Background

As many as 20 million men, women, and children – many of them right here in our own communities across America – are held against their will and trafficked into forced labor and prostitution. The sad fact is that the perpetrators of modern slavery are using our planes, trains, buses, ships, and trucks to do it.

USDOT's Transportation Leaders Against Human Trafficking (TLAHT) convenes representatives from across the transportation industry to identify opportunities to raise awareness about the issue and to educate the transportation workforce about human trafficking.

Human trafficking is defined as follows:

• Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; OR
   
• The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.

TLAHT stakeholders explore potential actions that transportation industry partners can achieve together to maximize our collective impact on the issue.  Our stakeholders come together to share their experiences, promising practices, and key results on actions taken to combat human trafficking across the country. 

Participation in this effort is voluntary.