In its latest push against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Trump administration has ordered all law enforcement agencies, the State Department, and a handful of nonprofits working against sex trafficking to remove references to victims’ race, LGBTQ+ identities, and immigration status, a change experts warn would endanger vulnerable minors. When interviewed by The Guardian, representatives for those organizations stated they will obey the order to avoid losing federal funding.
Donald Trump signed executive orders to heavily reduce DEI on January 20th, his first day in office. One order, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” mandates the removal of DEI-related policies, programs, and activities. Another, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” demands the removal of “radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms.”
The Office for Victims of Crime, part of the Department of Justice, recently removed the contents of a webpage titled “Faces of Human Trafficking,” which detailed stories of trafficking survivors, many of whom are POC and/or LGBTQ+. The page also contained resources on the legal rights and needs of victims and info for trauma-related services. The page’s content was replaced with an error message stating, “This content is currently unavailable” in early February, according to captures on archive.org.
In response to the news, Jose Alfaro, a gay Latino survivor of child sex trafficking and anti-trafficking consultant, said, “A lot of people rely on the government for this type of information, accurate information, and it’s no longer going to be there. People are only going to care about one specific population of people, which is going to be white, blond hair, blue-eyed, straight cisgendered females. It’s going to further stigmatize and also push everything underground. This is going to benefit traffickers. When you are further marginalizing and oppressing vulnerable groups, the response is going to be more homophobia, more transphobia, more racism, which then is going to create more vulnerabilities for those populations.”
LGBTQ+ people face a heightened risk of trafficking due to systemic barriers in employment, housing, and social services. These challenges make them an ideal target for traffickers due to many facing financial instability and a lack of familial support. Racism is also a major factor in risk of trafficking due to issues such as poverty, harmful stereotypes, and being in foster care – a system where Black youth are overrepresented – creating conditions for traffickers to exploit.
Previously collected data shows a large race disparity in terms of trafficking victims. For instance, 84% of child sex trafficking victims are Black in King County, Washington, despite Black residents only making up just 7% of the population. Latino communities are also very at risk of exploitation, according to research done by the anti-trafficking nonprofit Polaris. The Trump administration’s directive now prohibits nonprofits such as Polaris from collecting data of that nature.
