Florida remains ranked third in the nation for human trafficking, but the top prosecutor for Miami-Dade County says her office is now a model for fighting the insidious crime.
“One in three runaways are recruited for commercial sex within 48 hours of leaving home. Those predators know exactly what they’re looking for. They know the signs better than anyone else,” said State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, speaking at Camillus House at her office’s annual symposium on human trafficking on Thursday.
When the conference was first held in 2011, Florida had just three human trafficking cases pending – and no labor trafficking cases in 2011, Fernandez Rundle said. Today her office has worked with more than 1,100 victims and filed 850 human trafficking criminally-related cases.
Over the weekend, a 17-year-old girl presumed missing for five years was found and rescued from an alleged human trafficker.
The state attorney’s Human Trafficking Task Force was established in 2012 after the first conference on the issue held at Camillus House. Florida trails only Texas and California for the most calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.