Thread by @MatthewSoerens

An important story on shifting resources away from smuggling investigations npr.org/2019/02/21/696…

But, in the intro, @NPR makes the same unhelpful conflation President Trump has made, implying "smuggling" & "trafficking" are synonymous. From a legal perspective, they're not…

Both can be criminal offenses but the crimes themselves are distinct and not necessarily even related. Let me explain...

Smuggling is assisting someone to unlawfully enter the country. Smugglers, often known as coyotes, are hired by would-be immigrants to help them reach the US, to attempt to surreptitiously enter the country and/or to request asylum (which requires them to make it over the border)

Trafficking, under U.S. law, is defined by any situation where a person is made to work (whether in a labor role or in the commercial sex industry) by force, fraud or coercion. It's not about transportation or movement across a border

While immigrants (especially the undocumented) are disproportionately likely to be victims of both sex trafficking & labor trafficking (buff.ly/2GY0BiL), there are also native-born US citizen victims (among sex trafficking victims, the majority are US citizens)

Smuggling is illegal and human trafficking is illegal, but they're not the same thing. Some smugglers extort those who have hired them to be smuggled and ultimately are also traffickers, but others do not.

Plenty of human trafficking has nothing to do with foreign-born individuals or crossing borders

If we conflate the terms, we're likely to be unaware of effect of trafficking on native-born US citizen victims, who are disproportionately likely to be African American women & girls