Trinidad and To­ba­go has been down­grad­ed in the Unit­ed States’ Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons 2021 Re­port.

The re­port said the down­grade to Tier 2-Watch List was linked to cor­rup­tion and law en­force­ment com­plic­i­ty in traf­fick­ing crimes, which re­mained a sig­nif­i­cant con­cern and not enough be­ing done by the Gov­ern­ment to com­bat the prob­lem.

Pri­or to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the re­port said T&T was a “sex tourism des­ti­na­tion.”

Even af­ter bor­ders were closed in March 2020, an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion re­port­ed to the Unit­ed States that “large num­bers” of Venezue­lans were still com­ing in il­le­gal­ly, mak­ing them pri­ma­ry tar­gets for sex traf­fick­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly young women and girls be­tween the ages of 15 and 21.

“Sex traf­fick­ing vic­tims are women and girls pri­mar­i­ly from Venezuela, Colom­bia, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Guyana; traf­fick­ers of­fer em­ploy­ment in broth­els and clubs, in­clud­ing via so­cial me­dia—which in­creased as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic—along with ad­ver­tise­ments in Venezue­lan news­pa­pers and re­cruit­ment by oth­er vic­tims. Traf­fick­ers al­so ex­ploit in­di­vid­u­als from Puer­to Ri­co, the Philip­pines, Chi­na, In­dia, Nepal, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines,” ac­cord­ing to the re­port.

There are oth­er groups be­ing tar­get­ed for sex traf­fick­ing, such as LGBTQI peo­ple, while Caribbean mi­grants and Asians lack­ing le­gal sta­tus are said to be vic­tims of forced labour in do­mes­tic ser­vices and the re­tail sec­tor.

The re­port point­ed to cor­rupt forces in po­lice and im­mi­gra­tion fa­cil­i­tat­ing these crimes.

The re­port ex­plained, “Ob­servers re­port that law en­force­ment and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials are im­pli­cat­ed in hu­man traf­fick­ing, in­clud­ing Coast Guard of­fi­cials who fa­cil­i­tate the tran­sit of women and girls from Venezuela to the coun­try; Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms of­fi­cers who en­sure that women and girls ar­rive and re­ceive en­try; and mem­bers of the po­lice who ac­cept bribes to fa­cil­i­tate trans­port to hous­es across the coun­try and work with broth­el own­ers to pro­tect their es­tab­lish­ments from po­lice raids, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the south­ern po­lice dis­tricts where most Venezue­lan refugees and dis­placed per­sons at­tempt to en­ter the coun­try. Transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime with a link to mega­ban­das— large crim­i­nal gangs with more than 50 mem­bers who are part of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime net­works in Latin Amer­i­ca—may in­creas­ing­ly be in­volved in hu­man traf­fick­ing.”

In Jan­u­ary, of­fi­cials pub­licly stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment was in­ves­ti­gat­ing two dozen po­lice of­fi­cers linked to hu­man traf­fick­ing. The re­port al­so quot­ed Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials as iden­ti­fy­ing a num­ber of se­nior of­fi­cials for their po­ten­tial in­volve­ment in the crime, but in­di­cat­ed that these cas­es were not yet be­ing crim­i­nal­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

The re­port al­so high­light­ed com­plaints by non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) about the slow pace of in­ves­ti­ga­tions when they re­fer vic­tims to the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit.

It ac­knowl­edged that some work was be­ing done but said Gov­ern­ment did not demon­strate over­all in­creas­ing ef­forts com­pared to the pre­vi­ous re­port­ing pe­ri­od, even con­sid­er­ing the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on its an­ti-traf­fick­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

These ef­forts, the re­port added, in­clud­ed, “bring­ing ad­di­tion­al traf­fick­ing charges against three po­lice of­fi­cers pros­e­cut­ed in the pre­vi­ous re­port­ing pe­ri­od; pro­duc­ing a guide for front­line of­fi­cers on iden­ti­fy­ing vic­tims of traf­fick­ing; tak­ing steps to ex­pe­dite and stream­line cas­es and ex­pand the use of vir­tu­al hear­ings and tes­ti­mo­ny; pro­vid­ing de­por­ta­tion re­lief to vic­tims af­fect­ed; draft­ing leg­is­la­tion that in­clud­ed in­creased penal­ties for of­fi­cial com­plic­i­ty in traf­fick­ing crimes; and draft­ing an an­ti-traf­fick­ing na­tion­al ac­tion plan (NAP) for 2021-2023 in con­sul­ta­tion with out­side stake­hold­ers.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who was in Sen­ate at the time, for com­ment and was told re­spons­es to the ques­tions would be pro­vid­ed as soon as pos­si­ble. How­ev­er, up to press time, no re­spons­es were giv­en.

The last time T&T was down­grad­ed to a Tier 2 Watch List is in 2015. How­ev­er, the coun­try was up­grad­ed to Tier 2 in 2017 and main­tained the rat­ing un­til now.

The 2021 re­port, which was re­leased last Thurs­day, cov­ers the pe­ri­od of April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021 and as­sess­es up to 188 coun­tries.