The US Department of State released its long-delayed 2026 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report on October 8. 2026. In the report, the United States maintained its status as a Tier One country that is making substantial efforts to combat trafficking, despite its mass dismantling of anti-trafficking infrastructure and direct attacks on vulnerable populations. The report also excludes the recommendations for each country, eliminating the most valuable diplomatic component of the report.
In its recommendations for the 2026 TIP Report, FNUSA urged a downgrade of the US to Tier Two, as the country greatly reduced its capacity to address trafficking and exacerbated vulnerabilities to trafficking during the reporting period. Despite decreasing its efforts in almost every metric, the US Department of State chose to keep the US at Tier One, contradicting the recommendations of many non-governmental organizations.
As the report notes, the US Department of Justice withheld over $88 million in funding for human trafficking victim services in 2025, causing 113 victim service providers to reduce services, stop taking clients, scrape together other funding, or close their doors. Over one year later, the majority of the funds are still not awarded, leaving fewer than 100 DOJ-funded victim service providers in the entire country.
The US government’s mass arrests, detention, and deportation of immigrants resulted in increased vulnerabilities to human trafficking among immigrants and the detention and deportation of human trafficking survivors. By revoking immigrant trafficking survivors’ access to federally-funded benefits, the US government ripped away basic services that save survivors’ lives. US Citizenship and Immigration Services almost entirely stopped processing applications for T visas, a temporary visa category designed to help trafficking survivors access immigration protections and victim services. By vastly restricting asylum and turning away survivors seeking safety, the US Government returned survivors straight to their traffickers and other dangerous situations. The report does not mention any of this harm to immigrants, and instead attempts to blame them for human trafficking in the US without any data to support its claims.
The Trump Administration also drastically increased vulnerabilities to human trafficking by attacking Black and Brown people, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and immigrants. By stoking hostility towards already marginalized people and restricting access to social services, the US government increased barriers to good jobs, safe housing, and social services. When people cannot access their basic needs, they are made more vulnerable to trafficking and other forms of exploitation.
The US Government also worked to dismantle the largest human trafficking prevention project in the US, the Unaccompanied Children Program. Funding for legal services for unaccompanied children was withheld and threatened during the reporting period, leaving children from infants to teenagers to defend themselves in immigration court. The Trump Administration also directly targeted sponsors for deportation, ripping apart families and putting children in indefinite detention without access to the services they need. Children were held in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody for record lengths of time, with many pressured to accept voluntary departure back to their home countries.
Every other TIP Report before 2026 included a list of recommendations for each country. These are a critical component of the report because they explain how countries cam improve their ranking, resulting in fewer sanctions and diplomatic concerns. This missing information is most obvious in the United States’ narrative, where the US maintained its rank despite its notable abdication of responsibilities to support survivors and address trafficking. If the US can dismantle protections for immigrant survivors, withhold over 90 percent of its funding for victim services, and make vulnerable populations less safe, while providing itself no recommendations for improvement, it calls into question the validity of the report as a whole.
The United States should have received a downgrade to Tier Two in the 2026 TIP Report to accurately reflect its dismantling of anti-trafficking efforts. No country that revokes funding for victim services, targets survivors for deportation, and enables human trafficking should be considered a country making a sustained effort to combat trafficking. The report leaves out details of the substantial harm done by the US Government to the US anti-trafficking infrastructure in order to paint the US in a more positive light. But everyday survivors, service providers, and advocates see the impacts of this crisis. Survivors are the ones who suffer when services disappear, rights are inaccessible, and the government abandons them.
Read our full analysis of how the US failed trafficking survivors in 2025 here
