https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.axios.com/human-trafficking-sex-trafficking-trump-justice-0d006972-3df4-4a85-b1c0-9e3c8458d21a.html Efforts to combat human trafficking slow under Trump But prosecutions are down: The number of defendants charged with human trafficking by federal attorneys fell to 386 last year, from 553 in 2017, according to the State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. So far this year, federal attorneys have prosecuted 39% of the cases referred to them with child sex trafficking as the lead charge, according to data collected by Syracuse University.  That's down from 49% in the last year of the Obama administration. Investigations are also down: In 2018, the Justice Department opened just 657 trafficking investigations — down from a spike of 1,800 in FY 2016, per the TIP reports.