Human trafficking in Texas

Human trafficking in Texas is the illegal trade of human beings as it occurs in the state of Texas. It is a modern-day form of slavery and usually involves commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor, both domestic and agricultural.

Human trafficking is particularly relevant to Texas because of its close proximity to the U.S.–Mexican border, one of the most-crossed international borders in the world, and its extremely diverse population, especially in Houston. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, of the more than 50,000 people annually trafficked from foreign countries into the United States, a quarter enter the country through Texas. Additionally, at any given time, Texas contains around 25% of the trafficked persons in the United States, and almost a third of the calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline are from Texas. Texas is also a huge transit site for domestic trafficking, with around twenty percent of domestic trafficking victims traveling through Texas.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) defines sex trafficking as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center reported receiving 1,731 calls and emails in 2015 about human trafficking in Texas.

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