Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

When I moved to Central Illinois in 2016 one of the biggest worries I had about moving there was the lack of human trafficking community. In Atlanta, I left one of the longest serving task forces in the United States with an excellent infrastructure and organization sponsored by the Governor's Office in Georgia. It took me a few years to find those connections in Central Illinois and many of them had to be created from scratch.  In 2017, I heard about the establishment of a new task force in Central Illinois by State' Attorney Greg Harris at the Department of Justice Office in Springfield and so I wrote asking to be able to contribute. Advocating and using my research with practical applications was something I missed since moving to Illinois and I was really thankful to be on the ground floor with this newly formed task force! The picture above was my first meeting at the DOJ Office in Springfield and this meeting started eight years of collaboration and advocacy in the region...

  Today, I attended the Protection Cluster's Anti-Trafficking Task Force (ATTF) in Ukraine. This is an online meeting that due to funding cuts with USAID and the war has not met since November 2024. So even though I am in the middle of moving I made it a priority to attend and learn about the recent updates to anti-trafficking work in Ukraine. We learned about developments with the State Programme on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings until 2030. It was interesting to hear how the program is aimed at European Union membership and integration commitments. There are special mentions in the program for recruitment in online spaces and the use of online networks by traffickers which was particularly interesting for our research.  We also had a presentation on the different human trafficking cases assisted by the IOM Mission in Ukraine and its Partners in 2024–2025. It was very interesting to see differences throughout the war specifically that more people are exploited in Ukrai...