U.S.  INSULAR AREAS
All forms of trafficking are believed to occur in the U.S. insular areas. In the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, during the reporting period, a child sex trafficker was convicted and sentenced to more than 24 years’ imprisonment.The Puerto Rico Police Department and DHS investigated this case, and DOJ prosecuted it in federal court.While three sections of Puerto Rico’s penal code address human trafficking and slavery, it has not been updated to reflect modern anti-trafficking laws. In the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), an anti-trafficking bill introduced in a previous session was not enacted. In 2014, HHS funded anti-trafficking training in Puerto Rico and USVI. In Guam, there was a Human Trafficking Task Force consisting of four committees: Outreach and Research, Intervention, Law Enforcement, and Victim Services.There was also a DOJ-led taskforce in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). There were no known human trafficking investigations, prosecutions, or victim identifications in American Samoa, CNMI, Guam, or USVI during the reporting period.

URUGUAY:  Tier 2 
Uruguay is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children exploited in forced labor and sex trafficking. Uruguayan women and girls—and to a more limited extent transgender and male youth—are exploited in sex trafficking within the country. Uruguayan women are forced into prostitution in Spain, Italy, Argentina, and Brazil, though numbers of identified Uruguayan victims exploited abroad have decreased in recent years.Women from the Dominican Republic, and to a lesser extent from South American countries, are exploited in sex trafficking in Uruguay. Foreign workers in domestic service, agriculture, and lumber processing are vulnerable to forced labor. Some foreign fishermen aboard foreign-flagged commercial boats that have docked in Uruguay have reported indicators of forced labor, such as nonpayment of wages and physical and verbal abuse. Uruguayan officials have identified citizens of other countries, including China and the Dominican Republic, transiting Uruguay en route to other countries, particularly Argentina, as potential victims of sex and labor trafficking.
The Government of Uruguay does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Authorities identified and assisted an increased number of potential foreign sex trafficking victims and achieved the country’s first reported conviction for labor trafficking. The lack of accurate data on trafficking investigations, prosecutions, and convictions made it difficult to assess the government’s overall law enforcement efforts. Government funding for victim services, particularly for lodging, continued to be inadequate.The extent of efforts to assist internal trafficking victims and investigate internal trafficking cases was unclear, in part because Uruguayan law defines human trafficking as a movement-based crime.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR URUGUAY:
Intensify efforts to investigate and prosecute all forms of trafficking and hold traffickers accountable through convictions and sufficiently stringent sentences; pass and enact a law that prohibits all forms of trafficking and specifically criminalizes prostitution of children as child sex trafficking; increase funding for and availability of specialized services for trafficking victims; continue to increase training for law enforcement officials, labor inspectors, prosecutors, judges, and social workers on how to identify and assist victims of sex and labor trafficking; implement a data collection system to maintain official statistics on law enforcement efforts and victim identification; create and implement formal guidelines for additional government officials to identify trafficking victims among vulnerable populations, including people in prostitution and migrant workers; and publish and implement a national action plan.

PROSECUTION
The government convicted two labor traffickers, but made mixed progress on other law enforcement efforts. Article 78 of the immigration law, enacted in 2008, prohibits only transnational forms of trafficking, prescribing penalties of four to 16 years’ imprisonment, which are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with punishments prescribed for other serious crimes.This article establishes the use of violence, intimidation, deceit, or abuse of the vulnerability of the victim as an aggravating factor rather than an essential element of the crime. Articles 280 and 281 of the penal code prohibit forced labor occurring within Uruguay’s borders, prescribing sentences ranging from two to 12 years’ imprisonment for reducing a person to slavery or for imprisonment for the purposes of profiting from the coercive use of the victim’s services. Authorities can use sexual exploitation or pimping statutes to prosecute domestic sex trafficking cases; some of these statutes prescribe lesser sentences that can be commuted to community service or fines.Two judges in the specialized court on organized crime in Montevideo had jurisdiction over all trafficking cases carried out by organized criminal groups of three or more individuals; this court lacked sufficient staffing and funding. Some trafficking cases meeting these guidelines were not referred to this court by local officials. All other trafficking cases were heard by local courts with less expertise in human trafficking.
The government did not collect comprehensive data on anti- trafficking law enforcement efforts and had no system for tracking court cases. Uruguayan officials reported investigating two transnational sex trafficking cases in 2014, but did not report how many internal trafficking investigations were initiated during the year. A prosecutor and a judge determined there was insufficient evidence to investigate claims of labor trafficking of African fishermen aboard a Chinese-flagged vessel, ruling that any potential abuse occurred out of Uruguay’s jurisdiction. Notably, not all potential victims in this case were interviewed.The labor ministry brokered an agreement between the Chinese company and the fishermen to cover back pay and the fishermen’s return to their countries of origin. The government initiated the

prosecutions of five suspected sex traffickers in two cases in 2014; both cases involved Dominican victims.The organized crime court convicted two traffickers for labor trafficking in 2014; after appeal, the sentences were reduced to 24 months’ and 10 months’ imprisonment, below the mandatory minimum under Article 78. The government did not report if either sentence was suspended. In comparison, authorities did not report any trafficking convictions in 2013. The government did not report any other prosecutions or convictions despite numerous press reports of possible trafficking investigations in recent years.The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking offenses. The government provided training to law enforcement, immigration, and judicial officials on human trafficking, including in partnership with an international organization. Authorities reported collaboration with foreign governments on an unspecified number of trafficking investigations in 2014.