Bronwyn is a current senior at Scripps College in California. She is majoring in Politics with a focus in International Relations and Americans Politics, and is minoring in Philosphy. During high school, Bronwyn became interested in social justice and began to educate herself about women’s issues and the effects of horrific labor practices on communities of color. At Scripps College, her classes have focused on how global development affects human rights and understanding how to use human rights to create positive change. Bronwyn studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark and took classes about gendered perspectives on human rights and humanitarian law and armed conflict. She is very adamant about continuing to educate herself on social justice issues and continuing to understand the intersection between different forms of oppression.
In February 2021, a 911 operator in San Antonio, Texas, received a harrowing call for help from a woman locked in a truck tank. In Spanish, the woman described the truck, which would lead to the eventual arrest of one man and the discovery of 80 other people trapped inside. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident where undocumented immigrants have been the victim of human trafficking. In July 2017, nine Mexican and Guatemalan people were killed after being crammed in a tractor-trailer. Based on initial interviews, more than 100 people had once been trafficked in the truck. Also that month, Border Control seized four trucks around Laredo, Texas, containing immigrants from Central and South America. An unsettling side effect of United States immigration policies on the southern border is that an extremely vulnerable group of people can be easily targeted for human trafficking.
Immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, are particularly susceptible to human trafficking. These people are often unfamiliar with their rights in the United States and may not speak or understand English. Undocumented immigrants lack the required paperwork to immigrate legally, so they face a lack of protection under the law and the constant threat of deportation. Human traffickers, knowing that immigrants are less likely to seek help, take advantage of these vulnerabilities by forcing them into sex and labor trafficking.
Many undocumented immigrants who are being trafficked are dependent on their traffickers for their survival because without their legal identities, they face the risk of deportation from U.S. law enforcement. To try to encourage trafficked immigrants to seek out, the United States has a special visa for victims of human trafficking called the T-visa that was created in 2000 by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Act. To the victims’ detriment, there is a quota of 5000 visas per year (as of 2018), and the visas only last for four years. Furthermore, they are dramatically underutilized, as shown in United States Citizenship and Immigration statistics that state that only 500 to 600 are used each year.
With increasing urgency at the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration policies not deterring Central and South Americans from coming to the U.S., traffickers are increasingly profiting from people desperate to come to this country. To protect victims, there must be changes in policies for the protection of victims apart from deportation-focused actions. Since the creation of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, “Policymakers have given the enforcement of immigration restrictions a very high priority, and in this equation, smuggled migrants are subject to extremely harsh penalties under the criminal law.” The law creates a situation in which “either a noncitizen qualifies as a trafficking victim, […] or the noncitizen is a smuggled migrant, who is subject to detention, prosecution, criminal punishment, and removal.” A potential policy solution to facilitate aid for undocumented immigrant trafficking victims is requiring prosecutors to inform and facilitate T-visa paperwork and strengthen funding for victim advocacy. While these policies place emphasis on individual behavior, there must be larger cultural conversations about immigration policy and general public knowledge on the realities of immigration and human trafficking.
Meet the Artist: Cindy Cuellar is a Mexican-American woman who is a strong advocate for intersectionality. She recently received a B.S. in journalism and a focus in photography. She has worked with the number one college newspaper in California, the Spartan Daily, for almost two years at San Jose State. Cindy started off as a staff writer and progressed her way to be a graphics editor. She loved each semester spent in the newsroom and has grown not only as a journalist but also as an illustrator.
https://www.aclu.org/other/human-trafficking-modern-enslavement-immigrant-women-united-states
https://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-immigration/human-trafficking-exploitation-illegal-aliens
https://apnews.com/article/f18facbc8edbe24d3ec962e474f6af91
https://apnews.com/article/san-antonio-texas-human-trafficking-defac20fca2003a5ceb8020f60fc2393
https://apnews.com/article/4e60071114694e6e8e5a14392dc94819
The Intersection of Human Trafficking and Immigration
The Intersection of Human Trafficking and Immigration
