Human trafficking
The problems against anti-trafficking raids are related to the problem of the trafficking concept itself, as raids' purpose of fighting sex trafficking may be conflated with fighting prostitution. The Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorization Act of 2005 (TVPRA) gives state and local law enforcement funding to prosecute customers of commercial sex, therefore some law enforcement agencies make no distinction between prostitution and sex trafficking. One study interviewed women who have experienced law enforcement operations as sex workers and found that during these raids meant to combat human trafficking, none of the women were ever identified as trafficking victims, and only one woman was asked whether she was coerced into sex work. The conflation of trafficking with prostitution, then, does not serve to adequately identify trafficking and help the victims. Raids are also problematic in that the women involved were most likely unclear about who was conducting the raid, what the purpose of the raid was, and what the outcomes of the raid would be.
Human trafficking in the Dominican Republic
Dominican men and women have been subjected to sex forced labor in the United States and Argentina. Most trafficked victims are sent to Western Europe, and some are sent to North America. Out of all areas in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic has the highest amount of trafficked persons; women are trafficked to Costa Rica and Panama as well as to Western Europe. There are over one thousand Dominican commercial sex workers in Spain and 3,675 in Switzerland. While the Ministry of Labor reported that sugar plantations no longer use child labor, the sugar industry has been cited as vulnerable for possible use of forced labor. A 2009 NGO study found of some 500 male Haitian construction workers interviewed, 21 percent reported experiencing forced labor in the Dominican Republic at some point, although not in their current jobs as construction workers. However, the December 2014 "List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor" reported 5 agricultural goods produced under such working conditions in the Dominican Republic, all of them involving child labor and one involving both child labor and forced labor. Street children and undocumented or stateless Haitian people – including the Dominican-born children and grandchildren of Haitian migrants – were vulnerable groups to trafficking. Child sex tourism is a problem, particularly in coastal resort areas, with child sex tourists arriving year-round from various countries.