Human trafficking: A growing criminal market

Human trafficking has become a lucrative criminal market in the United States. The commodities involved in this illicit trade are men, women, and children. Traffickers transport undocumented migrants into the U.S. for work in licit, semi-illicit and illicit industries. The traffickers ' foremost goal is to maximize profits-- often resulting in physical and mental exploitation of the victims. The sale and distribution of trafficked humans in the U.S. is a global, regional, and national phenomenon. Women and children are trafficked short distances within the U.S. (small towns to bigger cities), as well as coming from as far away as China, Ukraine and Thailand. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that of the100 million migrants worldwide, about 4 million are undocumented, i.e., migrants who have been smuggled or trafficked (Graycar, 1999). The U.S. Department of State, has estimated that at any given time, there are hundreds of thousands of people in the pipeline, being warehoused by traffickers, waiting for new routes to open up or documents to become available-- and their primary target is the United States (Body Sellers, 1995). Human trafficking shares certain dynamics with alien smuggling, but is different in havin