Human Smuggling and Trafficking
When most of us hear the words smuggling or trafficking, we picture a speedboat loaded with cocaine or heroin racing through the night, or maybe a particularly desperate soul swallowing a plastic bag before going through a customs gate.
However, one of the most immediately dangerous forms of smuggling involves the transportation not of substances, but of human beings. Human smuggling can present a serious threat both to those in being smuggled, and to the citizens of whichever sovereign area they are illegally entering.
Thousands of people die every year when those smuggling them across a border in a truck or other vehicle abandon them while they are trapped inside. These people are often desperate enough to pay in advance, so the incentive for the smuggler often disappears as soon as the cash is handed over.
An example of the second type of threat mentioned might be the transportation of terrorists or other dangerous individuals across international boundaries. Part of the reason that border security is taken so seriously around the world is to prevent people with a potential or intent to do harm from doing so.
Official Differences between Smuggling and Trafficking
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Human Trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt, bondage, or slavery.”
Human Smuggling, on the other hand, “is the importation of people into a country via the deliberate evasion of immigration laws. This offense includes bringing illegal aliens into a country, as well as the unlawful transportation and harboring of aliens already in a country illegally.”
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Human smuggling and trafficking are incredibly serious charges. If you have been accused of this type of offense, contact the San Jose criminal defense lawyers at the [firm-name] today by calling [phone-number].
