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 California
Labor trafficking involves trafficking persons—through "recruitment, harboring, or transportation"—with the intent to use them for labor-related services. Common examples of labor trafficking can include domestic servitude, janitorial work, factory labor, agricultural work (primarily including migrants), alongside construction work. Classified as a form of modern-day slavery, labor trafficking is a subset of human trafficking, which is defined by the U.N. as: