Colleen supports community outreach for 2U Inc’s social work, mental health, and speech pathology programs. For more on this topic by Colleen see this post from 2017.
In January, President Donald Trump signed legislation that aims to turn commercial truck drivers into highway sentries against human trafficking.
Passage of the No Human Trafficking on Our Roads Act (S1532) and the Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act (S1536) marked a rare bipartisan accord for the current Congress. More importantly, the new laws are part of a growing effort to halt traffickers by equipping members of the public who might cross their paths with knowledge and information, so witnesses might intercede on behalf of victims.
Under S1532, anyone who commits a felony involving human trafficking using a commercial motor vehicle will be barred from driving it for life. And S1536 orders the U.S. Department of Transportation to coordinate a national effort to train truck drivers to spot telltale signs of human trafficking.
“Commercial truck drivers are one of the first lines of defense” against human trafficking, says Annalisa Enrile, a faculty member with the online Doctor of Social Work program at the University of Southern California.
The United Nations International Labour Organization estimates 4.8 million people are trafficked for sex worldwide. Sex trafficking accounts for two-thirds of the estimated $150 billion in illegal annual profits from human trafficking, according to USC’s report, “Freedom’s Journey.”
In the most recent FBI-led nationwide crackdown on underage prostitution, the average age of sex trafficking victims rescued was 15.
Enrile says truck and bus drivers and others in the transportation industry are in good position to detect unusual activities or suspicious people. During the late 1990s, for example, Enrile trained flight attendants to recognize mail order brides and to look out for adult and child passengers who might be traveling against their will.
Truckers “need a lot of education in terms of what it looks like because a lot of trafficking hides in plain sight,” Enrile says. Equally crucial, she says, is that truck drivers need to know exactly what steps to take next.
“When can you intervene and how can you intervene safely?” Enrile says. Identifying a potential trafficking victim is one thing, “but it’s quite another for them to know who to call for help and for that help to be timely.”
Prostitutes who knock on cab windows at truck stops are so common, they’re known to truckers as “lot lizards.” But what many drivers don’t realize is that some of the women, men, and children propositioning them for sex are doing it under threat or deception by criminals.
John McKown, a UPS driver and former police officer from West Virginia, noticed girls who roamed the parking lots inevitably would check in with someone in a van or car on the far edge. He saw it in Missouri. He saw it in Ohio. McKown eventually realized these minors were forced to sell sex.
“Many prostitutes are not just trapped, they’re enslaved,” McKown said during a TED talk about human trafficking. “America’s highways are modern-day slave routes.”
Enrile says it will require coordinated effort by law enforcement agencies and increased awareness by the public to tamp out human trafficking.
“It’s going to take all segments of society to stop this epidemic,” she says. “It is a huge, huge problem and there’s so many moving parts and there’s so many ways that people knowingly or unknowingly play a role in this type of exploitation.”