San Mateo County is launching awareness campaign on human trafficking

Supervisors Ray Mueller and Jackie Speier co-hosted the event to embolden various agencies throughout the county to prepare, identify the risk factors and signs of trafficking, and then train others. 

“Human trafficking is almost invisible,” Mueller said. “Traffickers depend on the shadows, the silence and we’re here to build something important, across jurisdictions and across sectors.”

Awareness of human trafficking often increases in regions leading up to high-attendance events, such as sports games, however, there is no concrete evidence of a correlation between an event and increased labor and sex trafficking. The problem, Speier said, is that awareness will then die down once the events end and people go back home.

“If you’ve had the regrettable opportunity to speak with a human trafficking victim, you know how repugnant it is,” Speier said. “You know how destructive it is, and you know that it could have been stopped.” 

In 2026, the Bay Area will host the Super Bowl in February and multiple FIFA World Cup games beginning in June, bringing millions to the area. San Mateo County’s connection to major international airports, major transit lines and a hospitality corridor stretching the Peninsula are all appealing to traffickers, experts said. 

Sex and labor trafficking are often residence-based, conducted in a home or hotel, behind closed doors, Travis James, analyst with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, said. Labor trafficking is most commonly found in the domestic work fields, in restaurants and in agriculture, which are popular careers in California.  

While trafficking is known to occur in hotels, particularly near airports, “it has now left the hotels and moved into neighborhoods into Airbnbs,” Mueller said, which makes tracking the crime slightly more difficult. 

There are approximately 3,500 Airbnbs in San Mateo County, and most aren’t required by local cities to register, Speier said. This may be something to address, she said.

The multiagency effort will look to shrink the environment in which traffickers operate in as much as possible, Matt Cobo, FBI assistant special agent, said.

“Human traffickers who exploit undocumented immigrants, drug-addicted adults and society’s most vulnerable children will find it increasingly difficult to operate in San Mateo County,” Cobo said.

The Department of Homeland Security is one of a handful of agencies working in collaboration with the county to address human trafficking. The federal organization is often correlated with immigration enforcement, but “human trafficking is a major priority for my agency,” Tatum King, special agent for the San Francisco region, said. 

DHS agents will be working in collaboration with other federal, state and local agencies ahead of the upcoming Super Bowl, in particular, to address trafficking. Victims will get the support they need regardless of status, King said.

“We represent the community here, we want to make sure that those folks that may not have lawful status are getting the support they need, making sure they’re working with prosecutors to hold violators accountable for their actions, but also so they can come out of the shadows and get the support they deserve,” King said. 

Traffickers target areas with limited resources for cities and minimum law enforcement presence, which underscores the importance of raising awareness particularly in San Mateo County where addressing trafficking has “really been a blind spot,” Speier said.

The upcoming major sporting events are just reminders that “we have a serious problem that hasn’t been properly addressed and we have to do a lot more,” Speier said.

“It’s very complex. It requires us not to stick our head in the sand but address the fact that it’s going on,” Speier said. “We’ve got to change the culture so people feel safe coming forward and reporting and so we can save lives.”

Just last week, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors recently approved Measure K funding to be allocated to Justice At Last, an organization providing free legal services to survivors of human trafficking. The funds will go toward providing full representation for 10 survivors from San Mateo County. 

“It is an issue that is happening here, aside from the Super Bowl coming up and the World Cup and those major sporting events, we know that traffic is going on behind closed doors on a regular basis in San Mateo County,” Rose Mukhar, founder of Justice At Last, said. 

The three-hour event Monday is the beginning of an ongoing effort to address and eradicate human trafficking in San Mateo County; County Executive Mike Callagy said the goal is to become the first county to end it altogether. 

“We packed a lot of info in the program,” Speier said. “This is just the beginning but it certainly made everyone recognize this is a very serious issue and we have a lot to do.”