Washington, D.C. — September 22, 2025
Polaris announced today that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded the cooperative agreement for operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline to another organization. Polaris is committed to ensuring a smooth transition that prioritizes survivors of trafficking and continuity of care.
Although we are disappointed by this outcome, Polaris’s past performance is clear: over the past 18 years, Polaris has responded to more than 460,000 signals, uncovered over 112,000 trafficking cases, and identified more than 218,000 victims and survivors. We have always recognized that every call, text, and chat to the Hotline deserves to be heard with respect and care, and our staff and systems have ensured that hundreds of thousands of survivors and community members were connected to safety, services, or information.
We are proud to have helped so many people access safety planning, critical services, and law enforcement when needed. This impact is the direct result of the extraordinary dedication of more than 60 Hotline staff — some of whom are survivors themselves — who brought compassion, expertise, and resilience to every signal. Those signals have ranged from urgent crises to questions from concerned community members, and Polaris built systems to triage those signals so that survivors in need received timely, trauma-informed support. That legacy will continue, even as a new operator takes the lead.
That commitment will also continue in Polaris’s next chapter. For nearly two decades, we have built the systems, expertise, and survivor partnerships that made the Hotline a trusted lifeline. That experience will continue to guide our work as we strengthen the national response to trafficking.
“We were honored nearly twenty years ago to answer a survivor’s call for a trusted place where people experiencing trafficking could turn for help — the vision that became the Hotline,” said Megan Lundstrom, CEO of Polaris. “We are committed to stewarding this transition so that survivors remain at the center of this work. Our mission remains focused on ending human trafficking. That means carrying forward the knowledge, systems, and survivor partnerships we’ve built to strengthen the national response to trafficking in all its forms.”
“Polaris is and always has been more than the Hotline,” said Jean Gilbert, Board Chair of Polaris. “We will continue to take on the systems that allow human trafficking to persist, strengthen survivor leadership, and fill critical gaps in the national response. We are grateful to every survivor, advocate, and supporter who has been part of this journey. Together, we will keep moving forward in the fight against human trafficking.”
As Polaris prepares to transition Hotline operations, we are accelerating our work to confront the systems and conditions that allow human trafficking to persist. Drawing on the experience of the Hotline and decades of broader anti-trafficking initiatives, Polaris is prepared to take on the next frontlines of this fight and to advance a stronger, more coordinated national response to human trafficking.
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About Polaris: Polaris is a leader in the global fight to eradicate human trafficking. For more than 20 years, Polaris has partnered with survivors to build data-driven strategies, shift systems that enable exploitation, and create pathways to freedom and justice. Learn more at polarisproject.org.
Media Contact: media@polarisproject.org
