With preparations for this year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas underway, local residents can expect to see a wave of anti-sex trafficking messages and police raids.
Police have historically pushed the message that there are big spikes in sex trafficking around large sporting events, and that raids and stings can help rescue those in danger. In reality, the connection between sports events and trafficking has been thoroughly debunked, and raids mostly terrorize and harm consensual sex workers without doing anything to help trafficking survivors.
That’s why Las Vegas sex workers and activists are organizing to try to stop useless and dangerous police raids in favor of policies that actually help survivors and marginalized people.
Law enforcement, some anti-trafficking organizations, and the media have already begun broadcasting the message that the Super Bowl is a dangerous magnet for sex trafficking. The Las Vegas television station 8NewsNow published an article saying that “millions around the world become [trafficking] victims every day,” and insists “the risk is even higher before major events take place in cities like Las Vegas.” Another article in the Reno Gazette Journal asks, ominously, “is Nevada ready for sexual predators pouring into Las Vegas when it hosts the 2024 Super Bowl?”
Yet, anti-trafficking organizations like Freedom Network USA and Polaris all agree that there is no evidence to suggest that there is a spike in human trafficking around the Super Bowl. Researchers have also found no link. Instead, this messaging is an effective way for some organizations to boost their profiles while also making the police look good and necessary. But it does little to help actual victims or survivors.
The idea that the Super Bowl is a major hub of sex trafficking is “a myth that law enforcement pushes,” said Jackie Valentina, a founder and lead organizer of Las Vegas Red Umbrella Collective. Valentina added that they use that myth “to justify raids and stings.” The raids are supposed to free trafficking victims, but, instead, police generally just arrest consensual sex workers and their clients.
“You can’t really help someone when you throw them in jail,” Valentina said.
Chris Ash, the survivor leadership program manager at National Survivor Network, adds that these raids not only fail to help trafficking victims, but also actively cause harm to sex workers.
“Stings are, by definition, trauma,” said Ash, pointing out that, in some cases, sex workers and those targeted by stings have actually leaped from windows to their death because they were terrified by police. “When we engage in stings, we’re basically acknowledging that we’re willing to traumatize people further, because we think we know better than they do what they want,” Ash said.
Ash also pointed out that even the awareness campaigns around the Super Bowl can be misleading and damaging. Such campaigns implicitly or explicitly rely on racist stereotypes about what sex traffickers and their victims look like. Ash noted numerous stories in which airline passengers accused Black parents of trafficking their own children or white parents of trafficking their mixed-race or Black kids.
Las Vegas Red Umbrella Collective and activists in Los Angeles are trying to spread the word about the dangers of raids with the Stop the Raids campaign, which began in 2022.
“We were really concerned about prostitution raids but also about the police actions that take place on the homeless and houseless people,” said Maxine Doogan, president of the Erotic Service Providers Legal Education Research Project. “When the big sporting events come along, it’s an excuse for the city to go in and clear out all these homeless encampments.”
According to Doogan, Stop the Raids hopes to hold a protest at the stadium on the day of events before the Las Vegas Super Bowl when players sign jerseys and meet fans.
“The media is always there,” she said. “So it’s a place to get in front of the media and tell the media and the public, ‘Hey, we’re here, we don’t like this false and misleading narrative that’s going on that’s resulting in all this harm against us.’”
Las Vegas Red Umbrella Collective and Stop the Raids are also trying to provide sex workers in Las Vegas with information and resources to protect themselves during the law enforcement crackdown around the Super Bowl. The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) will offer a cybersecurity webinar on how to secure devices and online presences, and there will be workshops available for sex workers on “laws and safety and making sure to work in a way that is a little more cautious,” according to Valentina. These resources, which ensure people know about their rights and legal options, can benefit workers long after the Super Bowl is over.
While mutual aid, education, and media outreach are all ways to reduce the harm from raids, Ash says they would like to see a real rethinking of an approach based on sensationalized messaging around large events coupled with raids and stings.
“We should be more creative and imagine what a solution would look like in which we’re unwilling to further traumatize either sex trafficking victims or people who are engaging in commercial sex,” Ash said. “We don’t conduct stings and operations to identify domestic violence perpetrators. Doing that would violate people’s agency and could put them in greater danger and even threaten their lives. Instead, it’s better to offer people resources.”
Anti-trafficking organizations and policymakers could also do much more to focus on the causes of trafficking. People who are in forced labor situations—whether in the sex industry, domestic labor, or farm work—are often poor. They may be vulnerable because they are immigrants or undocumented.
“By eradicating poverty, we can reduce people’s vulnerability to trafficking,” Ash said.
Discrimination and bigotry can put people at further risk of labor exploitation. Around 28% of LGBTQIA+ youth report experiencing homelessness or housing instability at some point in their lives because parents kick them out of the house or make living at home unbearable. Homeless youth are especially at risk of trafficking and of engaging in survival sex for food or housing.
“When we create these anti-trans laws and do not care for trans youth, and LGBTQ+ youth, we are making them vulnerable,” Ash said.
According to Valentina, one of the most important steps to helping sex trafficking victims is to decriminalize sex work, because, ultimately, police target people selling sex.
“If you are a victim, you can’t really go to the police because you’re the one that is going to be arrested,” Valentina said.
