Trafficking · Practice

Keep it going.

The signs fade from memory in a month. The practice is a drill you can repeat, a yearly rhythm, and the number already in your phone. Tick things here; the ticks stay on your device.

What’s true Do the thing

The drill: sign or not?

Six situations. Decide what you’d do, then open it. No single sign proves anything; the question is whether to call the hotline, which takes reports of potential situations.¹

A coworker’s cousin was offered a job abroad. The recruiter won’t put anything in writing and says the fee comes out of the first months’ pay.

Two signs

A debt to the recruiter and a recruiter who dodges questions are both on the hotline’s list. Nobody is a victim yet, which is the best time. Give your coworker the hotline number: it takes reports of potential situations and can help with a safety plan, though it says it can’t answer general questions.¹

Your teenager’s friend, 15, has a 24-year-old “boyfriend” who pays for her phone and nails and picks her up from school. She’s missed two weeks.

Call

A fast, lopsided relationship with an older adult, gifts, and a teen who’s stopped going to school: three signs together, and she’s a minor, so the hotline can act without her consent. Call 1-888-373-7888 with what you know. Don’t confront the man.¹²

The workers at a nail salon speak little English and seem to live upstairs.

Not enough

Speaking another language is not a sign. Living where you work is on the hotline’s list, but no single sign proves anything, and on its own it describes many immigrants who aren’t trafficked. Look for control: someone else holding their ID, debt to the employer, not being allowed to leave, fear of deportation. If you see one of those, call. If you don’t, a report based on ethnicity brings police down on the workers, not a trafficker.¹

A viral post says vans with zip ties are grabbing women in a parking lot near you.

Myth

Trafficking rarely looks like a stranger abduction; many victims are recruited by a partner or a family member, and most control is psychological. The hotline already knows about the viral posts. Report what you saw yourself, and don’t share the post.³

A friend who sells sex says she wants to stop. Her “manager” holds her ID and her earnings.

Trafficking; her call

Wanting to stop and feeling unable to, plus someone holding her ID and money, is coercion. She’s an adult, so the hotline won’t act without her consent; it will talk to her, and it won’t record the call. Give her the number and the text line, 233733. Offer to sit with her. Don’t report over her head unless she’s in immediate danger.²

A neighbour’s live-in housekeeper never has a day off, says she’s “paying back” her airfare, and the family keeps her passport “for safety”.

Call

Held passport, debt to the employer, no time off. Domestic work was the largest named labour-trafficking venue in US hotline cases in 2025. Call with specifics: the address, what you’ve seen, when. You can stay anonymous.¹⁴

The rhythm

Today

Two contacts in your phone: Trafficking hotline 1-888-373-7888, and Trafficking hotline text 233733.

This week

Read what a bad job looks like once, slowly. Ten minutes.
Set up the monthly gift to recovery. Five minutes.
If you have a teenager: the sextortion talk. Before anything happens is the only time it works.

Every six months

Run the drill above again. Memory of the signs decays; the drill takes five minutes.

Every year

January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the US.⁶ Use it as the cue: renew the recovery gift, re-read the hotline’s confidentiality policy (it changed operators in late 2025), and check whether the UN’s next global report is out.²
Once a year, ask your grocer or co-op whether it’s in the Fair Food Program, and say you’d like it to be. Don’t hunt for the label; back the enforcement workers run.⁵

One reminder on the first of each month that opens this page. It holds no dates or figures, so it never goes out of date.

With others

At work or in your congregation, ask the kitchen’s produce supplier whether it’s in the Fair Food Program. weak: the programme’s own figures Workers lead its enforcement, and buyers are bound by it. Its own report calls its track record unique.⁷
Mentoring by survivors shows promise. weak: one group of 41 In one programme, exploitation among participants fell from 72% to 14% over a year.⁸
Don’t start a neighbourhood watch for this. No evaluation of watch-style formats turned up in our check. Airline staff, some trained to spot trafficking, have reported mixed-race families as traffickers at least three times. Hotel and trucker training programmes report large numbers trained, over 11,000 hotel properties and 1.8 million truckers, but those are their own counts, with no evaluation of what they changed.⁹⁸

Say it in thirty seconds

Trafficking mostly isn't strangers and vans. It's a debt you can't pay off, a boss who holds your passport, a boyfriend who's too generous too fast, a teenager staying with an adult who isn't their guardian. Worldwide it's more often forced labour than sex. If you ever see something, the hotline is 1-888-373-7888, or text 233733; a trained person answers and you can stay anonymous. I have it saved. Want me to send it?

Your checklist

Hotline saved as two contacts.
Read the signs.
Did the drill once.
Had the sextortion talk (if there’s a teenager in your life).
Monthly gift to recovery: Sanctuary for Families, Restore NYC or GEMS (the Freedom Fund takes one-time gifts).
Asked my grocer about the Fair Food Program once.
Read what’s true.
Sent this page to one person.

Sources

National Human Trafficking Hotline, Recognizing the signs, read 5 Nov 2026; DHS Blue Campaign, How to identify and report human trafficking, updated 18 November 2025. primary
National Human Trafficking Hotline, When you reach us and Confidentiality policy, read 5 Nov 2026. primary
National Human Trafficking Hotline, Myths and facts, read 5 Nov 2026. primary
National Human Trafficking Hotline, Statistics, 2025: domestic work 617 labour cases, the largest named venue (the catch-all “other” is 833). primary
Fair Food Program results and buyers, read 5 Nov 2026. programme’s own figures
White House, Presidential message on National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, 6 January 2026. primary
Fair Food Program, 2024 report (20,000+ workers; from 2011 to 2024, 3,919 complaints and $638,948 in wages recovered). programme’s own figures
Rothman et al., evaluation of a survivor-mentor programme, Child Abuse & Neglect, 2020 (My Life My Choice; one group, 41 youth) research; misidentifications by airline staff via Jalopnik, 9 November 2021 (one Southwest and two Frontier cases) news.
BEST, Inn-dustry Training Project outcomes, 2019 (“Over 11,000 properties have staff trained”) charity’s own figures; FreightWaves, CVSA human trafficking awareness week, 12 January 2026 (Truckers Against Trafficking’s own count: 1.8 million trained) news.

Contest a fact, suggest something, or tell us what’s broken

If someone is in danger right now, don’t use this form. Call your local emergency number (911 in the US). For trafficking: 1-888-373-7888, or text 233733.

No name, no account. Your note goes into the site’s private records, nothing about your browser or connection is stored with it, and the email box is the only way we’d know who you are. The weekly review reads every note, re-reads the original source, and fixes the page if it should. A contested fact and its outcome are listed on Contested, in the review’s words, never yours.

No tracking on any link.Ticks stay on this device.Facts checked 5–6 Nov 2026.What changedContested