Taxi Industry Toolkit

Human traffickers may rely on taxis for transportation, and taxi drivers may be the first person a victim meets once they are trafficked to a city, placing taxi drivers in a unique position to identify and report human trafficking. To help its drivers be alert about the danger of human trafficking, a large taxi enterprise in the greater Houston area agreed to notify drivers by e-mail and text (in both English and Spanish) about human trafficking indicators. The potential for human trafficking can increase around special events, when the demand for taxi service is great. In light of the role of large-scale events, messages were also timed to be sent 5 days prior to each of Houston’s major events. Drivers were encouraged to notify The National Human Trafficking Hotline, whose number is included in messages, about suspicious activity. Training for drivers on human trafficking was implemented, and taxis also featured ads from the Watch for Traffick media campaign. Included in this toolkit are templates for e-mail and text messages that can be sent by taxi services to its drivers to alert them about the warning signs of human trafficking. Both English-and Spanish-language versions are available.