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TRUMP ADMINISTRATION RETREATS ON COMBATING HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND
CHILD EXPLOITATION  
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Aaron Glantz, Bernice Yeung and Noy Thrupkaew
September 17, 2025
The Guardian
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_ “For Trump, trafficking is a bludgeon that’s deployed to
accomplish political ends. It’s not about survivors. It’s not
about justice. There is no conscience or policy behind this – there
is only political calculation.” _

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The Trump administration
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aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to
combat human trafficking, a Guardian investigation has found.

The sweeping retreat threatens to negate decades of progress in the
drive to prevent sexual slavery, forced labor and child sexual
exploitation, according to legal experts, former government officials
and anti-trafficking advocates. They say the administration’s moves
are impeding efforts to prosecute perpetrators and protect survivors
in the United States and around the world.

“It’s been a widespread and multi-pronged attack on survivors that
leaves all of us less safe and leaves survivors with few options,”
said Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA,
a national coalition
[[link removed]] of
service providers, researchers and trafficking survivors.

Under Trump, key initiatives for fighting human trafficking have been
cut back at the US Department of State, Department of Justice,
Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Guardian found. Senior
officials and other staffers have been forced out, workers shifted to
other priorities and grants delayed or cancelled.

At DHS, Trump has ordered agents formerly dedicated to investigating
and arresting human traffickers to focus on deporting immigrants.
Current and former DHS staffers interviewed by the Guardian confirmed
that these investigators’ day-to-day work has been broadly shifted
toward deportations and away from investigating “major crimes”
with “real victims”.

At the state department, the Trump administration slashed more than
70% [[link removed]] of the workforce at
the agency’s office to monitor and combat trafficking in persons
(Tip office), which is responsible for leading anti-trafficking
efforts across the US government. The department has also held up
grants for nonprofit organizations fighting trafficking around the
world, putting their operations and services at risk.

In addition, the administration has also delayed release of an annual
report that documents human trafficking across the US and more than
185 other countries. Federal law requires that the report – which
charts global trends in human trafficking and provides a
country-by-country assessment of efforts to combat it – be provided
to Congress no later than 30 June. Multiple sources told the Guardian
that the report has been completed but had not been provided to
Congress.

Anti-trafficking advocates say the federal government’s retreat will
allow many human traffickers to operate with increased impunity.

“The reality is that perpetrators will go free” and
“international crimes will continue”, said Beth Van Schaack,
ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice during the Biden
administration. “It will take years to rebuild the expertise in our
law enforcement and diplomatic corps.”

The Guardian sent the White House 23 questions and details of the
issues examined in this story. Trump spokesperson Taylor Rogers did
not answer the questions. She instead provided a three-sentence
response that called the Guardian’s findings “total nonsense”
and accused Joe Biden of “coddling and apologizing for criminals and
sexual predators”.

The statement added that “President Trump has totally secured our
border to stop the trafficking of children” and “implemented
tough-on-crime policies” that go after human traffickers and “hold
these disgusting monsters accountable to the fullest extent of the
law”.

In public statements, Trump administration officials have highlighted
its deportation drive as a signature strategy in its fight against
trafficking. The administration says this approach has led to the
arrest or removal of hundreds of “criminal illegals
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including gang-related traffickers.

A state department spokesperson said that “human trafficking is an
issue which the Trump administration takes very seriously.” The DHS
assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, told the Guardian that under
President Trump and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, “we are
dismantling sex trafficking networks and saving children from sexual
exploitation and abuse.”

Advocates say the focus on detention and deportation leaves victims
trapped.

“Traffickers exploit the fear of immigration enforcement and the
police so they don’t come forward,” said Stephanie Richard,
director of the Sunita Jain Anti-Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law
School in Los Angeles. “That’s how they end up being forced to
provide labor or sexual services.”

Richard said the federal government’s rollback of support to victims
of trafficking has become so severe that she has stopped collaborating
closely with federal agencies and instead now works only with state
and local officials, who are less likely to put survivors at risk.

REVERSING COURSE

The fight against human trafficking has been a rare
bipartisan issue in recent American history.

Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass the landmark
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and over the last quarter
century have approved numerous reauthorizations and enhancements.
Evangelical Christians and other faith-based groups have been a
powerful force among the network of advocacy groups fighting human
trafficking and child sexual exploitation.

Advocates of varying political views praised many aspects of
the first Trump administration’s work
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these issues from 2017 to 2021. But things have changed as Trump and
his appointees have shifted course after his re-election – and as
many progressives and conservatives have blasted his administration
for refusing to release the full investigative files related to the
late Jeffrey Epstein, currently the world’s most infamous sex
trafficker.

On Tuesday the top Democrat on the US House judiciary committee,
Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, released a memo
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the Trump administration of “systematically dismantling the offices
and programs we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex
crimes”. Raskin said the administration’s “sympathetic alignment
with powerful sex traffickers and rapists goes far beyond its efforts
to suppress the truth of what happened in one explosive case”.

The second Trump administration’s retreat from the fight against
human trafficking began on the first day of his second term, when he
signed an executive order
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changed the mission of DHS’s homeland security investigations (HSI)
unit, which had long operated under a mandate
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international nexus – including child sexual exploitation and human
trafficking.

In his order, Trump declared that investigating “illegal entry”
and addressing the “unlawful presence of aliens” would now be
HSI’s “primary mission”.

By March, Reuters reported
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“scores of agents” who specialize in child sexual exploitation
investigations had been reassigned to immigration enforcement.

Special agents who previously investigated human trafficking and child
sex crimes were offered training on how to lure immigrants out of
their homes for interrogation in so-called “knock and talk”
visits, the news agency reported.

The Guardian interviewed more than a dozen current and former DHS
agents, analysts and officials – including some who experienced the
agency’s shifting focus first-hand in early 2025. Though some have
accepted the new mission, the Guardian found that for many, morale has
cratered. Some opted to depart.

“We were hired to stop major crimes,” said Eric Balliet, a former
HSI official who worked for the agency under four different presidents
and retired last year as the chief of the integrity investigations
division at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). “These are
cases where there are real victims – child sexual exploitation and
human trafficking victims. And then to now have to go out and
basically comb the streets and look for folks [through immigration
raids], it’s a bad use of resources.”

McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary, told the Guardian that
“after four years of not being allowed to do their jobs,” Ice and
HSI agents “are excited to be able to do their jobs again”.

John Tobon, who retired from HSI as the assistant director of the
division for countering transnational organized crime in January 2025,
said human trafficking cases are hard enough to prosecute and
diverting HSI agents away from investigating major crimes makes it
“easier for exploiters and traffickers to get away with their
crimes”. “It’s impunity for traffickers,” he said.

“Fighting human trafficking used to be a bipartisan issue,” said
Helen Stiver, who was once forced into sex work and now serves as a
consultant to organizations that combat trafficking. “But now the
climate has changed. It’s part of the immigration agenda because
there are some people who were trafficked who are immigrants here.”

In some cases, immigrants cooperating with human trafficking
investigations have been arrested, locked up or deported. In May, at a
routine immigration court hearing in Orange county, California, Ice
agents detained two workers who were assisting law enforcement after
reporting they had been trafficked.

“Upon walking out into the hallway, they were apprehended, cuffed
and taken away,” their attorney, Panida Rzonca of the Thai Community
Development Center, said.

Rzonca said she told the Ice agents that the two were victims of human
trafficking but agents’ response was “that’s not up to us,
we’ll sort it out later.” Soon after, the two migrants were
transported to Texas and deported to Venezuela, she said.

McLaughlin, Trump’s DHS assistant secretary, declined to comment on
the arrest and deportation.

Federal law allows victims of human trafficking to apply for a special
“T visa”, allowing them to stay in the country legally and work.
The second Trump administration has issued guidance
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easier for Ice to arrest and deport people who say they are victims of
crime, including human trafficking. A separate policy memo
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it clear that the administration will seek to deport anyone who is
denied a T visa.

Between January and March, DHS denied more T visa applications than it
approved for the first time in the agency’s history.

At the same time, the number of trafficking victims waiting for a
decision on a T visa application has swollen to 26,000 people –
three times the number of just two years ago.

McLaughlin said the T visa program was intended to help a limited
number of crime victims and aid law enforcement investigations, but
had become a “free for all” under Biden.

“Nearly every day Ice arrests pedophiles, kidnappers, child
smugglers and sex traffickers, including those who entered our country
illegally,” she said.

DHS is also the lead agency on a global effort to fight online child
exploitation and abuse, which can involve human trafficking. Kristen
Best helmed this effort as coordinator for countering crimes of
exploitation and protecting victims. In this role, she convened tech
companies and law enforcement and worked with parents, children,
teachers and advocates.

On 3 September, however, Best was placed on leave along with five
other staffers with DHS’s central policy staff and office of
international affairs – with their badges, facility access, email
and network access disabled.

No explanation was given in the dismissal email. Three individuals who
worked closely with Best told the Guardian they worried what her
ouster would mean for the administration’s efforts to fight online
child exploitation, but asked that their names not be used for fear of
retaliation.

The department declined to answer questions about Best and her
colleagues. Best could not be reached for comment.

‘AMIDST A GLOBAL CRISIS’

Another sign of the Trump administration’s retreat on human
trafficking emerged on 30 June. That day – as required by the
landmark federal anti-trafficking law – the state department was
supposed to submit its annual Trafficking in Persons (Tip) report to
Congress.

The Tip report was not released that day and has not been released
since. Four former and current state department officials told the
Guardian that the report had already been drafted and received
high-level department approvals.

A release event for the report – scheduled at the department on 30
June, featuring Secretary of State Marco Rubio and worldwide
“heroes” who combat human trafficking – was canceled and has not
been rescheduled.

In the 14 years it has been produced, the release of the Tip report
has never been delayed beyond July.

The report is an exhaustive evaluation of global anti-trafficking
efforts across more than 185 countries, grading foreign governments on
their efforts to prevent and address the problem. The report is seen
as a powerful diplomatic tool on human rights-related issues.
Countries that get poor marks are ineligible for many forms of US
foreign aid.

Olga Dunebabina, spokesperson for the human rights group La
Strada-Ukraine, said the desire to avoid US sanctions has been
critical to getting the Ukrainian government to focus on the issue.
Last year’s Tip report found that Ukraine failed to meet minimum
anti-trafficking standards and laid out a long list
of recommendations
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including urging Ukraine to step up efforts to screen for victims
among vulnerable populations, such as those displaced by Russia’s
invasion.

Without the Tip report, Dunebabina said, “the question of
anti-trafficking has gone down” in her country – if the Ukrainian
government believes the report will not be released in the future,
that problem will only get worse.

The report is produced by the state department’s office to monitor
and combat trafficking in persons, which plays a critical role in
coordinating the US government’s domestic and international response
to trafficking. But in July, that office was gutted
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staffing is down by 71% to less than three dozen employees.

During a July hearing
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on foreign affairs, Representative Sarah McBride of Delaware pushed
for explanations from deputy secretary of state Michael Rigas. He told
McBride that there had been staffing redundancies and most of the
people fired “were actually writing reports. They were not actually
engaging in the field as Foreign Service officers.”

“It boggles the mind and defies belief that 71% of this department
was so dispensable amidst a global crisis of human trafficking,”
McBride told Rigas. “I am not surprised that the Maga base is now
questioning this administration’s commitment to human trafficking,
globally and domestically.”

In its statement to the Guardian, the state department said “it is
false to assume that more staff equates to better results. During the
reorganization meticulous attention was paid to ensure the Tip office
could continue to carry out its core functions and statutory
requirements including its reports to Congress.”

State department grants for anti-trafficking work have also been
pulled or stalled. The office has historically awarded approximately
$80m a year to support research, training and victim services. Some of
these grants have been temporarily withdrawn, forcing groups to halt
training and support for trafficking survivors. The department has not
issued a call for new anti-trafficking grant opportunities since
January 2025 and the availability of future funding remains uncertain.

A researcher whose grant was frozen said the funding blocks “are
felt by so many in so many ways”, not to mention the “potential
national security implications of unchecked human trafficking”. The
researcher added: “You are taking away critical resources that
protect survivors of trafficking and vulnerable communities across the
world.”

The researcher declined to be named out of fear it would further
jeopardize their organization’s ability to do its work.

The state department’s anti-trafficking office has been without a
leader since Trump started his second term. The federal
anti-trafficking law requires that the Tip office be directed by an
“ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in
persons”.

Biden’s appointee, Cindy Dyer, a federal prosecutor under George W
Bush, stepped down in January. Trump has not nominated a successor.

While there are sometimes delays in naming the ambassador, a vacancy
has never previously occurred at a time when advocates and government
workers were as concerned about the president’s commitment to
fighting human trafficking.

Human rights advocates and current and former state department
officials said that the lack of an ambassador sends a message to the
world that the issue is not a priority and deprives the US of an
official who can advance America’s international anti-trafficking
agenda.

‘WORST CASE SCENARIO’

Inside the US, the justice department’s office for victims of crime
has long supported a vast network of service providers who work to
rescue survivors of human trafficking and provide emergency housing,
mental healthcare and other help.

In Trump’s second term, many of these providers are worried they may
be forced to end programs or scale back services at the end of the
month, because millions of dollars in grants approved by Congress have
not been released – and funding appropriated in previous years is
set to expire.

“We’re planning for the worst case scenario,” said Hailey
Virusso, director of anti-trafficking services at Preble Street, a
non-profit in Maine that relies on federal grants to support services
for workers trafficked into massage parlors, teenage runaways and
victims of forced labor in the state’s seafood and agriculture
industries.

Its latest grant, $950,000 to provide emergency services to
trafficking victims across the state, expires on 30 September.
“We’re still answering the phone,” Virusso said. “We’re
trying to do our best, but we also believe in transparency. So we’re
letting people know services may look different.”

The organization’s work has won praise
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Maine Republican senator Susan Collins, the powerful chair of the
Senate appropriations committee, who has in the past criticized the
Trump administration for failing to spend funds as directed by
Congress.

Collins declined comment for this story.

In its response to a query from the Guardian, the justice department
said money appropriated by Congress would be spent, but that
organizations that received money in the past wouldn’t necessarily
do so in the future – as appropriations would be made in accordance
with Trump administration priorities.

“The Department of Justice can remain focused on two critical
priorities at the same time: prosecute criminals who exploit children
and ensure the efficient use of taxpayer dollars,” a spokesperson
said. The department said grants for organizations that fight human
trafficking, which typically would have their applications posted in
the spring, would be rolled out over the next few weeks.

Another group facing imminent loss of funding is the Los Angeles-based
Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (Cast), which was founded
in 1998 after 72 Thai workers were discovered living in modern-day
slavery and debt bondage. Cast’s $950,000 justice department grant
– supporting a 24/7 hotline, housing and other emergency help – is
about to run out.

“Sometimes, when the call comes in, the survivor needs help
escaping. They’ve somehow gotten away from their trafficker and are
in a traditional hotel or in front of a 7-Eleven and we either send a
ride-share or one of our staff members to go pick them up and take
them to a shelter,” said Kay Buck, Cast’s chief executive.

In addition to money, the justice department has also provided
training for organizations that work to prevent trafficking and
support survivors. An online library of training materials and other
resources – including a human trafficking action research toolkit
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a human trafficking task force e-guide
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has disappeared from the justice department website.

A post [[link removed]] on the website said the materials
had been removed “in accordance with recent Executive Orders and
related guidance”.

‘POLITICAL CALCULATION’

Global workers rights programs aimed at fighting child labor and human
trafficking have also been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
In March, the Department of Labor slashed about $500m in funding for
69 programs
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tackled everything from forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry
to abuses on Mexico’s farms. Some organizations learned about cuts
to the department’s international labor affairs bureau through
social media posts from Elon Musk’s “department of government
efficiency” (Doge).

Three grantees have filed a lawsuit demanding that the department
reinstate the funds. The case is pending.

Courtney Parella, a spokesperson for the labor department, told the
Guardian that “Americans don’t want their hard-earned tax dollars
bankrolling an ‘America last’ agenda. That’s why we’re
improving accountability, prioritizing investments in the American
workforce, and bolstering protections for children and workers here at
home.”

The Trump administration points to its work protecting minors who have
migrated without their parents as central to its fight against human
trafficking
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But it has simultaneously sought to cut Department of Health and Human
Services funding for legal services that help protect unaccompanied
migrant children.

Under federal law, HHS is required to protect and care for children
who enter the US on their own. The anti-trafficking law specifically
makes HHS responsible for screening the sponsors who will serve as
their guardians and providing access to lawyers who can “protect
them from mistreatment, exploitation and trafficking”.

The Trump administration has been critical of HHS’s sponsor
screening, which led to the unprecedented deployment of immigration
agents, beginning in February, to conduct “welfare checks” at the
homes and schools of unaccompanied minors – sometimes in tactical
gear.DHS’s McLaughlin said its investigators conduct these checks to
ensure these children “are safe and not being exploited”.

Weeks after the administration began sending immigration agents to do
welfare checks, it terminated legal services funding
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putting more than 25,000 minors in limbo. Children as young as five
were showing up in immigration court without lawyers. After a federal
judge issued a preliminary injunction, the contract was restored. But
it must be requested every three months with no guarantee it will be
renewed.

Anti-trafficking advocates question the dissonance in Trump’s
approach to unaccompanied children. “If it was about trafficking and
kids, they would have used someone other than law enforcement, someone
who works with kids, to make sure they are okay,” said Aparna
Patrie, a lawyer with the immigrant rights group Roots Reborn. “And
they would not be sending kids to court by themselves by cutting off
funding for legal representation.”

HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Martina Vandenberg, founder of the Human Trafficking Legal Center,
also questions the president’s commitment to the cause.

“For Trump, trafficking is a bludgeon that’s deployed to
accomplish political ends,” said Vandenberg, who has represented
trafficking victims and trained more than 5,000 pro-bono attorneys.
“It’s not about survivors. It’s not about justice. There is no
conscience or policy behind this – there is only political
calculation.”

_Aaron Glantz is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences._

_Bernice Yeung is managing editor at the Investigative Reporting
Program at UC Berkeley Journalism._

_Noy Thrupkaew is a reporter and director of partnerships at Type
Investigations._

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