Human Trafficking: Department of Labor’s Role September 2013 Voiceover: Beat Intro 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Nazmia Alqadi 00:08 Hello and welcome. My name is Nazmia Alqadi and on behalf of the COPS Office I would like to introduce you to Ernesto Archila. Mr. Archila is a special assistant at the Office of Public Engagement at the U.S. Department of Labor. Today, Mr. Archila is here with us to discuss the Department of Labor’s work on labor trafficking and the importance of knowing the indicators to better identify trafficking victims. Mr. Archila, please tell us about the work you and your colleagues do at the Department of Labor to address labor trafficking. Ernesto Archila 00:39 There are three main buckets of work that the Department of Labor does in the area of labor trafficking. The first is around law enforcement cooperation. Second is around victim services, including the employment and training fields. The third is around transnational monitoring, technical assistance, and research. I’ll just briefly describe each of these and we can always provide more information in greater detail down the line if anyone is interested in reaching out to us directly. In terms of law enforcement, the first thing I need to do is make clear that the Department of Labor does not actually investigate or prosecute trafficking in persons directly. Rather, we partner with federal agencies and provide our assistance in the course of trafficking investigations as needed. In addition to which, we investigate and do litigation around underlying labor exploitation that doesn’t rise to the level of criminal trafficking because that is an integral component in the overall phenomenon. Our law enforcement agencies are charged with enforcing United States labor laws, including the Fair Labor Standards Act and others. Collectively, our Wage and Hour Division protects over 135 million workers in 7.3 million establishments. In the course of doing that sort of enforcement on civil labor laws, they sometimes can be the first set of eyes and ears to detect a potential situation of trafficking, at which point they refer it to federal law enforcement partners. We also participate in what are called ACT Teams. The pilot project has been set up and funded by the Department of Justice as well as local task forces. In those, we participate alongside federal and local law enforcement. One of the main roles that our enforcement folks in this kind of cooperation is to help calculate the restitution amount that’s owed to victims and survivors of trafficking. Because our investigators are used to calculating wage theft and related issues, they have forensic accounting skills and they have interviewing skills that come in very handy in these investigations. Particularly, as I say, they’ll calculate the amount that a victim is due in terms of restitution. In addition to this power, the Inspector General investigates fraud and abuse related to the Department’s Foreign Labor Certification program as well as non-traditional organized crime threats that might jeopardize the integrity of those programs. In terms of victim services, we have a mandate under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to provide training and employment services through the network of almost 2,700 American Jobs vendors around the country. As you know, at the tail end of the victim services continuum, it’s very important that a survivor of trafficking be provided with the tools they need to be able to find gainful employment and stand on their own and be integrated into society in a healthy, self-sufficient way. Employment and training services are just a critical part of that. Our partner agencies throughout the federal government fund a range of programs that include employment and training. Sometimes at the end of those programs, if a person has not yet found a job, they need to be cycled out and referred to local resources. Our American Jobs vendors are one such resource. We’ve been working really hard to enhance the ability of that system to provide services to victims and also working hard to let folks out there know we exist and that they can refer people to us. One of the things we’ve been doing to try and promote that is to generate a kind of informal employment conversation conference calls that we’ve been hosting. We’re trying to essentially engage the victim service community, ask folks to weigh in on perspectives, like what are the common barriers to employment that survivors of trafficking face, what are the difficulties in providing and planning training services, and what are some promising practices that are out there. We’ve also provided guidance to the workforce investment system, that’s the network of American Jobs centers, to try and better enhance their ability to provide these services. Then, real quick, the transnational front. We have an International Labor Affairs Bureau who is charged with maintaining two very important lists. One is called the Executive Order 13126 list and the other is the TVPRA list. Both of them essentially list source goods and source countries—primary goods and source countries that we have reason to believe are made with either forced child labor or forced labor in general. The Executive Order list is forced child labor and is a subset of the TVPRA list, which is forced labor in general. Those are produced through a series of consultations with information ranging from non-profit organizations to State Department Embassy input, just a terrific team of really talented people that work really hard to identify these things. In addition to that we produce a TDA report, it’s called a Trade and Development Act report, which is focused on the worst forms of child labor, of which some are trafficking. That report essentially looks at countries that we have preferential trade status with in terms of their efforts to address forced child labor. We also fund technical assistance projects overseas, primarily around worse forms of child labor, some of which focus on forced labor and trafficking. We also fund research. There was recently a forced labor survey guideline that was put out by the ILO—the International Labor Organization—that was partially funded by the United States Department of Labor along with the government of the U.K. We also recently put together a toolkit for responsible businesses that want to reduce forced labor in their supply chain. I feel like I should also note that there is a Consular Consultations Program that we have initiated with ten embassies, mostly in Central and South America as well as the Philippines, to try and better connect with their foreign nationals that are working in the United States and provide them information about their labor rights. Nazmia 06:43 That’s great. What are the challenges of identifying and tracking labor trafficking? Ernesto 06:47 That’s a great question. There are no real robust national statistics, no comprehensive studies on this phenomenon in the United States. We have information from the International Labor Organization on forced labor, globally but really nothing on labor trafficking really here in the United States that’s robust or definitive. So that, sort of lack of data, sort of gap in research is a critical piece. Another is that this is a hidden crime; it takes place in the shadows and the sort of the economic under belly of the country, often times with workers that may not have either the ability or the willingness to come forward and say that they’ve been exploited or you know, that they’ve been trafficked. It’s part of a broader continuum of labor exploitation that happens throughout this country and trafficking is the most egregious example, sort of the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole range of exploitation that’s going on around there, you know you can think from you know, the guys that get hired you know, in Home Depot parking lots all the way through, you know, restaurant workers or in the hotel industry. There’s a number of industries that have the potential for exploitation and various and vulnerable worker populations that work in them at low wages and that sort of broader continuum of labor exploitations feeds into the trafficking and there’s also a difficulty in figuring out where that line lies for victims or survivors themselves to realize that this has gone from being a simple exploitation situation to a criminal trafficking one. It’s also sometimes difficult for survivors to self-identify simply because they feel that they need these jobs and so they’re willing to accept this exploitation in order to make the money that they feel they need, or they’re afraid to come forward because of immigration issues or because of fear of retaliation. This labor trafficking involves force, fraud, or coercion, which can have elements of threat to their family overseas, threats to themselves, and sort of psychological menaces and psychological threats. And then the last issue, which I think is really relevant to this, is that sometimes local law enforcement is not as attuned or as trained to recognize labor issues as they may be to recognize sex trafficking or sex crime related issues—and you know this is one of the things we are working to address nationwide—and labor exploitation is very prevalent and it’s out there, and the more folks are able to sort of recognize when something doesn’t smell right and know what to do about it, the better we will be to identify this. Nazmia 9:27 So why is it so important to be aware of labor trafficking? Ernesto 9:28 Well, abolishing modern day slavery is really, in my view, one of the great moral [quandaries] of our time. And in President Obama’s words, it is something that ought to concern every person because it is a defacement of our common humanity; it ought to concern every community because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. Labor trafficking is of course a critical and widespread component of modern day slavery and the ILO estimates that there are 20.9 million people in forced labor worldwide. Again, we don’t know that number in the United States in particular, but the prevalence of this shameful practice is thought to be on a huge scale even here in the United States. Nazmia 10:12 So what are some signs that indicate possible labor trafficking that law enforcement should be aware of? Ernesto 10:18 So there are sort of three key factors in identifying trafficking in persons; the process, the means, and the end. So we’re looking for elements of force, fraud, and coercion in each of these potential factors, so for instance processes—how did the person come to be in the situation they are; in the means— how are they kept there, either by withholding their identification, threats against their family, threats against deportation; and the end is sort of why are they being exploited? What are the end economic benefits to the trafficker? So that’s a pretty, sort of, vague high level overview. But, examples of force, fraud, and coercion in those categories can be physical violence against the worker, their family, sexual violence, imprisonment or physical confinement, threat of deportation, false promises on recruitment, unreasonable debts imposed and exploited, and threat of supernatural retaliation. For instance, in some communities they can be threatened with being cursed or other forms of psychological or supernatural retaliation. And so breaking it down into the most specific things that local law enforcement should be on the lookout for—and there’s great resources on this at the department of homeland security website and several others but I’ll briefly go into a couple of points, which is worth highlighting in this context. So in terms of a loss of free will, you’re looking for like close monitoring or escorting of the worker; if the worker is not allowed to speak for themselves; if they’re being coached on what to say to you; if they have the inability to socialize with others. Threats of harm to them or to their families, threats if they’re going to be arrested or deported, physical abuse, signs of restraints or confinement, untreated illnesses, infections or malnutrition—those are something that are definitely red flags. If they don’t have control over their documents, if they don’t have, like, their passport or their I.D., or their driver’s license, but the employer keeps them in a locked box somewhere else, that’s a red flag. No control over their wages, if they’re not paid or if they’re paid very little. If they are paid less than they were promised, if they are unable to hold or control their wages, if they are paid the money but they don’t actually have it. If they’ve been recruited for one purpose but they are actually working something completely different or substantially different, potentially more dangerous. Unusual living conditions, like cramped spaces with multiple people in them, unusual or extensive security. The doors to all the dormitories have locked padlocks on the outside would be a really clear example of that. Unsanitary facilities, the denial of food, water and medical care. And then sort of excessive or unusual hours, irregular rest breaks at various times. So those are sort of the high level indicators you want to be on the lookout for. Nazmia 13:12 Great! Thank you. So finally, are there any resources the Department of Labor has for law enforcement? Ernesto 13:14 Sure, well I should point out that because we don’t investigate and prosecute trafficking ourselves, the resources that our sister agencies have may be more relevant for law enforcement, and in recent years the Obama administration has been taking great strides in monitoring and combatting human trafficking. They’ve been really multiplying the U.S. government’s ability to prevent this crime and to prosecute the perpetrators and to protect survivors, including providing them with services they need, to pick up and move on with their lives. So government wide I would recommend first and foremost, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, which is run by the Polaris Project, which is a nonprofit but funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. And that phone number is 888-373-7888. Again, 888-373-7888. And that number is sort of a catch-all, you can call, you can get technical assistance, you can get explanations about what trafficking is about, you can get referred to local services, you can get referred on to federal law enforcement or local law enforcement. Another important resource to mention is the DHS Blue campaign, which has great outreach tools, posters, brochures, cards, materials, videos—and that’s available at [www.]dhs.gov/blue-campaign/blue- campaign. And here at DOL we have some broad resources that I think are worth mentioning, for that sort of broad continuum of labor exploitation that may not rise to that level of trafficking but that is still an egregious crime and is something that the local law enforcement should be aware of and be able to refer people. I think the most important tool on that front is the toll free hotline of our wage and hour division, which is 866-4USWAGE, that’s 866-487-9243. That’s a hotline you can call and pass on. Hey, look, you think something’s fishy in terms of labor exploitation, you’re not sure it rises to the level of trafficking but it’s something that should be looked into. You can also reach out and contact our wage and hour division local offices, you can find that information at www.dol.gov/whd, and we also have a series of Know Your Rights videos out there that can help workers know what their rights are and help law enforcement be aware of what worker rights are. That’s available at www.dol.gov/whd/resources/kyrvideo.htm. In terms of employment and training services, finding the local American Job Center is kind of the first step if you’ve got a survivor you know that you’re working with and they really need employment and training—they can’t get access to some PERF services funded by our sister agencies or they’ve exhausted those possibilities—the website to go to there is jobcenter.usa.gov, that’s a pretty comprehensive website that has a range of resources that you can just plug in your zip code and it will pop out the local nearest American Job Center. There’s also links through there to a thing called My Next Move, which is a great career planning tool, which allows persons to say kind of what kind of job they might want to do and figure out what training steps they need to take, what certifications they need, what are the competencies that are associated with that job and even click through to actual job listings. And then the last thing to point out would be the International Labor Affair Bureau’s toolkit for responsible businesses. It’s a great tool to point local employers to if they feel like they are concerned they are having forced labor in their supply chain and the things that they’re buying, and for other corporations as well, and that’s available at www.dol.gov/ilab/child-forced-labor/index. So those are the primary resources I would refer most to. Nazmia 16:57 That is great. Thank you, Mr. Archila, for providing us with your expertise and time today. Ernesto 17:02 Thank you so much. Voiceover: Beat Exit 17:03 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. 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