1/ Donald Trump says he wants to make fighting human trafficking a priority. But advocates say his administration's immigration policies have made it harder to protect victims.

TIME's @abbyabrams investigates what’s happening on the ground https://time.com/5905437/human-trafficking-trump-administration/

2/ Emma remembers the pressure in her chest as she struggled to breathe.

She and 2 other human trafficking victims were packed into a wooden box in the back of a truck crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S.

“I thought I was going to die,” she says

3/ After her terrifying journey, Emma eventually found herself in an illicit massage business in Kentucky. She was later found by investigators during a raid on the parlor in July 2019

4/ Human trafficking is one of the world’s fastest-growing criminal industries.

The crime is often difficult to prosecute without victims' cooperation—and getting survivors to participate in investigations has become more complicated since Trump took office

5/ Like Emma, most victims are trafficked by people they know—often by intimate partners, family members, or by someone promising a job opportunity—not bound or forcibly dragged across the border as Trump frequently claims

6/ The T visa has allowed trafficking victims to stay in the U.S. for a period of time with work authorization and benefits if they assist law enforcement.

In 2018, the Trump Administration announced that those denied a visa could be subject to deportation proceedings

7/ That alone is enough to scare many trafficking victims away from applying.

For those that do apply, the processing time for T visas has grown from an average of 7.9 months in 2016 to a current estimate of up to 2.5 years

8/ Emma remains in limbo with no sense of when she will hear back about her T visa—and without the ability to legally work.

She faces the largest backlog of pending T visa applications and the most denials in the program’s history. Read the full story: https://time.com/5905437/human-trafficking-trump-administration/