Homeland Security steps up efforts to stop human trafficking
"The elements of the of human trafficking don't necessarily involve transportation. That's more human smuggling," said Brandi Bynum.
Stopping human trafficking is a year-round mission for the Homeland Security Department. Last week DHS marked its annual blue campaign, a public awareness effort. For how DHS organizes around this challenge, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turn to Brandi Bynum of the center for countering human trafficking.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin And let’s begin with [Department of Homeland Security (DHS)] itself. No single component is really in charge of human trafficking. So give us a sense of the components that come to bear on this particular problem.
Brandi Bynum That’s correct. And that’s why DHS and Congress passed legislation to create the Center for Countering Human Trafficking four years ago. And so what it did was it took the 16 components and offices that have a footprint on human trafficking, and it put us all into one place. And so when we talk about the different components, we talk about Customs and Border Protection, who protects our borders? We talk about U.S. Coast Guard, who protects human trafficking or combats human trafficking on the waterways. We talk about The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) who train state and local law enforcement. We can even talk about Homeland Security Investigations, who has authority in the government to not only investigate human trafficking, but over 400 crimes. And then including my program, the Blue Campaign, we were formally in DHS headquarters, and then recently with that legislation, got moved over to the CCH team.
Tom Temin I would assume also Transportation Security Administration, because the officers have pretty shrewd eyes on what’s going on in airports, fair to say?
Brandi Bynum Absolutely, yes. So they help us combat human trafficking at the airports, part of our transportation portfolio. And we actually an element of the Blue Campaign is the Blue Lightning Initiative, where we work with TSA, we work with Customs and Border Protection. We work with the Department of Transportation to help educate and train those in the aviation industry.
Tom Temin Right. And well, before we get to some of the details there, maybe give us the extent of human trafficking. What exactly is the definition of human trafficking? Just anyone who is moved against their will from one country to another.
Brandi Bynum Not necessarily. Because the elements of the of human trafficking don’t necessarily involve transportation. That’s more human smuggling. So I’ll talk about that in a second. But human trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion to obtain some type of labor or a commercial sex act. And so I mentioned, one of those three elements by federal definition needs to be proven if somebody is going to be prosecuted for human trafficking except when a minor. So anyone under 18 is involved in a commercial sex act because they can’t consent. So a lot of times, and I’m so glad to talk about this, is a lot of people get human trafficking and human smuggling confused. So human smuggling is a crime against a border. It does involve transportation. And the majority of the time it’s voluntary. So somebody does want to go from one country to another. So they’re going to pay a smuggler to get them there. Where human trafficking is exploitation against a person and is involuntary. Nobody chooses to go into the life of human trafficking.
Tom Temin But yet it may look alike.
Brandi Bynum Sometimes, there are some cross nexuses. I’ll give you an example of a smuggling situation that can turn into trafficking. So let’s say someone is in the United States and they want to get to Canada. So they want to pay a smuggler $10,000 to get them illegally across the border. They spend their life savings getting across the border. They get to Canada and the traffickers like you owe me another $10,000 because I had to pay for this, I had to pay for this. And they’re like, I gave you all my money. They don’t care. So you’re going to have to pay me back, either through commercial sex or labor to pay that debt back. And so that’s a situation where somebody voluntarily wanted to transport over a border or across a border voluntarily, and then it turns into trafficking involuntary where they’re having being forced fraud to then be in this trafficking situation where they’re paying it back at it.
Tom Temin And you mentioned earlier that people can be trained, even federal officers and federal agents and representatives can be trained to spot this in a transportation situation. What are some of the signs that those people with that guy are smuggling or they are being trafficked in some manner?
Brandi Bynum Absolutely. So trafficking looks different in different places, in different parts of the world. And so what our program tries to do is create tailored materials, whether it’s posters or indicator cars or a training guide to best fit the audience that we’re trying to reach. So we can talk about aviation. We have a special program, I mentioned the Blue Lightning Initiative that we collaborate with the Customs Border Protection and Department of Transportation, because there was legislation that came out in 2006 that said that airports or airlines needed to train their in-flight staff. Because we know they’re in a unique position to possibly see human trafficking. So we created this program to provide this training. And so someone in an airport may see, let’s talk about a ticket agent. A person is coming up with a person and they’re wanting to get tickets or go somewhere, and they don’t know where they’re going. We have a survivor lived experience expert in our network who said that her trafficker bought her a ticket where she thought she was going to Florida. She went to get the ticket, the ticket agent said, you’re not going to Florida. You’re going to New York. Why wouldn’t someone know where they’re going. So that’s a possible indicator. Let’s say somebody is checking in and you have to show your license at the airport, some form of I.D., whether it’s the license or the passport. Most of the time, most adults have possession of that in a trafficking situation. That trafficker most of the time pass possession of someone’s personal documents like the passport and a license. So that can be an indicator, someone that’s traveling with no baggage. We’ve seen that as an indicator, because they don’t plan on coming back or paying for a ticket in cash is very rare that folks are paying cash and then going to keep their ticket at the ticket desk. And so most of time we already go in there, it’s on our app.
Tom Temin I don’t think they have cash drawers.
Brandi Bynum And so that can be an indicator for somebody that is in aviation. And so we’ve actually expanded that Blue Lightning initiative to not just train in-flight staff so our pilots and our amazing flight attendants, but also our gate agents, our baggage claim. TSA, as we mentioned, they get training through the Blue Campaign. We’re in charge of providing the DHS human trafficking training to over 260,000 employees. And so we have broken down that virtual training for each component so they know what it looks like within what they’re doing, because trafficking for CBP is going to look different from TSA. TSA is going to look different for an investigator, homeland security investigation. And that’s going to look different than what trafficking may look like for U.S. Coast Guard, we talk about training the maritime industry. And so it’s very unique when we talk about indicators. I love to break it down for each individual industry because it’s going to look different.
Tom Temin Sure. We were speaking with Brandi Bynum. She’s an acting unit chief at the Center for Countering Human Trafficking, part of the Homeland Security Department. And the Blue Campaign, you have a day where you mark this, but it sounds like it’s a year round effort to keep people up to date on what’s going on. And you must see new innovations by the smugglers and the traffickers knowing what it is that you’re doing to counter them.
Brandi Bynum 100%. So that’s why the department created this program. So January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. On Jan. 11, we commemorate the month with National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, which she mentions on Jan.11. DHS has coined a #wearblueday. And so even though that’s our biggest awareness day of the year, our program runs all year round. So it’s not just a January thing. January, typically we have a lot of events, but we’re rolling into February. My team is actually getting ready for a symposium that’s happening on the 15 and 16, but then we have webinars on the 21 and 23 for free for the public to gain more information. And we roll in the Super Bowl, so we’re doing a really humongous resource fair in conjunction with our local Homeland Security Investigations Office. And then we go into March and April, and we just keep going throughout the year. Because this crime doesn’t just happen a few times a year. I mention this happening to over 27 million people, men, women and children. So our job isn’t done because one victim is one victim too many.
Tom Temin And let me ask you about a scenario how this happens in operation. Suppose a flight attendant or a gate agent suspects something, they would alert the TSA? I would think?
Brandi Bynum So, no. We actually want them to report directly to Homeland Security investigations, which is the component within DHS. And so will work with the airports and the airlines to make sure that their reporting protocols are in place and make sure that if they do suspect that there’s a victim of human trafficking, that they notify federal law enforcement who will work with local law enforcement to make sure we have somebody on the ground to help protect that potential victim.
Tom Temin You would have to orchestrate all this quickly if they’re, say, going to board a flight to Russia or a flight across country, say, is the idea to prevent them from boarding in the first place or to catch what might happen at the other end of the flight?
Brandi Bynum I think it just depends on when that employee notices some indicators. So in the scenario that you just mentioned, if they notice it before they get on the flight, then we want them to notify local law enforcement or federal law enforcement immediately. We have law enforcement at the airports, whether it’s Customs and Border Protection or whether it’s TSA. And so they then they can then notify Homeland Security investigations. If they find in-flight, then we want them to follow proper protocol so that then we can touch on who’s on the ground in whatever country, because we do have a presence, not just DHS, but also State Department at the embassies overseas.
Tom Temin And is this a hotline type of situation so that if someone calls Homeland Security investigations on Sunday evening, somebody will pick up?
Brandi Bynum Yes. So we promote to hotlines at the Blue Campaign. The first one is the National Human Trafficking Hotline. So we encourage those individuals to call that hotline if they are community member or if they’re a victim of human trafficking, because Polaris, who operates that line, has relationships with non-governmental organizations and service providers across the country, and can get them connected to resources. If someone wants to report directly to federal law enforcement, I encourage them to call us at DHS. And the really great thing about both those lines is that they are available 24/7 and people can report anonymously so they don’t have this fear on like, oh my gosh, I don’t know if is human trafficking. I recognize some indicators, I just need to tell somebody. We encourage everybody to do that.
Tom Temin And what happens if it is determined that some intervention should take place and they nab the trafficker? What happens to the individual being trafficked?
Brandi Bynum We will immediately bring on one of our victim assistance specialist. So that is a role that individuals, both men and women, are non law enforcement and they accompany our amazing special agents out in the field and their primary role is to take care of that victim. So they are meeting with that victim immediately, getting them out of that situation and then getting them connected with resources, whether that’s housing or medical care, food and shelter. While that investigator can focus on getting the trafficker. And so that’s how our teams work together with then Homeland Security investigations to make sure we are deploying a victim centered approach, which means that DHS wants to place equal emphasis on getting that trafficker and securing the victim. And it hasn’t been like that always. And so we have these really amazing people that are in this role of the victim assistance specialist and forensic interviewer whose primary focus is working and getting that victim re acclimated back into society.
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Tom Temin
Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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