The U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and its subsequent reauthorizations recognize and define two primary forms of human trafficking:

Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11)(A))

Forced labor is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery. (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11)(B)) 1

Trafficking is not the same as smuggling. Human trafficking does not require movement over borders, though human trafficking and human smuggling might occur together. 2

In fact, the crime of human trafficking does not require any movement whatsoever. Survivors can be recruited and trafficked in their own communities, even in their own homes. 3

Exploitation of a minor for commercial sex is human trafficking, regardless of whether any form of force, fraud or coercion was used. 4