Are human trafficking and human smuggling the same?
Middle Eastern migrants drifting through the Mediterranean on fragile inflatable boats. Tractor trailers packed with Mexican families trying to cross into the United States. South American migrants fleeing Brazil and entering the dangerous jungles of the Darien Gap.
These are just a few of the situations where media coverage has highlighted the prevalence of human smuggling and/or human trafficking, often conflating the two.
It’s important to distinguish between the two often misunderstood crimes. Here are the key differences between human trafficking and human smuggling, as well as how the two criminal enterprises overlap.
Definitions of human trafficking and human smuggling
Are human trafficking and human smuggling the same? Understanding the distinctions between these crimes begins with defining both. Although there is complexity and nuance, the distinction between human trafficking vs. human smuggling lies in a few key factors.
- Human trafficking is a crime against a person, while human smuggling is a crime against a country.
- Human trafficking is nonconsensual and involves force, fraud, or coercion. Human smuggling is usually a consensual arrangement.
- Human trafficking does not necessarily include movement. Human smuggling always involves movement across country borders.
According to the U.S. State Department, “A key difference is that victims of trafficking are considered victims of a crime under international law; smuggled migrants are not — they pay smugglers to facilitate their movement.”
Even though individuals who are smuggled are not, by default, considered victims of a crime, it is important to note that they are also not criminals. When a smuggler accepts payment to facilitate a migrant’s fraudulent entry into a country, the smuggler is the one held legally accountable.
Where do human trafficking and human smuggling intersect?
Even when a situation begins as a human smuggling scheme, it can quickly evolve into human trafficking or other criminal actions.
“Even if irregular migrants generally enter into the journey voluntarily, they are often exposed to significant risks, including that of being trafficked, kidnapped or dying in transit to their destinations,” Interpol states.
“An individual may pay a smuggler to be transported into the United States but, upon arrival, may be told he or she must pay additional money to the smuggler and be forced into commercial sex,” the Department of Defense offers as an example. “That individual is now a trafficking victim. It is important to note that although smuggled persons can become the victims of crime, not all crimes are trafficking. A smuggled person is at risk of abuse… although a smuggled person may be subjected to physical or sexual violence or held for ransom, the individual is not a trafficking victim unless he or she is compelled into forced labor or commercial sex.”
A smuggler might deceptively transport someone across a border for the purpose of trafficking them. That means that the perpetrator is guilty of two distinct crimes. Often, experts who serve migrant populations observe this progression from a crime that begins as smuggling but quickly becomes trafficking.
Trafficking isn’t the only potential harm that can come to migrants who fall prey to smuggling crime. Smugglers might also commit physical or sexual assault.
“Our research showed that violence is used by the smugglers or other perpetrators as a form of punishment, intimidation or coercion, and often inflicted with no apparent reason,” says Morgane Nicot with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
She adds, “Migrants also don’t come forward because a significant portion of the abuses stem from public officials who may also be involved in the actual migrant smuggling operation.”
Human trafficking and human smuggling are both considered nexus crimes, as they very often intersect with organized crime syndicates. Europol reports that in cases they have intercepted, the criminals are commonly tied to broader networks that might also be trafficking drugs or running financial scams. In fact, sometimes these other crimes, such as money laundering, serve as the law enforcement entry point to unraveling a human smuggling empire.
Why do people agree to human smuggling?
If someone is seeking out the services of a smuggler, they are often experiencing suffering, abuse, or fear of danger so severe that it creates desperation. In Southeast Asia, the Rohingya people are desperate to escape what has amounted to attempted genocide. Migrants flee war and famine in African countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Sudan. The pressure of geopolitical unrest within the Middle East has sent migrants fleeing across the Mediterranean. In Latin America, displaced Venezuelans flood neighboring countries to escape increasing violence in their own home. We explore each of these regions in more depth below.
Many of the most common migration routes involve unforgiving terrain that claims thousands of lives each year. When considering what might dislodge someone from their native country and send them into harrowing homelessness, we can surmise that only the most critical situations would compel someone to consider a desert or ocean voyage preferable to staying at home.
In 2022, a human smuggling case made national headlines when 53 migrants lost their lives while locked in a semi-truck trailer in Texas. Marvin Gomez was one of the few survivors.
“It was like $1,500 for taking you to Mexico and then in Rio Bravo; they charge you per segment. In total, it was like $8,000,” Gomez told ABC News. The steep pricetag represented an exorbitant expense for most of the migrants on the truck.
“It was so painful, realizing what had happened to my friends, who had big dreams… Today, they’re not here anymore,” Gomez said, reflecting on what it was like to wake up in a hospital and realize how few of his cohort survived. “It’s hard to explain, because one day you’re talking to someone, we are on this journey together, and the next day… they’re gone.”
Stories like these place the blame squarely on anyone who would exploit the vulnerability of a migrant desperate enough to spend their whole life’s savings on the potential for a safer life.
Where is human smuggling happening?
Human smuggling can happen on the border between any two countries, anywhere in the world. However, there have been significant surges in specific areas based on climate events, war, poverty, and famine.
The Mediterranean
Smuggling has increased across the Mediterranean, a route that requires a dangerous sea journey often embarked on in overcrowded, insufficiently stable boats. According to the International Organization for Migration, between 2021 and 2023, known migrant deaths in the Mediterranean surged from 2,048 to 3,041. Due to underreporting, real numbers are likely much higher. Since 2014, nearly 30,000 migrants have simply disappeared en route to Europe.
Decades of unrest in Middle Eastern and North African countries have prompted this mass movement of people.
A migrant from Sudan told the BBC: “I just survived a war, I have nothing to lose.”
Darién Gap
The Darién Gap is a dense jungle region between Colombia and Panama. Countless migrants have lost their lives while being smuggled through this region en route to the southern border of the United States. These migrants come from the Caribbean and South America, desperately seeking asylum from the economic instability and violence in their home countries. Recently, there has been a notable rise in migrants from Venezuela and Ecuador.
The government of Panama says that 520,000 migrants crossed through this region in 2023. Although not all of those migrants were being smuggled, some of them certainly were.
Because of how difficult it is to find and recover bodies in this area, it’s difficult to assess the true human toll. But at least 124 bodies were found between 2021 and 2023. As in the Mediterranean, the most common form of death recorded is drowning.
Tragically, according to UNICEF, one in five of the migrants moving through this region are children. One of those children was Sofia, a 1-year-old girl whose estranged father abducted her from Brazil in hopes of using her to help gain access to the United States. When her father died in the jungle, Sofia was left abandoned. The Exodus Road assisted in reuniting her back home with her mother, Veronica.
Sofia’s journey received national news coverage in Brazil, a story displaying some of the complex intersections between migration, smuggling, and trafficking. Unfortunately, there are thousands of other small children who the rest of the world will never hear about as they disappear in the dense jungle.
Between Thailand and Myanmar
The Exodus Road has firsthand experience working cases where human trafficking and human smuggling intersect in Thailand. Ethnic tensions, poverty, and sustained violence all serve to displace people from Myanmar, which shares a border with Thailand. In particular, the Rohingya people group has been systemically expelled from the country, left desperate to find somewhere else to go. In partnership with law enforcement equipped with Cellebrite digital forensics technology, The Exodus Road helped to secure freedom for hundreds of Rohingya migrants who were being smuggled and abused.
There are other reasons migrants might opt to be smuggled over the border. The UN reported that one Indonesian woman told them, “My friends also told me that the chance of getting into Malaysia is lower if we come on our own. Some people get rejected at immigration if they don’t use a tekong [smuggler], because the tekong pays a bribe to the immigration authorities, which they call ‘guarantee money.’”
These clear systems of corruption are exploiting the most desperate and vulnerable job-seekers. The UN estimates that 75% of those being smuggled across the border of Myanmar experience some kind of abuse en route.
Stop the spread of myths about human smuggling
In recent years, human smuggling has become the subject of rampant misinformation, even in professional media reporting. Unfortunately, this means that people are often chasing myths instead of the reality of the crime.
This is one reason why The Exodus Road’s training and education initiatives in places like Brazil focus on equipping law enforcement to accurately identify trafficking, smuggling, and other kinds of related exploitation. These efforts have led to freedom for more than 400 survivors of trafficking or exploitive smuggling since 2021.
General public awareness is at least as critical as law enforcement training. When falsehoods about human smuggling are dispelled, advocates for freedom can stand together in clear-minded vigilance against exploitation of all kinds.
Here are some common myths you can counter in your community.
Myth: Human trafficking and human smuggling are the same
Human trafficking does not require movement. If the crime involves force, fraud, or coercion of a person for another’s gain, it is trafficking. Human smuggling always involves movement across country borders.
Human trafficking happens without the consent of the person being exploited. Human smuggling happens to someone who has consented to be moved (though they may be deceived about what that transit will look like).
Human trafficking is a crime committed against an individual. Human smuggling is a crime committed against a country.
Myth: Migrants who are smuggled are criminals
A common misconception is that migrants being smuggled across borders are criminals. The reality is that the person facilitating the transport is the criminal — not the individual being smuggled.
Although being smuggled does not automatically indicate that someone is the victim of a crime, their intense vulnerability often means that criminal abuse will be perpetrated against them later. This could include trafficking, assault, or fraud.
Data also suggests that individuals who are smuggled are less likely to commit crimes in their destination country than the general population. As one crime analyst told the New York Times, case studies in several major cities in the United States showed that a swelling migrant population was actually correlated with a reduction in violent crime. This makes logical sense: if someone has fled their home to enter another country through unofficial channels, they will do whatever they can to avoid interacting with the governing authorities.
Myth: We can’t do anything about human smuggling
Smuggling might seem like it’s entirely outside of our control, especially when it originates in other countries. But just like with human trafficking, our commitment to self-education and spreading awareness can disrupt criminal enterprises and create a safer world for anyone seeking a new home.
Another way that each one of us can be part of fighting human smuggling crime is through befriending the most underprivileged and under-resourced populations in our communities. These are the groups that smugglers and traffickers alike target. Supporting local shelters, donating to trustworthy organizations, and simply befriending the marginalized actively combats exploitation of all forms.
