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January is Human Trafficking Prevention month and Collective Liberty wants to give 5 lucky winners a chance to show their support! Enter to win masks that reduce vulnerabilities to trafficking by creating economic opportunities for the Mazahua community and support the work of Collective Liberty in ending human trafficking in North America. The contest closes on Jan 26th. Check out our social media to find all details.

The long hours, crowded work conditions, and denial of basic labor rights for workers vital to our national supply chains have a long history in our country. Pre-pandemic, the routine denial of fair and consistent wages contributes to worker stress, distress, and potential for injuries and sickness. This has only escalated amidst COVID. People have been sounding alarm bells, and even in a pandemic we aren’t listening. In order to protect our supply chains during the pandemic, workplace safety enforcement was lifted in agriculture and meat processing. Since then, worker lives have been lost in alarming numbers without any consequences.

• In May 2020, 20 meatpacking workers had died from Covid-19, 5,000 were sickened
• By September, 200 workers were dead and 42,534 had been sickened in their meatpacking workplace
• That same month Fosters had to close their meat processing plant in Fresno, CA because of rapid infects with nearly 200 infections and at least 12 deaths.
• In November, Cal/OSHA inspectors determined that Smithfield failed to adequately address at least 300 cases of COVID-19
• In January, Nebraska governor says citizens, legal residents will get vaccine priority over undocumented immigrants

• Collective Liberty’s faculty have provided training on many law enforcement best practices to agencies throughout the State of Kentucky, including their Attorney General’s Office, who conducted this operation – Louisville man arrested again for allegedly trying to sell minor for sex. Targeting traffickers and not survivors is the most victim-centered way to conduct operations. This however shows that without beneficial services being provided that are tailored to the specific needs of the survivor, they can often fall back into trafficking.
• We are extremely proud of the work being done by our partners in Waco – Sting leads to Waco man’s arrested on trafficking, prostitution of a minor charges, and as always proud to work with and provide support to such a great group of trafficking investigators.
• El Paso County Attorney’s Office, Attorney Jo Ann Bernal’s office, led a 3-month investigation into massage parlors posing as fronts for sex trafficking in the area. Their approach toward victim support and offender accountability is a national model we are proud to incorporate into our training institutes.

Our CEO, Rochelle Keyhan shared her expertise on how victims end up in massage parlor trafficking and why it’s so hard to get them out: “If they go to law enforcement for help, they know there is a high likelihood that they are going to get arrested, so they are not going to ask for help. We need to be thinking, ‘What is the end game here?’ Do we care more about prostitution than trafficking, and if so, we really need to consider what the priorities are: What is the worst crime?”.
This type of investigative shift is what we support throughout our training institutes and data intelligence support through our Human Trafficking Fusion Center. To learn more, visit htfusion.org.

Subscribe to our weekly human trafficking newsletter with updates about proven instances of human trafficking across the United States.