The National Human Trafficking Hotline has a new management team after 18 years of being operated by Polaris Project. The hotline is now run by Compass Connections, a Texas-based child services nonprofit.
The switch was made by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after alleged complaints of tips to Polaris Project not being properly reported to law enforcement.
Amy Zhao is the policy and partnerships strategist at Imua Alliance, a leading anti-trafficking organization in Hawaiʻi. She said Imua has been working with Polaris since 2011 and has built a victim-first and victim-centered approach.
“The hotline was about building trust with these victims and prioritizing giving them care over anything else. Polaris really prioritized respecting survivors and their autonomy,” Zhao said.
Victims would call Polaris, and based on the information they were willing to provide, Polaris agents would direct them to local organizations that could provide resources, safe havens, and tools to escape the situation they were in. Imua Alliance is one of the places Hawaiʻi survivors were often directed to.
Zhao said this process allowed victims to decide, on their own terms, if they wanted to pursue legal action or not. She said she worries that this transition of power to a new management team will result in many victims' wishes being overlooked.
“If we are able to put these survivors first and give them the space to make their own decision on whether or not to make a case, they're more likely to access services through the national hotline,” Zhao said. “But if that trust is weakened, we're really concerned that there will be less survivors that are actually using the hotline.”
Zhao said that the presence of sex trafficking in Hawaiʻi is concerning, noting that there are over 150 suspected sex trafficking institutions throughout the state. She said she wants to make sure Hawaiʻi victims are not forgotten in this management change.
Imua Alliance plans to work with Compass Connections this week to establish a relationship and ensure the organization continues the victim-centered approach.
“We're excited to learn more about their work for human trafficking, but there's really no transition plan right now as to how everything's going to happen,” she said. “We just want to make sure that survivors are prioritized in this transition.”
The National Human Trafficking Hotline is 1-888-373-7888.
