Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard established the Task Force for Human Trafficking Investigations and Enforcement Unit during fall 2025. This unit stands as Michigan’s first to work full-time investigating sex and labor trafficking tips. The Southfield and Madison Heights police departments joined as initial participants.
Between November 2024 and November 2025, the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office secured 52 convictions in 53 cases. That’s a 98 percent conviction rate. Twenty-two cases remain pending. The office managed 31 trafficking cases in 2025 compared to an average of eight such cases per 10 months across the previous four years.
“Before this ad hoc committee was formed in 2015, we had little knowledge of what human trafficking was,” Bouchard said, according to Downtown Publications. “And from an investigative standpoint, it was only into late 2025 that we finally had the necessary resources to create a focused, dedicated full-time unit working on sex and human trafficking.”
The National Human Trafficking Hotline reported 779 signals from Michigan in 2023, according to the Michigan Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Commission’s 2024 annual report. From those calls, 254 cases were confirmed. Authorities identified 506 victims. Since 2007, the state has received over 10,000 signals, confirmed almost 3,000 cases, and identified over 6,200 victims.
Attorney General Dana Nessel wrote in the report that the numbers are incomplete because many incidents go unreported. “Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery that needs to be addressed with more work, policy change, and education,” Nessel wrote, as reported by Downtown Publications.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald in September 2025 requested nearly $457,000 from the county. The money would fund two additional paralegals, an assistant prosecutor, and salary support for a chief. The prosecutor’s office in November 2024 held a two-day training seminar. Three hundred law enforcement, probation, parole, and medical professionals attended.
“When I was assistant prosecutor 25 years ago, you would get to court, and there would be a file with maybe a 10-page police report sometimes accompanied by a few photos,” McDonald said, as shared by Downtown Publications. “Now, you may have to work through flash drive’s worth of digital evidence.”
State Representatives Tom Kunse and Kelly Breen in September 2025 co-sponsored House Bill 5012 with over a dozen other policymakers. The legislation aims to punish minor traffickers more harshly. It also seeks to stop criminalizing minors swept into the industry.
“It’s embarrassing that Michigan is towards the bottom of the list when it comes to the protection, prevention, and penalization of those who have been coerced into sex and human trafficking,” Kunse said to Downtown Publications. Michigan received an F grade from Shared Hope International in 2023.