Human trafficking is among the world’s fastest growing criminal enterprises and is an estimated $150 billion-a-year global industry. It is a form of modern day slavery that profits from the exploitation of our most vulnerable populations. It involves controlling a person or group through force, fraud, or coercion to exploit the victims for forced labor, sexual exploitation, or both.

The victims of human trafficking are often young girls and women, although young boys and men are victims.

Young girls and women are 55% of the forced labor victims and 98% of sex trafficking victims.

California – a populous border state with a significant immigrant population and the world’s ninth largest economy – is one of the nation’s top four destination states for trafficking human beings.

San Joaquin County is centrally located along the corridor that traffickers transport victims across California. Los Angeles is one of the main points of entry into the United States for victims of sex trafficking and San Francisco is among the cities that are experiencing an increase in the number of sex trafficking cases (retrieved from HumanTrafficking.org, 2006). San Joaquin County is located 80 miles east of San Francisco, 50 miles south of Sacramento and 221 miles from Los Angeles. It has an active inland port, a county regional airport and several major freeways (San Joaquin County, 2016).

In response to the growing problem of human trafficking in San Joaquin County, a coalition of organizations and individuals was started in 2014. This coalition was comprised of roughly 50 individuals representing government and non- government organizations, as well as other community entities, all collaborating in the fight against human trafficking.