A recent study focused largely on the New Orleans metro area found human trafficking in Louisiana has virtually doubled in the first half of 2013 compared to the entire year of 2012.
In the report, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center received approximately 227 phone calls from Louisiana with 50 of those calls likely being human trafficking cases. Of those 50 phone calls, 68 percent involved sex trafficking, including pimp-controlled scenarios, internet-based commercial sex and escort services, according to the report.
This research, however, is only from the first six months of 2013, not the entire calendar year, a vast difference from data collected from the entire calendar year of 2012.
In 2012, the NHTRC received 223 phone calls with 40 likely being related to human trafficking. Lions Against Trafficking President Laura Langberg said she is not surprised by the growing number of reported incidents.
"Human trafficking is a growing industry," said Langberg. "It has been expected to grow for the past several years and is expected to exceed drug trafficking and become the number one world organized crime. The reason for this is that as a drug dealer you can only sell a kilo of cocaine, for example, only once; but as a pimp you can sell one person over and over again."
The 40-page report conducted by the Modern Slavery Research Project at Loyola University and the New Orleans Human Trafficking Working Group found that New Orleans is a "significant source, transit and destination location for human trafficking."
It goes on further to say that the reason for human trafficking's prominence in the city relates to New Orleans' "central location as a transportation hub, the constant influx of work-seeking migrant laborers and transplants to the area in the years since Hurricane Katrina and the preponderance of sexual entertainment services."
For example, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a pool of thousands of guest workers came to the New Orleans area to find work rebuilding the area. As the report notes, a study conducted by the Human Rights Center of the University of California at Berkeley, 54 percent of those workers were undocumented and therefore illegal. As the report cites, this allows for more human trafficking abuses to occur.
Langberg said illegal immigrants are more susceptible to human trafficking, especially in areas like New Orleans, because they are already in a vulnerable position.
"Once these illegal immigrants are where the traffickers want them, they believe they must stay there," said Langberg. "They don't want to get help from the police, because they'll be deported, so they stay with the trafficker. Their position is made even more difficult because, in most cases, they don't speak English."
The report also notes Million Express Manpower, Inc., which recruited workers from Thailand after Hurricane Katrina, promised workers jobs in North Carolina, but ultimately sent them to New Orleans.
Once in New Orleans, the report said that the Thai workers "were forced to do construction work and held hostage by armed guards in squalid, un-rehabilitated buildings. Their passports and visas were confiscated. They were given no money for food, so they were forced to eat birds they caught outside their building."
One of every four male clients and a third of female clients at the emergency shelter center for young adults, known as Covenant House of New Orleans, have at some time traded sex for money or a place to stay.
The report also cites that human trafficking often increases by particular local demographics. Since Louisiana consistently ranks among the highest rates of poverty, with almost 20 percent of the state's population living in poverty, as of 2012, it is no wonder human trafficking has become somewhat of an epidemic.
Langberg, though, said New Orleans is not the only major Louisiana city to have a human trafficking problem. She said Baton Rouge, home to Louisiana State University, has become a hub for traffickers.
"More prominent, and to me surprising, is Baton Rouge," said Langberg. "Baton Rouge ranks among the top 10 cities in the US where trafficking occurs. This is because of the major highways that pass through."
Langberg said Louisiana is leading the fight against human trafficking with strict laws and awareness programs more so than any other state where human trafficking is widespread.