American airports have a human rights problem: human trafficking. Trafficking in persons is a $32 billion industry which involves millions of people a year, and it commonly involves the movement of people (for sexual and labor exploitation). Airports provide large hubs for domestic and international travel. Thousands of US-born and foreign victims are trafficked through U.S. airports every year. Often they cannot ask for help, because of confusion, fear, or language barriers.
The Bush and Obama administrations both increased their focus on recognizing and fighting the problem of human trafficking overall. Yet the government began paying attention to human trafficking only 20 years ago, and remains woefully behind in combatting its spread. Current legislation targeting human trafficking is vague, buried in unrelated bills, and unfocused. Few laws focus on finding victims en route to situations of abuse, even though victims who stay in one location are harder to locate (and subsequently help). Considering the millions of people who travel through American airports every year, airline employees should have training on what human trafficking is and how to respond.
In June Congress passed the FAA extension bill. The bill included a clause mandating that all air flight attendants undergo training to spot signs of human trafficking and learn how to respond appropriately if human trafficking is suspected. However, the clause was buried inside hundreds of pages of other extensions, and only included flight attendants, not the broader group
Programs already exist to train airlines personnel how to spot signs of destress and react through proper channels. Airline Ambassadors International (AAI) developed such a program and had it approved by the Department of Homeland Security. Delta Airlines partnered with AAI in 2012 so all Delta employees could complete human trafficking training. Amtrak has a similar program in conjunction with the Department of State and the Department of Transportation, in which over 8,000 Amtrak employees were trained.
Since training programs approved by the government exist, common sense says we should pass a bill dedicated to training airline employees. While we’re on the issue, there’s one other group of people under-prepared to face the problem: DHS employees. The Department of Homeland Security does not have mandatory human trafficking training. Although the DHS unveiled an anti-human trafficking campaign in 2010 which aims to “more effectively combat human trafficking through enhanced public awareness, training, victim assistance, and law enforcement investigations”, many DHS employees are themselves untrained in the topic. This is an egregious oversight. Airline personnel should learn to recognize signs of distress, and they would be best backed up by an adequately trained security force. The government should fix the oversight immediately through a revision to the DHS training protocols alongside with a bill directing airlines to train their employees. Human trafficking is an enormous problem, and many solutions will be required if we want to properly address the topic. One of the things we can do is put protections in place to find victims while they’re in motion. Human trafficking is a scourge against human rights. Everyone benefits from the fight against it.
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