The annual State Department report documenting the severity of human trafficking around the world will not include a section on LGBTQ victims this year, one of its authors told GBH News.
Each year the State Department publishes what it calls the Trafficking in Persons Report — also known as TIP — to gauge how individual countries deal with sex and labor trafficking within their borders. Each year, including during President Donald Trump’s first term, LGBTQ victims have been included in the annual survey.
Not this year, says Jose Alfaro, a survivor of sex trafficking and a member of the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking. In speaking with GBH Alfaro emphasized that he was not speaking on behalf of the Council.
Alfaro, who lives in the Boston area, said he received a telephone call this week from the State Department to inform him that the section on human trafficking detailing the exploitation of gay men and women, trans, queer and non-binary victims will not be included in the full report that will be made public later this year.
There are no references to LGBTQ issues in the 2025 Interim report to Congress released by the State Department this week.
Alfaro said he was told that not only would the section on LGBTQ trafficking be dropped from the report, “no information on LGBTQ issues and no language surrounding the LGBTQ community was going to be included. And for me, that felt extremely devastating”
Alfaro says he inquired further about the reasoning behind the decision.
“My follow up question to State Department officials,” he said “was 'why not continue to push for it? And is it due to fear of backlash? Is it due to fear of being fired? And is it fear of being targeted by the current administration?’ And the response that I got was, 'Yes to all of the above.’”
GBH News reached out to the State Department for comment but did not receive a response.
Prior TIP reports have been very clear in pointing out the impact of human trafficking on LGBTQ communities. For instance, the 2023 Report included this summary: “When we partner to support vulnerable migrants, advocate for women’s rights, or enact legislation to protect LGBTQI+ individuals, we are creating a more just and equitable world that is also more impervious to human traffickers.”
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Massachusetts advocates point out that large percentages of human trafficking victims are queer, trans and non-binary. The organization for trafficked girls, My Life My Choice estimates that 51 percent of the survivors who pass through its doors are LGBTQ.
Alfaro told GBH that the communication he received said the omission of the LGBTQ section for the report was based on Trump’s executive action eliminating all references to what his administration describes as DEI.
“It feels as though that we’re being erased from anything involving the government. And my assumption is that that is the goal,” said Alfaro, who was featured in GBH’s series on the trafficking of boys and men, called “ Unseen: The boy victims of the sex trade ”.
Julie Dahlstrom, Director of Boston University’s Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program, said the TIP Report has been an important tool in assessing how countries deal with sex and labor slavery and in pushing some nations to address these issues for fear of embarrassment and the withholding of aid.
She said there is growing research that LGBTQ communities are especially at risk and vulnerable.
“The Trafficking in Persons is based on input from anti-trafficking organizations, those who are on the ground and know exactly what is happening. So, taking that information out of the Trafficking in Persons report is deeply troubling,” she said. “It signals erasure of this important and vulnerable population. I think it will imperil efforts to identify survivors who are from the LGBTQ community.”
Advocates for human trafficking victims says the politicization of “suffering” of LGBTQ victims will have a long-term devastating impact, including forcing some victims further underground, says Steven Procopio, a Boston area social worker who has led groundbreaking research on the sex trafficking of boys and men.
“Trafficking victims come in all shapes and sizes, all sexual orientations, all races, ethnicities and economic backgrounds,” said Procopio. He said any indication that the State Department will not protect LGBTQ victims will make trafficked boys less likely to seek help. “It is going to permeate through the rest of the male community and it’s just going to push people more underground, unfortunately, and put more people at risk in this already underserved population in Massachusetts,” he said.
Alfaro says the targeting of LGBTQ communities, especially trans individuals has to be confronted.
“I’m going to be honest with you, I was terrified to speak out,” he said. “But, the more that I thought about it, the more that I felt like here I am again, feeling afraid and fearful, just like my trafficker did to me. But now the silencing is coming from our U.S. government and the society that supports the U.S. government and supports the silencing of marginalized folk.”
