Florida law defines human trafficking as 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 subjugation to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, slavery, or a commercial sex act. Force is physical violence which may include imprisonment, torture, rapes, starvations, murder, or beatings. Fraud occurs when there are deceptive offers of employment, marriage, or a better life. Coercion are threats of force, schemes, plans, or patterns intended to cause a failure to perform an act and make them believe that failure to perform that act would result in ‘force,’ document confiscation, abuse, or threatened about of the legal system, or threats to safety of family in source country. Florida’s statute on human trafficking further provides that coercion means providing a controlled substance to any person for the purpose of exploitation of that person.
Activities for which people are trafficked include both legal and illicit industries consisting of, but not limited to, the following: prostitution, exotic dancing, agriculture work, domestic work, child care, factory work, commercial cleaning, restaurant work,construction work, hospitality, health and elder care, salon services, criminal activities, day labor, and door-to-door sales.