America’s report on human trafficking takes a massive step backward

Since 2000, the annual Trafficking in Persons Report has been the government’s most effective tool to combat human trafficking worldwide. The report objectively diagnoses countries’ successes and shortcomings, recommending concrete changes to improve things.

Since 2010, the report has held the U.S. to the same standards. However, the 2026 report takes a massive step backward, eliminating all of its prioritized recommendations and slashing coverage of governments’ shortcomings in combating human trafficking. This year’s report, which was released more than three months late, comes in the wake of last year’s mass layoffs and prodded early retirements that decimated the State Department’s trafficking office to barely a quarter of its former size.

This year’s report eliminated all of its nearly 2,000 prioritized recommendations across 188 countries. Those recommendations were the report’s engine, telling other governments what to fix and providing a yardstick for measuring their progress. Without prioritized recommendations, the report is a shell of itself.

The 2026 report also cut nearly 40 percent of the content in the previous year’s report . It slashed information relating to extraterritorial child sexual exploitation, child sexual abuse material, male sex trafficking victims, the gay and transgender communities, non-governmental organizations, and, shockingly, trafficking survivors.

The report doesn’t just evaluate foreign governments’ efforts to combat trafficking; it also evaluates U.S. government efforts to do so. This year’s U.S. section is roughly one-third the length of last year’s. It no longer contains recommendations. Last year , there were 14.

The critical findings of nongovernmental organizations and survivors are gone. The Jeffrey Epstein case, which galvanized public opinion on child sex trafficking, is omitted entirely, including the virtually unanimous enactment of the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025 and the Justice Department’s botched partial disclosure of trafficking evidence.

Instead, the first accomplishment the new report cites for the U.S. in combating trafficking is “strengthened immigration enforcement at the border.” Numerous organizations, including my organization, Protect All Children from Trafficking , have underscored how mass-deportation efforts have put child trafficking survivors at risk.

What the report leaves out matters more than what remains. Last year’s U.S. narrative acknowledged anti-trafficking experts’ concerns about trafficking victims facing deportation without being identified. It noted that the government had canceled the contract providing legal services to unaccompanied children and that processing times for T-visas , which offer trafficking victims an opportunity to temporarily stay in the U.S., had grown to nearly 15 months.

This year, those alarms have disappeared, along with statistics on T-visas and continued presence temporary designations — protections that encourage foreign-national trafficking victims to come forward.

The report accurately notes that federal funding for victim services provided by nongovernmental organizations fell from $82.3 million to $18.9 million, a 77 percent cut, and that funding for youth trafficking prevention education dropped by nearly a quarter since last year. But it fails to describe the impact of those cuts.

There is also genuine progress worth recognizing. Federal trafficking convictions rose from 210 to 293 , and the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act became law, giving survivors a federal path to clear convictions for crimes they were forced to commit. But a report that celebrates enforcement while staying silent on collapsing victim services is not an honest assessment.

In February, Protect All Children from Trafficking submitted recommendations to the State Department for this year’s U.S. narrative. The first was to treat prevention education as a pillar. Our review of 15 U.S. anti-trafficking curricula found that not one was designed primarily for K-12 students or parents. Second, recognize the transportation sector as a front line for prevention. Third was to address the vulnerability of boys, who are routinely undercounted and underserved. Fourth was to require real survivor leadership in designing prevention programs. And the final recommendation was to reckon honestly with how immigration enforcement is undermining victim identification.

Little of this made it into the report. On the bright side, prevention education earned a few sentences in a state-level sidebar focusing on Florida’s HB 1237 , which mandates human trafficking awareness training across the public school system, and a funding figure that revealed a dramatic cut in prevention education funding.

On the negative side, boys got one sentence. Transportation workers appear only in a list of people who received training. Survivor involvement was reduced to the fact that an advisory council met. On immigration, the report did not merely ignore our concerns; it perversely reframed the harsh enforcement as a signature anti-trafficking achievement.

Next year, the State Department should ensure that the Trafficking in Persons Office’s size and stature are restored to ensure it has the personnel and resources to produce a candid and thorough report, including prioritized recommendations, and support those recommendations with robust diplomatic and foreign-assistance engagement.

Congress has a role, too. Through oversight hearings and the next reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, lawmakers can insist that the report remain the rigorous, evidence-based assessment they intended. They can restore funding for victim services and prevention education, and ensure unaccompanied minors have legal representation.

The United States led the creation of the playbook against human trafficking. A shorter Trafficking in Persons Report that goes easier on ourselves and allies does not make children safer. It only makes their exploitation easier to ignore.

Aram A. Schvey is senior director of Policy and Government Relations at Protect All Children from Trafficking and previously served as Senior Congressional Advisor in the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.