Megaevents bring major upticks in labor trafficking across the construction, hospitality, and fashion industries — imagine the opportunities for exploitation along the entire supply chain for every piece of branded merch that’s produced. The other types of events that see a major uptick in human trafficking? Natural disasters. Unfortunately, here in LA, we’ve been subjected to both, making the region doubly vulnerable. While alarms are being sounded about many potential human rights violations, there is growing concern around the absence of a cohesive human trafficking prevention strategy for LA’s megaevent era.

…

Unfortunately, breathless coverage of law enforcement raids, and namely sex trafficking sting operations, dominates megaevent headlines — despite the fact that labor trafficking is far, far more prevalent. As the report notes: “there is no empirical data demonstrating an increase in sex trafficking associated with major sporting events.” Just look at this story from last month’s Super Bowl about a “sex trafficking crackdown” executed by 67 coordinating law enforcement agencies which are planning to replicate this model in other World Cup host cities this summer. Yet a 2021 report by USC’s International Human Rights Clinic found such law enforcement operations to be expensive and ineffective. "Anti-sex trafficking operations identify few victims or traffickers and instead result in the arrest, physical, verbal and sexual abuse of many victims and sex workers — a disproportionate number of whom are LGBTQ people, undocumented immigrants and people of color, particularly Black women and minors,” said IHRC’s director Hannah Garry.