Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 to combat trafficking in persons. As the centerpiece for U.S. antitrafficking efforts, the TVPA advanced a three-pronged victim-centered approach— prevention of trafficking, protection and assistance for victims of trafficking, and prosecution and punishment of traffickers. Among its provisions, the TVPA addressed identified gaps in existing law and enhanced the tools available to pursue these crimes. Specifically, the act criminalized the obtaining or maintaining of persons for commercial sexual activity, using force, fraud, or coercion for those 18 or over (but not for those under 18), and to use certain kinds of force or coercion to provide or obtain persons for any labor or services (e.g., work in farms, factories, and households). It also included nonviolent coercion and threats of harm to third persons in federal involuntary servitude laws; made attempted trafficking crimes punishable; criminalized the holding of actual or purported identity documents in the course of committing, or with the intent to commit, any trafficking crime; and increased the maximum penalty for slavery and involuntary servitude offenses from 10 to 20 years or to a life sentence if the offense involved factors like death, kidnapping, or aggravated sexual abuse. In addition, the TVPA required restitution for victims of trafficking and forfeiture of traffickers’ assets and provided legal status and special benefits to aliens certified as trafficking victims in the United States who are willing to assist law enforcement efforts against traffickers. (App. II identifies specific statutory provisions relevant to investigating and prosecuting trafficking in persons crimes.) Responsibilities for pursuing trafficking crimes fall to multiple federal agencies, including the FBI and ICE, which investigate these crimes; CRT/CS, CEOS, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, which prosecute traffickers; and other agencies within DHS and DOJ and components of DOL and DOS that support U.S. efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking in persons. Figure 1 depicts these key agencies and their respective responsibilities related to the investigation and prosecution of trafficking in persons crimes. In addition, to coordinate the implementation of the TVPA, the act directed the President to establish an Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and authorized the Secretary of State to create the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons to provide assistance to the task force. In February 2002, the President issued an executive order creating this cabinet-level task force and then in December issued National Security Presidential Directive 22, which identified trafficking in persons as an important national security issue and directed federal agencies to strengthen their collective efforts, capabilities, and coordination to support the goal of abolishing human trafficking. Subsequently, the 2003 TVPA reauthorization statutorily established the Senior Policy Operating Group (SPOG) to address interagency policy, program, and planning issues regarding the TVPA’s implementation. In addition, HSTC, which is staffed by detailees from DHS, DOJ, DOS, and the intelligence community, among other places, collects and disseminates intelligence information to build a comprehensive picture of human trafficking. Pursuing trafficking investigations and prosecutions also needs the support of state and local law enforcement, who may be in the best position to find trafficking victims because of their familiarity with their respective jurisdictions, and nongovernmental organizations, from whom victims may more readily seek assistance. To leverage these resources to support federal efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking in persons, DOJ designed, developed, and instituted a task force approach that it presented during the first National Training Conference on Human Trafficking: Rescuing Women and Children from Slavery, held in Tampa, Florida, in July 2004. DOJ invited 21 teams of 20 federal, state, and local law enforcement and nongovernmental service providers from communities that it believed to have potential trafficking problems to attend the conference. After the conference, the teams were expected to work together on human trafficking in their respective communities. To implement the approach, BJA, the DOJ component responsible for supporting local, state, and tribal efforts to achieve safer communities, developed and implemented a human trafficking law enforcement task force competitive grant program. These grants were to be awarded to state or local police agencies that work with the local U.S. Attorney’s Office, federal law enforcement entities, and nongovernmental organizations that may come into contact with victims of trafficking. In addition, in spring 2003, the FBI’s Crimes Against Children Unit, DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children launched the Innocence Lost National Initiative in 14 U.S. cities where the FBI field offices had identified a high incidence of trafficking of U.S. children for commercial sex. As trafficking in persons is a transnational crime, federal agencies may need to obtain information and assistance directly from individual foreign governments and through international law enforcement organizations in order to investigate and prosecute trafficking in persons cases in the United States. Multilateral and extradition treaties provide the authority for U.S. investigative and prosecutorial agencies to request information and assistance on criminal cases, including trafficking in persons, from approximately 175 individual foreign governments. Working through ICE and FBI personnel stationed at U.S. embassies, U.S. investigative and prosecutorial agencies have obtained a broad spectrum of assistance from individual foreign governments and with such assistance have successfully prosecuted traffickers. This assistance has included obtaining documentary evidence and corroborating witness testimony, protecting U.S. trafficking victims’ family members in a foreign country, apprehending fugitive traffickers, and extraditing defendants. In addition, U.S. agencies may obtain information through the International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol, which serves as a conduit for a cooperative exchange of information on criminal activities from its 186 member countries. Subsequent to the enactment of the TVPA, federal agencies reported 139 prosecutions and hundreds of investigations of trafficking for commercial sex or labor as of June 2007. To support federal efforts to identify victims and investigate and prosecute these crimes, agencies (1) provided training to agency personnel to raise awareness and increase the skills needed to identify victims and pursue trafficking investigations and prosecutions, (2) carried out outreach and training to raise public awareness of and skills in identifying trafficking victims, and (3) engaged state and local knowledge and resources by funding state and local trafficking in persons task forces and developing and disseminating a model state law. In addition, to address their responsibilities related to trafficking in persons crimes, some agencies have established special units, agency-level goals, or plans or strategies. Federal investigative and prosecutorial agencies have generally drawn from existing resources to carry out these efforts (app. III provides information on resources). With the enhanced tools available to federal investigators and prosecutors as a result of the enactment of the TVPA, federal agencies reported a general increase in the number of prosecutions and investigations of trafficking in persons crimes. These data are an indicator of the level of agency effort in pursuit of these crimes, since fiscal year 2001, although they are limited by a number of factors. Trafficking crimes and their victims are hidden and not readily identifiable. Traffickers may be charged or convicted of other than trafficking crimes (e.g., kidnapping, immigration violations, or money laundering) for strategic or technical reasons. Also, limitations of agency data systems, which are primarily case management systems, may not allow for the extraction of trafficking data per se. In addition, availability of individual agencies’ data may be limited by factors pertinent to that agency; for example, ICE was only established in 2003. Moreover, agency data are not comparable across agencies nor can data on investigations be linked to data on prosecutions. As a result of these limitations, however, the actual number of investigations and prosecutions that have led to the incapacitation of traffickers may be greater than the numbers that have been reported by federal agencies. CRT/CS reported 139 prosecutions from fiscal year 2001 to June 14, 2007, as compared with 19 cases for fiscal years 1995 to 2000. These cases included 39 defined by CRT/CS as labor trafficking and 100 as trafficking for commercial sexual activity. According to CRT/CS officials, the number of prosecutions varies in any given year, because of differences in the complexity of the cases. (See app. IV for illustrations of the complexity of cases.). FBI and ICE provided data on numbers of trafficking cases opened. The FBI’s Civil Rights Unit reported opening a total of 751 trafficking in persons cases between fiscal year 2001 and April 5, 2007. However, these data do not include investigations involving trafficking that are classified as other types of crime, for example, alien smuggling cases that also involve trafficking in persons. ICE reported opening a total of 899 trafficking in persons cases, for fiscal year 2005 through May 31, 2007. Both FBI and ICE data may include cases involving investigations handled jointly by the two agencies. In addition, as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative, the FBI’s Crimes Against Children Unit reported 327 cases opened on trafficking of U.S. children for commercial sex between fiscal year 2004 and June 5, 2007. Appendix III presents additional data related to trafficking in persons investigations and prosecutions; including arrests; indictments; convictions; and restitution to the victims, as required under the TVPA, where appropriate. National Security Presidential Directive 22 directed federal departments and agencies to ensure that all appropriate offices within their jurisdiction were fully trained to carry out their specific responsibilities to combat trafficking, including interagency cooperation and coordination on the investigation and prosecution of trafficking.