Port of Spain, Trinidad – A senior U.S. State Department anti-trafficking official has laid out a balanced assessment of Trinidad and Tobago’s anti-human trafficking efforts, celebrating recent breakthroughs in enforcement while sounding the alarm over underfunded prevention and victim support programs, stalled probes into official complicity, and systemic gaps in identifying at-risk populations.
Rachel Poynter, Principal Deputy Director of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking, delivered the remarks Tuesday at the official launch of a specialized human trafficking investigative training workshop hosted jointly by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Homeland Security Counter Trafficking Unit at the St James-based Trinidad and Tobago Police Service Academy.
Poynter outlined that constrained budgets for trafficking prevention and victim protection programming have directly reduced the volume of vulnerable populations screened for exploitation, cutting off critical pathways to identify both survivors and trafficking perpetrators. She warned that this limited screening exposes growing numbers of coerced trafficking survivors to unfair legal penalties for unlawful acts they were forced to commit, alongside a notable year-over-year drop in the number of new trafficking investigations launched, with evidence-gathering protocols remaining a persistent weak spot in local law enforcement workflows. Most concerning, she noted, is that systemic corruption and documented official complicity continue to derail active cases, with multiple probes targeting high-ranking government and law enforcement personnel frozen indefinitely with no public updates on their status.
Even as she flagged these urgent gaps, Poynter emphasized that the critique was delivered in the spirit of bilateral partnership, and acknowledged Trinidad and Tobago’s tangible recent strides in anti-trafficking enforcement. Citing data from the 2026 U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report, she noted that the country opened 13 new sex trafficking cases in the most recent reporting period, up from 11 the prior year. She highlighted a landmark 16-year-plus prison sentence handed down to a former police officer convicted of human trafficking, a ruling she said sent an unambiguous public signal that no individual, regardless of official status, is exempt from accountability for trafficking crimes. Additional recent wins include a May Counter Trafficking Unit operation that charged two suspects with 29 separate trafficking-related offences, marking the first time national Preventive Detention Orders were deployed against a trafficking network, as well as the unit’s first ever dedicated trafficking operation in Tobago in August that resulted in charges against three suspects.
Poynter framed these milestones as the product of years of deepening bilateral law enforcement collaboration, which has included targeted training for local officers on investigative techniques, survivor-centered interviewing protocols, asset forfeiture procedures, and anti-money laundering measures to dismantle the financial infrastructure of trafficking networks. Over the past 12 months alone, dozens of personnel from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, Counter Trafficking Unit, and specialized law enforcement divisions have completed U.S.-supported training courses at the International Law Enforcement Academy and targeted anti-trafficking workshops. In September, U.S. Customs and Border Protection also delivered specialized training to 170 local aviation and border security personnel to help them spot early warning signs of trafficking at points of entry.
The newly enacted Advance Passenger Information law in Trinidad and Tobago, which establishes a 24/7 dedicated Passenger Information Unit, is also poised to drastically expand real-time information sharing between local authorities, U.S. law enforcement, INTERPOL, and the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security, Poynter noted. During the workshop, she also led a session clarifying the critical legal and operational distinctions between human smuggling and human trafficking, noting that smuggling involves a person voluntarily paying to cross a border unlawfully, while trafficking centers on ongoing, profit-driven exploitation through forced labour or commercial sex that does not require cross-border movement to occur. She stressed that smuggled people are at extreme risk of being re-victimized as trafficking survivors, particularly if they lack valid immigration documentation or owe steep smuggling debts that can be used to coerce compliance, including via threats to harm family members remaining in their home countries.
The multi-day training workshop is designed to directly address longstanding gaps in evidence collection, victim identification, and survivor protection, while building structured accountability frameworks for ongoing trafficking probes. “I raise these persistent gaps as a trusted partner, because we have seen firsthand the capacity and commitment that exists in this country to protect its most vulnerable residents,” Poynter told the assembled cohort of local law enforcement officers, adding that the progress already achieved through joint cooperation demonstrates the transformative impact of aligned bilateral action to dismantle transnational trafficking networks that threaten public safety on both sides of the Caribbean.
T&T FALLING SHORT
