The Gilder Lehrman Center presents:
Kerry Ward, Associate Professor of History, Rice University Gilder Lehrman Center Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery Fellow: “Ground Zero: The explosion of anti-human trafficking initiatives in Houston, Texas”.
Houston anti-human trafficking activists regularly invoke the metaphor of “ground zero” to describe the perceived explosion of human trafficking in the city and the social disaster that has been wrought by the scourge of modern day slavery. Presenting human trafficking through the lens of disaster implies that the onset of human trafficking has been sudden and unexpected thereby requiring a coordinated response to repair the damage to the social fabric of the community. Anti-trafficking initiatives have been generated across political, religious and social spectrums but they overwhelmingly focus on “sex-trafficking” within the paradigm of rescuing young women. Human trafficking has also altered law enforcement responses to human smuggling and irregular migration through attempts to distinguish “victims” from illegal immigrants. This paper explores the evolution of Houston’s anti-trafficking network in the context of city, county, state and federal responses since the enactment of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.