Katie Schelchter has just released her work.

March 22, 2018

Our 2017 fellow has worked on how Mexico’s Human Trafficking Laws Imprisons Women they Aim to Protect.

Katie Schlechter is a freelance print and radio journalist based in Mexico City. She reports on migration, LGBTQ issues, sex work, addiction, international law/policy as well as U.S. involvement in Latin America, past and present. Prior to freelance career, she completed her M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University.

* Project Synopsis: Mexico’s current law against human trafficking is being used to round up women, mostly migrants from Central America, working in cantinas and/or doing sex work in the southern state of Chiapas. Critics argue that the law places these women into one of two rigid categories, victims of trafficking or traffickers of others, even when little evidence supports either designation. While the international press has largely oversimplified the issue and praised the law’s crackdown on sex trafficking, migrant women are being deported and sentenced to prison for crimes that they have not committed.

*Committed Media Outlet: HuffPost

Works by Katie Schlechter:

Mexico’s Sex Trafficking Laws Are Hurting The People They’re Supposed To Protect, HuffPost, March 16, 2018