Great article by Bob Herbert on modern day slavery. I do a lot of work for the Polaris Project, which is a great NGO working on this issue. It is run by two Brown graduates who are very dedicated to this issue. To clear up the most common (and annoying) mistake about Trafficking:

In the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000, sex trafficking is defined as: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act. Also defined in the TVPA, the legal definition of severe forms of trafficking in persons is:

• sex trafficking in which a 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; or
• 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.

It is important to note that nowhere in the TVPA requires that victims be from other countries or cross borders. Hence, trafficked persons can be from other countries as well as from the same country where they are trafficked. Domestic sex trafficking (or internal trafficking) definitively involves the actions, means, and purposes that meet both the definition for sex trafficking and severe forms of trafficking in persons, including elements of recruiting, transporting, and obtaining; elements of force, fraud, and coercion, as elaborated below; and the inducement of commercial sex acts.

If you don’t know about Human Trafficking or how big a problem it is, I implore you to read Herbert’s column (if you have TimesSelect) and to go through the Polaris Project website.