Human Trafficking in Florida Can Take Many Forms
Friday, June 20, 2014
By: Carmel Delshad

June 20, 2014 | WMFE, Orlando - The U.S. State Department released a report today on the state of human trafficking worldwide.

In 2013, more than 1,700 calls from Florida were made to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. That’s the third highest number of calls nationwide. Some of these calls come from people facing forced labor.

That number doesn’t surprise Laura Germino with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a worker’s rights group based in Florida that also aims to end human trafficking.

Germino says that throughout her two decades in the field, she’s seen trafficking take many forms:

“We’ve seen forced labor and human trafficking in the hotel, restaurant, and construction industries, with domestic workers who come on guest worker visas to clean houses.”

Germino says labor trafficking is a major issue throughout the U.S.—one noted in this year’s State Department Trafficking in Persons Report.

But—Germino says, there is hope that through growing awareness of the problem, more people will notice potential human trafficking cases and seek help.

"When there is more awareness of the issue, and people feel like there is a way to report something and that we can fight this crime, then you are going to have people stepping forward and saying, ‘I believe something is going on here,” says Germino.

More than 68 percent of the calls made in Florida to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center were related to the sex trade, and about 20 percent to labor trafficking.