Human trafficking in Mexico

Human trafficking is the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. Mexico is a large source, transit, and destination country for victims of human trafficking.

Government and NGO statistics indicate that the magnitude of forced labor surpasses that of forced prostitution in Mexico. Groups considered most vulnerable to human trafficking in Mexico include women, children, indigenous persons, and undocumented migrants. Mexican women, girls, and boys are subjected to sexual servitude within the United States and Mexico, lured by false job offers from poor rural regions to urban, border, and tourist areas. Mexican trafficking victims were also subjected to conditions of forced labor in domestic servitude, street begging, and construction in both the United States and Mexico. U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2" in 2017.

Human trafficking in Mexico takes many forms including sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Often, migrants being willingly smuggled are entrapped in one or more of these types of trafficking.

While sex work is largely illegal in Mexico, most cities do have Zonas de Tolerancia, areas where prostitution is allowed. This has made Mexico a destination for sex tourism and one of the world's largest hubs for sex trafficking; It is the largest destination for sex tourism from the United States. Sex work's profitability in Mexico has driven the forced exploitation of many girls as sex workers. Mexico is on the Tier 2 Watch List of the U.S. State Department's 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report, a designation given to countries that do not meet the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003 (TVPRA), but which are still making efforts to comply with these guidelines, in large part because of its booming child sex trafficking industry; an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 Mexican and Central American children are thought to be victims of sex trafficking in the country Mexico is rated as the second worst country in terms of child prostitution globally as of 2010. Governmental ineffectiveness and rampant corruption have corroded trust in the Mexican government, which is evident in the declining rate of crime reporting in border regions of Mexico.

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