It can­not be count­ed as progress in any form or fash­ion that even be­fore this coun­try se­cured its first hu­man traf­fick­ing con­vic­tion—and this sin­gle con­vic­tion came more than 12 years af­ter the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (TIP) Act was passed—the felon has dis­ap­peared.

This black mark against the coun­try, a ma­jor em­bar­rass­ment, was made worse by a fu­tile at­tempt at dam­age con­trol by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, who con­vened an ill-ad­vised me­dia con­fer­ence last week to an­nounce the con­vic­tion of the es­capee.

Min­is­ter Hinds, even with his propen­si­ty for high-sound­ing rhetoric, could find no words in his ex­ten­sive vo­cab­u­lary to put a pos­i­tive spin on the in­ci­dent.

The in­escapable facts are that An­tho­ny Michael Smith man­aged to free him­self from an elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing de­vice and is now on the run from the law.

As it stands, the fail­ure to re­cap­ture this fugi­tive makes it un­like­ly this coun­try will ad­vance from Tier 2 on the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State’s watch­list for hu­man traf­fick­ing, where it has been stuck for far too long.

No com­fort can be de­rived from Min­is­ter Hinds’ un­found­ed op­ti­mism that T&T is mak­ing progress against the scourge of hu­man traf­fick­ing.

The tes­ti­mo­ny of Smith’s 16-year-old vic­tim, who was forced in­to pros­ti­tu­tion and suf­fered beat­ings, em­bar­rass­ment and sex­u­al at­tacks from var­i­ous men, in­clud­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, is the lat­est sting­ing in­dict­ment against the var­i­ous arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in this coun­try.

So while the case against Smith has re­sult­ed in a con­vic­tion, his es­cape from jus­tice is a shat­ter­ing de­feat that has de­nied the vic­tim, as well as the count­less women and girls who have been mer­ci­less­ly abused and ex­ploit­ed by hu­man traf­fick­ers, the jus­tice they de­serve.

Lest any­one think that much ado is be­ing made about this one in­ci­dent, con­sid­er the lack of progress in oth­er hu­man traf­fick­ing cas­es still stuck in the coun­try’s dys­func­tion­al crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

There has been on­ly min­i­mal progress with in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to 12 cas­es from 2020, in­clud­ing nine for sex traf­fick­ing, in ad­di­tion to the 36 cas­es still pend­ing from 2019, 39 from 2018, and 38 from 2017.

The lat­est Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons (TIP) Re­port from the US De­part­ment of State calls out the T&T Gov­ern­ment for con­duct­ing few­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions and iden­ti­fy­ing few­er vic­tims.

Fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ing this hu­man traf­fick­ing cri­sis is the num­ber of of­fi­cers through­out the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem fa­cil­i­tat­ing this wan­ton ex­ploita­tion of lo­cal and mi­grant women and girls.

There is strong ev­i­dence of the ex­tent to which Coast Guard of­fi­cials fa­cil­i­tate the en­try of traf­fick­ing vic­tims in­to the coun­try, and im­mi­gra­tion and cus­toms of­fi­cers en­sure they are de­liv­ered in­to the hands of broth­el, casi­no and busi­ness own­ers, while po­lice of­fi­cers pro­tect these es­tab­lish­ments from raids.

The waves of refugees from Venezuela pro­vide a steady stream of vic­tims. Then, the vo­ra­cious ap­petite of many in this coun­try for sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit­ing and abus­ing women and girls con­tin­ues to fu­el this il­lic­it trade to an alarm­ing de­gree, while hordes of of­fi­cials ei­ther en­able it or look the oth­er way.

Hu­man traf­fick­ing is be­ing com­mit­ted in plain sight all across the coun­try. This is a dire state of af­fairs for which the au­thor­i­ties have not giv­en prop­er ac­count.