Human Trafficking Awareness and Public Safety Initiative
What's New
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Advisory Committee on Human Trafficking – 2024 Report
The U.S. DOT Advisory Committee on Human Trafficking has released the 2024 report on preventing and addressing human trafficking in the transportation sector. This report underscores trafficking trends, emerging issues and promising practices to prevent and address human trafficking.
Overview
Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery, with nearly 25 million victims worldwide, including in the United States. Traffickers use all modes of transportation to conduct their activities and often use public transit because it is low cost, offers greater anonymity in buying fare cards, and provides less direct interaction with government or transit officials.
FTA’s Human Trafficking Awareness and Public Safety Initiative supports DOT's Transportation Leaders Against Human Trafficking initiative through transit-focused industry engagement, education, public awareness and outreach, and research and technical assistance to combat human trafficking in transit. In addition, the program supports FTA’s operator assault and crime prevention efforts. The initiative aims to maximize the transit industry’s collective impact to address human trafficking and other public safety concerns.
U.S. DOT Campaigns
U.S. DOT combats human trafficking by working with public and private sector stakeholders to empower transportation employees and the traveling public to recognize and report possible instances of human trafficking.
DOT's Transportation Leaders Against Human Trafficking (TLAHT) initiative was formed in 2012 for transportation and travel industry stakeholders to maximize their collective impact on human trafficking. TLAHT’s focus areas are leadership, training and education, policy development, public awareness, and information sharing and analysis. Partners take action to combat human trafficking by issuing leadership statements, signing pledges, developing reporting protocols, training their employees, and conducting public awareness campaigns.
On January 13, 2023, FTA Administrator Nuria Fernandez released a video as part of DOT’s campaign to #PutTheBreaksOnHumanTrafficking. The video highlights FTA’s counter-trafficking efforts and encourages transportation leaders to issue their own messaging and sign the Transportation Leaders Against Human Trafficking pledge.
FTA Webinars
2024 Human Trafficking Prevention Month Webinar
In recognition of January's Human Trafficking Prevention month, FTA hosted a webinar featuring the South West Transit Association and two additional transit agencies to discuss how they have implemented resources from the safety4transit.org website to prevent crime and human trafficking at smaller agencies. Additional resources can be found on our Human Trafficking Awareness and Public Safety Initiative webpage.
2023 Human Trafficking Prevention in Tribal Communities Webinar
FTA hosted a webinar that explored how human trafficking impacts American Indian/Alaskan Native populations, the role transportation and public transit has in human trafficking, how transit agencies can prevent human trafficking, and how drivers and other front-line transit employees can intervene if trafficking is identified.