Human Trafficking is the recruitment, transport, sale, or receipt of persons within or across national borders through force, fraud, or coercion to place the persons in slavery or slavery-like work conditions. 

Traffickers use violence, threats, blackmail, false promises, deception, manipulation, and debt bondage to trap vulnerable individuals in horrific situations. According to the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), severe forms of human trafficking are legally defined as: 

Sex Trafficking: The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age (22 USC § 7102).

Labor Trafficking: The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purposes of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery, (22 USC § 7102).