Putting a dol­lar val­ue on the hu­man traf­fick­ing in­dus­try in T&T is dif­fi­cult be­cause a lot of the trade hap­pens be­hind closed doors.

But don’t be fooled by that, as an in­dus­try it is un­for­tu­nate­ly, a bur­geon­ing one here, di­rec­tor of this coun­try’s Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) Alana Wheel­er has said.

Last year the CTU iden­ti­fied and con­firmed at least 60 vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing in T&T, Wheel­er told the Busi­ness Guardian. This is the high­est num­ber the CTU has ever record­ed since its es­tab­lish­ment in 2013.

Last year’s fig­ure was a more than 600 per cent in­crease from 2020 when on­ly nine vic­tims were con­firmed.

The high­est fig­ure be­fore last year was in 2019 when 41 vic­tims were con­firmed.

Wheel­er said this in­crease co­in­cid­ed with the on­go­ing mi­grant cri­sis in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela.

“From around 2018 we start­ed to see an in­crease in the re­fer­ral and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of un­ac­com­pa­nied and sep­a­rat­ed mi­grant chil­dren,” Wheel­er stat­ed.

While it may be chal­leng­ing to quan­ti­fy the in­dus­try, Wheel­er high­light­ed the in­come traf­fick­ers could make.

“What I would say is that on av­er­age a traf­fick­er can make about $18,000 per day if he or she is traf­fick­ing ten per­sons,” she said.

“Pros­ti­tu­tion tends to be the eas­i­er one to mea­sure be­cause that’s the one that is a lit­tle bit more vis­i­ble than the oth­er types of traf­fick­ing like do­mes­tic servi­tude,” she said.

“Let’s say a per­son has one vic­tim that they are traf­fick­ing and sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit­ing. That one vic­tim may have about six clients a night. On av­er­age you may get ser­vice for $300 to $500 per client. So let’s say that one per­son can bring about $1500 to $2000 per night. Just one per­son,” Wheel­er said.

Wheel­er said since the traf­fick­er has no oblig­a­tion to pay their vic­tim they pock­et the mon­ey with min­i­mal ex­pen­di­ture which may in­clude con­doms and food.

Wheel­er said ini­tial­ly sex traf­fick­ing took place in broth­els scat­tered in the South­ern, South West­ern, Cen­tral and North­ern parts of Trinidad.

“That has changed a lot and you will find that a lot of the traf­fick­ing does not take place in the tra­di­tion­al broth­els now, they take place in pri­vate res­i­dences, in rent­ed up­scale neigh­bour­hoods, res­i­den­tial ar­eas, up­scale apart­ments and apart­ment build­ings, town­hous­es and pri­vate res­i­dences, large prop­er­ties that are rent­ed where these things take place and of course the ho­tels,” she said.

“You will find that where­as the ad­ver­tise­ments used to be done in one way you will find that the ad­ver­tise­ments are now done via so­cial me­dia mes­sag­ing like What­sApp, In­sta­gram, Snapchat, Face­book so a lot of the ad­ver­tis­ing is done that way and you book your ap­point­ment or you choose your girl from a slate of pic­tures,” Wheel­er said.

And be­cause these ac­tiv­i­ties are tak­ing place in pri­vate res­i­dences it has be­come more dif­fi­cult to de­tect, Wheel­er ex­plained.

“To raid a pri­vate res­i­dence of course you re­al­ly have to have some sol­id in­tel­li­gence and some sol­id in­for­ma­tion to be able to do that,” she said.

Apart from the flesh trade Wheel­er said some were al­so found be­ing ex­ploit­ed for labour.

“We found them at road­side ven­dors such as burg­er carts and dou­bles ven­dors. We have iden­ti­fied vic­tims be­ing ex­ploit­ed for labour in those busi­ness­es, in pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms, in li­censed bars and restau­rants, in the mod­el­ling in­dus­try in pri­vate guest­hous­es and ho­tels, homes, spas, mas­sage par­lours and even the gam­ing in­dus­try,” she said.

Wheel­er al­so told of a sit­u­a­tion of do­mes­tic servi­tude that was un­earthed in T&T.

“One of the cas­es we had was a do­mes­tic work­er, a Latin Amer­i­can fe­male who was in her mid-’40s and she was in a home as a do­mes­tic work­er and she was be­ing ex­ploit­ed by the fam­i­ly and it was a pret­ty wealthy, well-off fam­i­ly in a wealthy neigh­bour­hood in T&T where she was be­ing ex­ploit­ed as a do­mes­tic work­er and that arrange­ment was made through her pump­kin vine rel­a­tive who would have arranged for her to come to T&T for that pur­pose,” Wheel­er said.

“These are things hap­pen­ing in T&T I am not talk­ing about any­thing for­eign or alien to our coun­try,” she said.

The woman was res­cued af­ter her daugh­ter sought in­ter­ven­tion from her coun­try’s em­bassy here.

While the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic has caused sev­er­al busi­ness­es to suf­fer, Wheel­er said the flesh trade con­tin­ued.

“Those ser­vices that are still in de­mand which are the vices peo­ple have and stuff those ser­vices are still in de­mand and even in more de­mand be­cause per­sons are un­der stress­ful con­straints and so they need to find av­enues to re­lieve that stress,” she said.

With the coun­try’s bor­ders closed last year to help stop the spread of COVID-19 here, Wheel­er said the CTU found that there was more smug­gling of per­sons com­ing in.

In the face of the dif­fi­cul­ties in­clud­ing chal­lenges with fi­nan­cial re­sources, Wheel­er said the CTU has been able to do a lot with lit­tle.

Last June the unit was con­grat­u­lat­ed by In­ter­pol for its work in res­cu­ing nine Venezue­lan women.

Wheel­er, a For­eign Ful­bright schol­ar, has been with the CTU since March 2013.

She has worked in the field of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for 25 years.

“I love my work and I am very pas­sion­ate about it and I want to make a dif­fer­ence,” Wheel­er said.

“Every de­ci­sion you make here has a di­rect im­pact on oth­er peo­ple’s lives whether you choose to go out on an op­er­a­tion and res­cue peo­ple you change their lives, if you choose not to re­spond to that in­for­ma­tion then some­body is left out there,” she said.

Wheel­er said one of the chal­lenges is the slow ju­di­cial sys­tem in vic­tims get­ting jus­tice on time.