While many of us are familiar with sex trafficking, far fewer of us understand labor

trafficking–what it is, how frequently it occurs, how to identify it, and what we can all do to end it.

Labor trafficking is the harboring or recruiting of people for labor or services under force, fraud,

or coercion for the purpose of involuntary servitude, debt bondage or peonage. Through our

investigations in partnership with law enforcement, Naomi Project has uncovered two distinct

variants of labor trafficking within the Sioux Falls restaurant industry.

In the debt bondage variant of labor trafficking, workers are indebted to the

smuggler who brought them into the U.S. and are forced to pay off their debt at exorbitant

interest and under brutal threats. For example, workers might be paying their smuggler

hundreds of dollars a week solely in interest under the threat that if they do not make these

weekly payments, their family members in their home country will be killed. In the employer-as-

trafficker variant of labor trafficking, workers are housed, transported, exploited,

and threatened directly by their employer. Through Naomi Project’s outreach to restaurant

workers at an establishment in Sioux Falls, we uncovered that workers were not getting their pay in full.

We lead outreach missions that identified that these workers did not receive worker’s compensation

and would have to work while sick. These workers were housed by the company and were

transported to the establishment by company lead vehicles. These workers had no seeable way out of this

inhumane life until the Naomi Project provided guidance for justice.

This inhumane abuse must stop. To this end, Naomi Project has begun a campaign called

“Hungry for Justice” to equip restaurant establishments to be part of the solution to end labor

trafficking. In this partnership, restaurant establishments invite the Naomi Project team to train

their staff to identify the indicators of the different variants of labor trafficking to then reach out to

Naomi Project if they become aware of these indicators. Naomi Project will then follow up on

these leads, reach out to law enforcement with relevant information and offer support services

to those identified as survivors of human trafficking. In recognition of this partnership, Naomi

Project will present participating restaurant establishments with a certificate celebrating their

commitment to being part of the solution to ending trafficking within the restaurant industry.

Labor trafficking thrives when communities fail to recognize its existence. It is a horrific crime

that depends on untrained eyes and ears in order to masquerade as legitimate business. By

training more and more people to identify and report labor trafficking, we as a community will

more readily identify people experiencing labor trafficking, which is crucial to then move forward

effective investigations that hold accountable those responsible.

We all want to see justice be done. Any one of us can be the person who stops by the side of

the road and attends to the person who was victimized. In order to be that person, we need to

be equipped to recognize the many forms of victimization. Join us to end labor trafficking today.

Want to learn more about becoming part of the solution? Please reach out to our Hungry for

Justice campaign lead Jordan Bruxvoort: director@projectofnaomi.org.