New York City Cited as Human Trafficking Hub

New York city has one of the highest human trafficking rates in the nation, government officials said, noting that Long Island was recently found to be home to the second-largest human trafficking ring ever prosecuted in America.

“Slavery has returned to American soil,” the director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ trafficking in persons program, Steve Wagner, said. The federal government estimates that between 14,500 and 17,000 people are trafficked into America each year, a third of whom are children.