The forms of trafficking outlined above exist at the hands of a wide variety of actors. Traffickers include known and unknown persons, state and non state actors. The limited information available on traffickers and their modus operandi suggests that small and large criminal organizations largely contribute to trafficking, but do not control the entire market.
Private actors
The networks that facilitate and maintain trafficking for sexual
exploitation involve a variety of private sectors, including
transportation, tourism, media/communications, entertainment and
legal.
. Taxi drivers, rickshaw drivers (tricicleros), and truck drivers
participate in the movement of women and children to and
between places of exploitation. Often, drivers add to the
exploitation by forcing sexual favors for their service. They
may also be engaged as recruiters, working under agreements
with establishment owners or independently.
. Throughout the region, the media was a noted method of
recruitment through classified and radio advertisements.
Increasingly, the Internet is being used to support and
encourage the demand for commercial sexual services,
through web based tourism operations, sex tourism guides and
chat rooms.
. Hotels and motels are often used as "safe houses" for those in
a migration process (which may be for the purpose of sexual
exploitation) and also to support prostitution.
. The legal profession has been implicated in trafficking
activities by arranging for false documentation to allow
children to travel without parental permission and fixing
immigration status in destination countries. In Nicaragua,
researchers were told that fifteen attorneys were suspended in
2001 for producing fraudulent documents to allow minors to
leave the country. Lawyers have also been tied to trafficking
in Panama and Costa Rica, where fraudulent marriages are
used to arrange resident status of predominantly Dominican
women.
. Owners and managers of the bars, nightclubs and brothels
where trafficked women and minors are exploited and pressed
into sexual servitude most obviously participate in the
trafficking. Owners receive and control the majority of profits
from trafficking, money which secures the owner's position in
the community and guarantees a certain degree of impunity.
At the moment, the tourism industry and associated
transportation services are the only sectors beginning to participate in
efforts to combat trafficking related to child sex tourism and child
prostitution.
In Costa Rica, for example, the government tourism
institute has launched a campaign against child sexual exploitation in
partnership with the Association of Costa Rican Hotels (Camara
Costarricense de Hoteles). Several hotels in San Jose, Costa Rica also
organized a campaign against such behavior, posting public warnings
that child sexual exploitation would not be tolerated.
Public actors
In many cases, immigration, police and other civil servants aid
traffickers. Public participation has been identified in providing
fraudulent birth certificates and other documents, arranging for illegal
border crossings, protecting bar and brothel owners from investigation
or prosecution, and becoming clients.