The hotline reports that since September 2009, when they began tracking this statistic, 108 truck drivers have phoned in tips. However, that number could be much higher because it is not required that people calling the hotline identify themselves.
Depending on the nature of the call, the NHTRC might contact local law enforcement officials or an area nonprofit organization to investigate. Even if it seems insignificant, Thompson encourages professional truck drivers to contact the hotline. This way the government and police can better address the problem. “It’s important for them to make those calls, period,” says Thompson.
She adds, “I realize it takes a great deal of courage to make those calls, but it’s the only way that that kind of crime and those kind of threats can be removed, as well as the girls being rescued.”
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