Trafficking · Do

Pay for recovery. Know the number. Twenty-five minutes.

Need help now? Call 1-888-373-7888 or text 233733, any hour. If someone is in danger right now, call 911. What the hotline does.

Twenty-five minutes: set up a monthly gift to a survivor’s recovery, learn what a bad job looks like and keep the hotline number, and back enforcement that workers run. 49.6 million people were in modern slavery in 2021, the latest estimate.¹ One person won’t take down a network; these are the parts one person can do. Each step carries a label for how well it’s proven.

What’s true Keep it going

The whole thing

1. Pay for recovery, monthly.

   Housing, legal status, counselling and a job help a survivor stay free. Federal money for them lapsed in October 2025: more than a hundred victim-service grants ended on 1 October, with $88 million still unreleased in March 2026. Approvals of the visa that lets survivors stay fell from 3,786 to 1,398 in a year, with 81,695 waiting in June 2026. weak: small studies, charities’ own results³ Whether the services work is thinly studied: a review found six small studies of 161 survivors, most of poor quality.²⁰ Where to give.

   5 minutes · any amount

2. Learn what a bad job looks like, and be the person who knows the number. US

   A fee for the job, a debt to the recruiter, documents held, a visa tied to one boss. Trafficking rarely looks like a kidnapping; most traffickers trick, manipulate or threaten instead.¹⁰ none but plausible: untested as a friend’s role No study shows that public awareness finds victims. In Nepal, women who took a two-day course on migration risks were no less likely to end up in forced labour; the destination and the recruiter set the risk. That tested warning the worker, not having someone to turn to. What you can be is the informed friend with the number, for when a job turns out to be a bad one.⁴²¹ The signs.

   10 minutes · $0

3. Back enforcement that workers run. US

   Audits and ethical labels have failed, repeatedly; the alternative has workers reporting abuse to an independent monitor, with buyers bound to stop buying from growers who don’t fix it. weak: the programme’s own figures The Fair Food Program covers more than 20,000 farmworkers, and workers on its farms brought 3,919 complaints to its hotline from 2011 to 2024.⁵ One independent study links the programme’s arrival to fewer low-weight births among Latin American-born mothers; it doesn’t measure forced labour.²² What to do.

   10 minutes · $0 or a monthly gift

Pick the day and time you’ll do step one:

Near you

Enter your ZIP code and this page adds the steps that depend on where you live: your state’s own programs and laws, and the finders that take a ZIP. The code stays in your browser, like the ticks.

Where to give

Most anti-trafficking groups report their own results, and few of those results have been rigorously tested. A review of the whole field found evaluations mostly measure activity, not outcomes.⁶ The surest thing your money buys is recovery.

Recovery, in New York

• Sanctuary for Families: free legal help, counselling and shelter for survivors of trafficking and gender violence, whatever their immigration status. Charity Navigator 97.⁷
• Restore NYC, monthly: housing, counselling and jobs for survivors of trafficking. Charity Navigator 92. Its form ticks “Cover fees” for you, which raises the monthly amount; untick it if you want the amount you chose.⁷
• GEMS: services built on survivor leadership for girls and young women aged 12 to 29 who have been commercially sexually exploited. Know that its 2023 audit carried a going-concern warning and its director stepped down in 2024; its 2025 accounts had recovered. Charity Navigator 65.⁷

Worldwide

• The Freedom Fund backs frontline groups in hotspot countries; its donate page takes one-time gifts only. Since 2016 it counts someone as freed only if they also got follow-up support, the strictest rule we found. Charity Navigator 100.⁷⁸

The Exodus Road and International Justice Mission were on this list. They came off: both score well on paperwork, but neither has an independent evaluation of results we could read. Both have worked with police to find and free victims, and raids like that have a documented record of harming the people they find.⁶

What a bad job looks like

Not every sign shows up in every situation, and no single sign proves anything.⁹ Labour signs first, because most forced labour worldwide is outside the sex trade, by the ILO’s estimate,¹ and because these are the ones you can catch before anyone travels.

Around a job

• A fee “for the opportunity”, or wages that go to paying off the recruiter or the employer.
• Someone else holds their passport or ID.
• A visa tied to one employer. Among trafficked workers on US temporary visas who reached the hotline, 59% were controlled by threats about their immigration status.⁴
• They aren’t paid what they were promised, can’t leave freely, or live where the employer puts them.
• A far-away job where the recruiter dodges questions, won’t put it in writing, or hands over a contract in a language they can’t read.¹⁰ Before anyone signs: Contratados carries workers’ own reviews of recruiters and employers.

Around a person

• A fast, lopsided romance with gifts and money, or a “too close” relationship with someone known only online.
• Someone they defer to controls where they go and who they speak to; they seem coached on what to say.
• A teen keeps running away, has stopped going to school, or is staying with an adult who isn’t their guardian.
• They want to stop selling sex but feel they can’t, or have a “manager”. Any minor in commercial sex is legally a trafficking victim.⁹¹⁰

Not signs

• Speaking another language, travelling with someone of a different race. Airline staff, some trained to spot trafficking, have reported mixed-race families as traffickers at least three times; none were.¹¹
• Chains, vans, strangers. It needn’t involve a border or any travel; most control is psychological; many victims are recruited by a partner or a family member; agreeing at first, or being paid, doesn’t rule it out.¹⁰

How to report, and what the number is for

• Danger right now: 911.
• An adult you know: give them the number. The hotline is built first to get the person help. It also takes tips, and passes them on only in some cases. It won’t act without the consent of the person in the situation, except where a minor may be abused or someone is in imminent danger. It can help plan a safe exit. Don’t report over an adult’s head unless they’re in immediate danger.¹²
• A minor, or specifics you saw yourself: call 1-888-373-7888, text 233733, chat, or use the web form (not for anything urgent or in the last 24 hours).
• A child exploited online: NCMEC’s CyberTipline, or 1-800-843-5678.
• You were hit by an online scam: report it at ic3.gov. Many scam operations run on trafficked workers.¹³
• Report what you saw yourself. The hotline already knows about viral posts.

What happens after you call

A trained advocate answers. A supervisor reviews every tip before anything leaves the hotline. The hotline won’t act without the consent of the person in the situation, except where a minor may be abused or someone is in imminent danger. Calls aren’t recorded and you can stay anonymous. You won’t get updates; if you learn more, call again.¹²

Be honest about what a tip does. In the year to September 2025, 3,643 of the 13,623 potential situations the hotline identified were reported to law enforcement, and a federal evaluation notes that once a report is made, the hotline “has no influence on whether law enforcement takes additional action”.¹⁴ In 2025 a fifth of its contacts came from victims themselves.² The number’s best use is in a survivor’s hand.

The hotline changed operators in late 2025: Compass Connections took over from Polaris, starting in September, with the handover announced complete on 8 December. The number is unchanged, and the confidentiality policy as published on 5 November 2026 is word for word the one Polaris ran. Two things to watch: Compass runs federally funded shelters for unaccompanied children, has two stars from Charity Navigator and has published no tip-sharing policy of its own, and its federal grant requires a “law enforcement engagement plan” to “standardize how tips are shared”.¹²¹⁵ The ICE tip line (1-866-347-2423) is a different thing: it goes straight to an immigration enforcement agency.

Back enforcement that workers run

• Ask your grocer or co-op whether it’s in the Fair Food Program, and say you’d like it to be. Buyers sign binding agreements to stop buying from growers who abuse workers. The programme’s 2024 report: 20,000+ workers covered; from 2011 to 2024, 3,919 complaints from workers and $638,948 in wages recovered.⁵ The tomato label itself is rare: the programme names only Whole Foods, Giant and Stop & Shop.⁵
• Give to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the farmworker organisation that built the model. Charity Navigator 94. Dairy has its own version, Milk with Dignity: 54 farms, 611 violations resolved, by its own count.⁵⁷
• Know why labels don’t work. The factories behind two of the deadliest garment disasters of the last fifteen years had passed social audits weeks or months before. Research calls audits and certification “ineffective” at catching forced labour, and points to monitoring led by workers instead.¹⁶

If you have a teenager

Financial sextortion, where someone gets an intimate image and demands money, now targets teenage boys more than anyone else, NCMEC says. It received about 137 reports a day in 2025. In a survey of young sextortion victims, most who kept it from family and friends said shame or fear of getting in trouble stopped them.¹⁷ none but plausible: official advice, no trial Tell them now, before anything happens:

• If it happens, come to me. You won’t be in trouble; the blackmailer is to blame.
• Don’t pay. Paying rarely stops it.
• Block, but don’t delete. The messages are evidence.
• Taken under 18? Take It Down gets it removed from participating sites without the image ever leaving your phone. Then report to the CyberTipline.¹⁷

Ask for one thing

The 2026 damage is policy-made, so the fix is too. none but plausible: for one message Find your representatives at house.gov and senate.gov, and ask for one of these in your own words:

• Fund victim-service grants without gaps: more than a hundred ended on 1 October 2025, and their replacements weren’t due to start until July 2026.³
• Clear the T-visa backlog: 81,695 survivors were waiting in June 2026.³
• Keep the hotline consent-based. A 2023 bill, H.R. 2601, would have made it share what it hears with state and local police on request; survivor groups said that would turn a lifeline into a tip line, and Polaris, then its operator, opposed it. The bill never reached the House floor.¹⁵

One more, if you have the time

• Be a steady adult for a kid. Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC asks for two outings a month for at least a year. Mentoring has modest, real effects on school and drugs; nobody has shown it prevents trafficking itself. moderate: for youth outcomes, none for trafficking¹⁸

Questions people ask

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Sources

1. ILO, Walk Free and IOM, Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, September 2022 (2021 data, the latest). A modelled estimate, not a count, and a contested one. primary
2. National Human Trafficking Hotline, statistics, 2025 data, read 5 Nov 2026. The hotline says its numbers don’t measure how common trafficking is. primary
3. Freedom Network USA, Flying in the Face of Survivors, March 2026 (the ended grants, $88 million unreleased, 5,000+ survivors) charity’s own figures; USCIS, T visa statistics, FY2026 Q3 (3,786 principal approvals in FY2024, 1,398 in FY2025, 81,695 pending in June 2026) primary; The Advocates for Human Rights, Trafficking and T visas, June 2026 charity’s own figures.
4. Polaris, Labor trafficking on specific temporary work visas, 2022 (hotline cases 2018 to 2020; 59%) charity’s own figures; the Work in Freedom evaluation in Nepal, SWiFT briefing, May 2017, and research report, February 2019 (a woman’s risk of forced labour “was not influenced by” her awareness of risks) research; Szablewska and Kubacki, a review of anti-trafficking awareness campaigns, 2018 (16 studies, no outcome evaluations; record read) research.
5. Fair Food Program, 2024 report and participating buyers programme’s own figures; its label page, read 6 Nov 2026 programme’s own figures; Milk with Dignity, impact, read 5 Nov 2026 programme’s own figures; US Department of Labor, List of goods produced by child labor or forced labor, September 2024 primary.
6. Bryant and Landman, Journal of Human Trafficking, 2020, on evaluations in the field research; Charity Navigator profiles for The Exodus Road and IJM, read 5 Nov 2026 evaluator; The Exodus Road, donate page (“Our undercover investigators partner with law enforcement to find victims”), read 6 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures. On raids, read 6 Nov 2026: Human Rights Watch, Off the Streets, July 2010 (Cambodia: people caught in raids sent to centres where rape and beatings were documented) charity’s own figures; GAATW, Collateral Damage, 2007 (India, where it names IJM among the backers of Mumbai brothel raids, and Thailand) charity’s own figures; Ditmore and Thukral, Accountability and the use of raids to fight trafficking, Anti-Trafficking Review, 2012 (46 interviews in the US: arrest, detention, deportation before screening) research. These describe police raids on the sex trade, reported from 2007 to 2012; none studies either charity’s work today.
7. Charity Navigator scores and latest filings for Sanctuary for Families, Restore NYC, GEMS, the Freedom Fund, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC, read 5 Nov 2026 via Charity Navigator and ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer evaluator; GEMS’s 2023 audited statements (going-concern paragraph) primary.
8. The Freedom Fund, Impact, read 5 Nov 2026. charity’s own figures
9. DHS Blue Campaign, How to identify and report human trafficking, updated 18 November 2025 primary; 22 U.S.C. §7102 (any minor in commercial sex) primary.
10. National Human Trafficking Hotline, Recognizing the signs and Myths and facts, read 5 Nov 2026. primary
11. Reported misidentifications by airline staff: three mixed-race families, via Jalopnik (9 November 2021), and a father with his 13-year-old daughter in 2023, via Live and Let’s Fly; Airline Ambassadors is one group that trains airline staff to spot trafficking. news
12. National Human Trafficking Hotline, When you reach us, Confidentiality policy, About us and FAQ, read 5 Nov 2026; Polaris, transfer of hotline operations, 8 December 2025. primary
13. US State Department, 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report, 8 October 2026. primary
14. HHS Office on Trafficking in Persons, hotline data, fiscal year 2025 (13,623 potential situations identified; 3,643 reported to law enforcement; 9,446 of 187,863 signals from potential victims, counted differently from the hotline’s own 2025 figure) primary; HHS OPRE, evaluation of the National Human Trafficking Hotline, December 2023 primary.
15. HHS, the hotline award to Compass Connections, 22 September 2025 primary; National Association of Attorneys General, letter from 41 attorneys general, 15 April 2025 primary; Polaris, on H.R. 2601 charity’s own figures; the text of H.R. 2601 as introduced in 2023, and its status on GovInfo (no floor vote), read 6 Nov 2026 primary; National Survivor Network, on H.R. 2601, read 6 Nov 2026 charity’s own figures; Compass Connections’ and BCFS’s filings via ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, read 5 Nov 2026 primary; Compass’s Charity Navigator rating evaluator.
16. Re:Structure Lab, Social auditing and ethical certification, July 2022 (Ali Enterprises certified three weeks before its fire; Rana Plaza ten months before; the brief thanks Humanity United and the Freedom Fund, which this page recommends, for project funding) research; LeBaron, Journal of Supply Chain Management 57(2), 2021, doi:10.1111/jscm.12258 research.
17. NCMEC, CyberTipline data (2025) and Sextortion, read 5 Nov 2026 primary; Thorn, Sextortion: summary findings from a 2017 survey of 2,097 survivors, December 2019 (used as data only; ages 13 to 25; of those who didn’t tell family or friends, 84% cited shame and 79% fear of getting in trouble) charity’s own figures.
18. Raposa et al., meta-analysis of 70 mentoring studies, 2019; Big Brothers Big Sisters, impact; BBBS of NYC volunteering, read 5 Nov 2026. research
19. UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024, December 2024 (2022 data). A 2026 edition is in preparation. primary
20. Dell, Maynard, Born, Wagner, Atkins and House, Helping survivors of human trafficking: a systematic review of exit and postexit interventions, Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 2019 (six studies, 155 women and 6 men, four countries; abstract read 6 Nov 2026) research
21. Zimmerman, Mak, Pocock and Kiss, Human trafficking: results of a 5-year theory-based evaluation of interventions to prevent trafficking of women from South Asia, Frontiers in Public Health, 17 May 2021 (in Nepal, “participation in trainings did not reduce the likelihood of experiencing forced labor”; read 6 Nov 2026) research
22. Rubalcaba and Ortega, Worker-driven social responsibility and infant health, Demography, 2025 (birth records 2006–2018; abstract read 6 Nov 2026) research

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