Modern prohibitions of human trafficking in the United States have their roots in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which barred slavery and involuntary servitude in 1865. Prior to 2000, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed human trafficking cases under several federal statutes related to involuntary servitude and slavery, but the criminal laws were narrow and patchwork.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), Pub. L. No. 106- 386, in 2000, equipped the U.S. Government with new tools and resources to mount a comprehensive and coordinated campaign to eliminate modern forms of slavery domestically and internationally.
Critically, the TVPA established the framework for the “3 P’s” of the fight against human trafficking: protection, prevention, and prosecution.
Protection
The TVPA provided increased protections for trafficking victims in the United States in several key ways:
- By making foreign victims eligible for federally funded or administered health and other benefits and services and by requiring federal agencies to expand the provision of such benefits and services to victims, regardless of their immigration status;
- By creating immigration protections for foreign national victims of human trafficking, including protection from removal for victims of trafficking (the T visa) and victims of certain crimes (the U visa); and
- By allowing certain nonimmigrant status holders the opportunity to adjust to permanent resident status.
Prevention
The TVPA strengthened the U.S. Government’s prevention efforts by
- Providing for international initiatives to be established and carried out to improve economic opportunity for potential victims as a means of deterring trafficking.
- Creating the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons in the State Department, making that office responsible for publishing an annual Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report that describes and ranks the efforts of countries to combat human trafficking. The TIP Report is the U.S. Government’s principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments on human trafficking.
- Requiring the President to establish an Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking (PITF), a coordinating task force comprising cabinet-level officers chaired by the Secretary of State, and directed it to carry out activities that included measuring and evaluating the progress of the United States and other countries in preventing human trafficking, protecting its victims, and prosecuting its perpetrators.
Prosecution
The TVPA sharpened and enhanced the capacity of federal prosecutors to bring human traffickers to justice for their crimes by:
- Adding new criminal provisions prohibiting forced labor, trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor, and sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion;
- Criminalizing attempts to engage in these activities; Mandating that traffickers pay restitution to their victims, and providing for forfeiture;
- Strengthening penalties for existing trafficking crimes
(source: US Department of Justice website https://www.justice.gov/humantrafficking/key-legislation#:~:text=The%20Trafficking%20Victims%20Protection%20Act%20of%202000%20(TVPA)%2C%20Pub,of%20slavery%20domestically%20and%20internationally.)