Human trafficking is a major problem in Texas, as it is across the nation and world.
According to the World Population Review, Texas is ranked 10th for states with the highest rates of human trafficking. Data from the city of Austin Human Trafficking and Vice Unit reveals that there are an estimated 313,000 victims of human trafficking in Texas and approximately 79,000 minors and youths who are victims of sex trafficking.
Researchers say traffickers exploit about $600 million a year from 234,000 victims of labor trafficking in the most at-risk industries including migrant farm work, construction, restaurant kitchen work and landscaping services.
Becky Austen of Lighthouse.
| Photo courtesy of Allies Against Slavery
On May 11, ATX Together: The Engage Series hosted a discussion titled “Human Trafficking in Our Region.” Courtney Bailey, director of issues & engagement for Leadership Austin, and Trenzio Turner with Austin PBS, served as moderators. Becky Austen of Allies Against Slavery, Texas Assistant Attorney General Brooke Grona-Robb and Sophia A. Strother, a trafficking victim who became an advocate for victims, spoke on the issue, how it impacts central Texas, and what is being done to combat it.
“Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. As I mentioned earlier, there are 313,000 victims of human trafficking in the state of Texas,” Bailey said in an introduction. “This includes about 79,000 youth and children who are trafficked for sex and 213,000 adults who are trafficked for labor. In addition to the significant human toll, human trafficking also has a major impact on our state’s economy. An estimated $6.6 billion is spent on the lifetime cost of providing care to victims and survivors of minor and youth sex trafficking in Texas. Additionally, traffickers exploit approximately $600 million per year from victims of labor trafficking in our state."
Austen said her work centered on compiling useful data to help reveal the depth of the problem. She had worked at IBM in the corporate psychology field before getting involved in this issue through a fellowship in the Leadership Austin program that was supposed to last a year.
“Three years later, I’m still there. I could just couldn’t leave after the fellowship was up,” Austen said. “It’s our north star to really understand the data and collect it and visualize it in a way that gives it meaning so that we then can either take action or advise those who have the ability to take that action. They can drive policy or budget or other decisions to address the issue.”
She said this data is allowing Allies Against Slavery and its associates to ask more informed questions.
“Now it’s more like why is that happening? Why is the percent of ads that that people post online for sex higher in Austin relative to the population than Dallas or Houston, even though Dallas and Houston have higher populations?” Austen asked. “Why are the number of arrests for trafficking offenses relatively low compared with the arrests for sexual assault or pornography or prostitution or other related charges? Why do we see different percentages or different trends in different parts of the state? How do we get underneath that and how do we take action around it?”
Grona-Robb explained how the Attorney General’s Office is working to reduce the number of victims.
“I think there’s a few things that Texas is doing to address those issues. The first is a broad prevention effort, like getting the word out about trafficking so that trafficking victims can self-identify and can have the resources to report,” she said. “Second, I think by using three levels of government, right? We have locals involved. We have state investigators involved and we have federal investigators involved, perhaps more in trafficking than any other offense. We are using local, state and federal investigators to really get at the heart of what's going on, to really investigate those offenses.
“And then the third thing Texas is doing, that we were first in the nation to make sex buying a felony offense. So now that the offense of buying sex is a felony, we are really taking a swing at demand because we believe that we cannot stop sex trafficking until we look at the demand. And so since that was enacted in September of 2021, there have been over 1,000 people arrested for soliciting sex in the state of Texas. And I think that’s something to really be proud of, that we are taking that step towards ending sex trafficking by looking right up to the man.”
The panelists were asked how to identify people being trafficked. Austen said it is not easy.
“One of the challenges about working in this space is that oftentimes there aren’t signs that an individual is being trafficked,” she said. “We’ve seen data that said that 88% of survivors encountered professionals who could have helped them and weren’t aware that they were being trafficked. So we use things like screening tools to help identify some of the indicators or risk factors that show up for individuals who are trafficked. There may not be physical indicators unless that individual has been physically abused. And so it’s more about certain behavioral aspects, or maybe they’re missing school or maybe they’re showing up with multiple cellphones, which would be unusual versus just having one.”
There are ways the public can help, and they can learn more by watching a video called “Be The One: In the Fight Against Human Trafficking,” a hour-long video with several stories of trafficking and several key things to look for, ways to make reports, things that you should know about sex and labor trafficking.
Education is one key to prevention, Austen said. A program called Children at Risk has people who used to buy sex online pose as buyers to intercept other buyers and ask them if they were aware of the impact on the people they were trying to exploit.
This can be very powerful and effective, she said.
Bailey brought up human smuggling and human trafficking and asked if people understand the terms, and how they were related.
“Human smuggling is the business of transporting people illegally across the international border,” she said. “And given that Texas is close to the U.S.-Mexico border, how is human smuggling related to human trafficking and what issues arise?”
Grona-Robb said there definitely is a correlation, because many trafficking victims do not have documentation, overstay their time in the USA or illegally enter into the United States.
”And so that creates a vulnerability for sex and for labor trafficking that they are going to become victims of one or both,” she said. “So the tie is that the more of the smuggling, the more illegal entry there is, the more vulnerable people that there are, and the more that we see trafficking in Texas.”
Austen said most trafficking cases are based much closer to home.
“...This is glorified in the movies and in the media, they think that somebody is being trafficked, is snatched from their bedroom and taken away somewhere and sold. And while that happens and it's quite tragic, it’s actually rare,” she said. “Many more instances of trafficking are family-related.”
The panelists were asked if state welfare administrators screened for trafficking in their existing caseload and reported all children missing from the state care to law enforcement?
Austen said it does, and other agencies also do such screening.
"The Department of Family Protective Services does screen among their cases to determine if individuals are being exploited. But there's a whole network of screening agencies around the state,” she said. “So child advocacy centers, rape crisis centers, drop-in centers, emergency shelters, different types of programs that work with vulnerable youth or vulnerable adults, school districts. So there’s this network of an increasing network of professionals who are screening and helping to identify victims of trafficking.”
They were asked what compelled them to work in this area with so much tragedy and misery.
“I like to say the universe put me here like there was a whole path of things I did throughout my life. Never had this as a destination or a part of that journey,” Austen said. “But I look back and think of all the things that I did contributed to my being able to be in this fight and use the skills that I have and these experiences that I’ve had to try to make a dent.
"For me, it's not about working with one individual or working on policy or whatever. I see data as a tool that will inform others who are doing that direct work to do it better and to be better informed about it and hopefully be making better decisions or influencing policy and budget and law in a way that, you know, has a positive outcome for survivors.”
Grona-Robb said she felt a calling to focus on this challenging area.
“I agree it would be hard to choose which is more fulfilling. I will say that probably in the end, the reason I do it is for the relationship that I get to make as I’m prosecuting a case with the victim,” she said. “And that’s probably what hits that heart, hits that reason to keep going back, reason to keep fighting. It’s a hard fight. We need all the people we can get to join the fight because it’s a hard one.”
They urged people to call 911, or the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 888-373-7888. You also can text 233733 to receive assistance, or go to an online chat room.
People also were encouraged to visit its website for a list of all the services available region by region. There are several agencies across the state focused on ending human trafficking and supporting its victims.