The Trafficking Survivors Relief Act Passed in January. The Program That Helps Survivors Use It Runs Out of Money This Month.

Here is the number I keep turning over.

In Polaris Project’s National Survivor Study, 62 percent of trafficking survivors surveyed had been cited, detained, or arrested. Of the survivors who were arrested, 81 percent were arrested while they were still being trafficked, and 90 percent said all or at least some of their record was tied to it.

Nine out of ten. Not people who drifted into crime afterward. People who got a record while it was still happening to them, for things that happened because it was happening to them.

We have built an entire national vocabulary around rescuing victims. Then we book them.

I don’t say that to be inflammatory. I say it because it is the most literal version of the thing I write about constantly: the recognition gap. The distance between what is actually happening to a person and what anyone — including that person — is able to name while it is going on.

Traffickers understand that gap better than anyone. Forced criminality is a tool. You drive the car. You hold the phone. You carry the bag. You sign your name to the lease. Later those are your charges, in your name, with your fingerprints on them, and the person who arranged all of it is nowhere in the file. Congress wrote this into the record this year, naming “the changing tactics of human traffickers, who are using forced criminality as a form of force, fraud, and coercion.”

That is the part that should stop people. Not the sensational version of trafficking. This one. The paperwork version.

What changed in January

On January 23, 2026, the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act became law — Public Law 119-73, now 18 U.S.C. § 3771A. According to the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, it is the first time in American history that federal law has explicitly authorized expunging a conviction. Not a pardon. Not sealing. Erasure.

If you were convicted of a nonviolent federal offense as a direct result of being trafficked, you can now file a motion to vacate that conviction and expunge the record. You can file at any time — it reaches backward to arrests and convictions from before the law existed. No fee may be charged to file. Everything is filed under seal and kept out of public inspection, so you are not paying for relief with your privacy.

And here is the provision I did not expect: a sworn affidavit from an anti-trafficking service provider or clinician is sufficient evidence, if the court finds it credible and no other evidence is readily available. Nobody has to have arrested your trafficker. Nobody has to have convicted him. Congress said out loud that a survivor should not have to produce a prosecution in order to be believed.

That is a law written by people who understand the recognition gap.

What did not change

A right you cannot exercise is not a right. It’s a brochure.

Filing under this law takes a lawyer who knows how — and federal courts have never done this before, so there is no worn path to follow. Freedom Network USA’s Survivor Reentry Project describes itself as the only national program that provides post-conviction record relief for trafficking survivors by connecting them to a nationwide network of pro bono lawyers. Right now it is not accepting new intakes at all. Its grant funding ends September 30, 2026, and its own page says services may pause or close when it does.

FNUSA’s co-executive director, Jean Bruggeman, put it plainly to News21: “We can pass all the great laws in the world, but if we don’t have the ability to implement them, then it’s just a piece of paper.”

The shortage isn’t abstract. The project lists seventeen states where it needs pro bono attorneys most. Colorado, where I live, is one of them. In Florida and Tennessee, the Justice Restoration Center — free legal help, about twenty new clients a month — is booked into March 2027.

So: nearly every state now has some form of record relief for survivors, and as of this year the federal government does too. And the pipeline that carries an actual human being from eligible to filed is running on a grant that expires on September 30.

A record is not a paperwork problem

Among the survivors in that study who had criminal records, sixty-nine percent said the record kept them from getting or keeping a job. Sixty-three percent said it blocked education, training, or a professional license. Fifty-nine percent said it stood between them and safe housing. Among those with children, thirty-five percent said it affected custody. Across everyone Polaris surveyed, not only those with records, 43 percent were earning under $25,000 a year, against 26 percent of the general population.

Every one of those is a prevention failure, not only a fairness failure. No job you can pass a background check for, no license, unstable housing, and a record that quietly advertises you as someone nobody will believe — that is not a survivor’s aftermath. That’s a recruiter’s shopping list. A record built by exploitation makes a person easier to exploit again.

This is why I keep insisting that prevention is not a poster campaign. Prevention is whether the exit is real.

The two recognitions

There is the private recognition: the one where you finally have language for what was done to you. That arrives on its own schedule, and it can take decades. She had no idea. That is the point.

Then there is the public one. A judge signs an order saying the state was wrong about you — that the thing on your record was not your character, it was your captivity. Brent Woody, who runs the Justice Restoration Center, described that moment to News21: “There’s just something about the system acknowledging to someone who was wronged by the system, and putting that in an order, a court order, that is life-changing.”

We just built that door at the federal level for the first time in this country’s history. And we are about to let the only national program that walks people to it close for want of a grant.

You aren’t broken, just misaligned. Sometimes the misalignment is an entire system: the right law, and no way in.

If you’re an attorney in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, or Washington — the Survivor Reentry Project has been looking for you.

If you were charged with a federal offense because you were being trafficked, this law may apply to you. Polaris keeps a plain-language explainer of the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act at polarisproject.org/tsra. The National Human Trafficking Hotline is 1-888-373-7888, 24/7, confidential.

I write about the recognition gap — how manipulation stays invisible while it’s working, what it costs people afterward, and what actually prevents it. If that’s the kind of thinking you want in your inbox, subscribe free below. No paywall on anything that could help someone get out.

How this piece was made. The thinking, the argument, and every sentence here are mine. I use AI the way I’d use a very fast research assistant: to pull statutes and reports, to check that a number I want to quote actually says what I think it says, and to keep my posting schedule from collapsing on a week when both kids need me more than the internet does. Header and social images are AI-generated; photographs of real people or places are always identified as such. Nothing about my own life gets outsourced to it, and nothing it writes goes out under my name without me rewriting it first. Every source in this piece is linked so you can check my work instead of trusting me.

Sources

Freedom Network USA, Survivor Reentry Project program page (last modified 31 August 2026): intake pause, 30 September 2026 grant end, “only national program” description, and the seventeen states of acute pro bono need. freedomnetworkusa.org/advocacy/survivor-reentry-project

Sophia Braccio, “After exploitation, some human trafficking survivors carry the burden of criminal records,” Carnegie-Knight News21, 13 August 2026: the Bruggeman and Woody quotes, Justice Restoration Center caseload and backlog, and the income figures.

Collateral Consequences Resource Center, “Federal expungement for survivors of human trafficking” (published 13 May 2026, updated 22 June 2026): Public Law 119-73, 18 U.S.C. 3771A, the first-in-US-history framing, retroactivity, no filing fee, sealed filings, and the affidavit provision. ccresourcecenter.org

Polaris Project, Criminal Record Relief for Trafficking Survivors and the National Survivor Study: 457 survivors surveyed; 62 percent cited, detained or arrested; 81 percent of those arrested were arrested during their trafficking situation; 90 percent of those arrested reporting all or at least some of their record was related to their trafficking; and the employment, education, housing and custody figures. polarisproject.org