The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 is the first comprehensive federal law to address trafficking in persons. The law approaches the issue through prevention, protection and prosecution. The TVPA was more recently reauthorized in 2013.
Under the law, “trafficking in persons (TIP)” includes both sex trafficking and labor trafficking. The law uses the following definitions:
Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age. (22 USC § 7102; 8 CFR § 214.11(a))
Labor trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purposes of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. (22 USC § 7102)
For the full law, click here.