An article by the Washington Post raises questions on the number of people who are being trafficked into the United States. 

As part of the fight, President Bush has blanketed the nation with 42 Justice Department task forces and spent more than $150 million — all to find and help the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of forced prostitution or labor in the United States.

But the government couldn’t find them. Not in this country.

According to the Washington Post, the actual number of victims identified as victims of human trafficking has been significantly lower then the estimated tens of thousands believed to be in the United States.

The administration has identified 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000, nowhere near the 50,000 a year the government had estimated. In addition, 148 federal cases have been brought nationwide, some by the Justice task forces, which are composed of prosecutors, agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local law enforcement officials in areas thought to be hubs of trafficking.

The article comes a little over a year after a  report by the US Government Accountability Office (PDF) stated that the method of collecting Human Trafficking figures is “questionable.”  The report stated:

The accuracy of the estimates is in doubt because of methodological weaknesses, gaps in data, and numerical discrepancies.

In addition, Slate’s Editor at Large Jake Shafer has been highly critical of the human trafficking estimates, with arguments against the figures going as far back to January 2004.

Currently, we at Havocscope are listing the figures released by the United States Department of State, where the 2003 Human Trafficking report stated that an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 people are trafficked into the US every year.