San Diego County, one of the nation's most active hubs for human trafficking, is building a new program that would have survivors help other survivors find their way to safety and stable lives.
The county is hiring a community-based organization to deploy peer navigators, people with their own lived experience of trafficking, commercial sex, or underground labor exploitation, to guide vulnerable individuals through a system that has often been fragmented and hard to navigate. The goal is to move people toward lasting stability, away from trafficking and dangerous work, by triaging them to the right level of care.
The county's geography makes the stakes plain. San Diego sits on the busiest international border crossing in the world, ringed by military installations, a booming tourism economy, and a homeless population of more than 10,000. The FBI has consistently ranked the city among the top in the country for sex trafficking. Labor trafficking, often invisible by comparison, runs through agriculture, hospitality, and domestic work. Advocates have long argued that law enforcement sweeps, while generating headlines, often ensnare victims rather than connect them to help.
This program leans in the opposite direction. Rather than relying on police referrals, it would meet people where they are through peers they're more likely to trust.
The funding structure may be the most significant part of the story. San Diego County plans to leverage Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, to help sustain the program. That's possible because of California's sweeping CalAIM Medi-Cal overhaul, which in recent years made peer support specialists and community health workers reimbursable services under Medicaid for the first time. Counties can now draw down federal matching dollars for this kind of work, replacing what once relied entirely on grants that can disappear. That matters especially now: the Trump administration has proposed cuts to the federal Office on Trafficking in Persons and related HHS grant programs, making state and Medi-Cal pathways a more durable foundation.
The county is reserving the contract for small local businesses, a deliberate choice to steer work toward grassroots organizations embedded in the communities they serve. San Diego has a dense ecosystem of anti-trafficking nonprofits, including groups like GenerateHope and Free to Thrive, many of them small enough to qualify.
The solicitation is posted through the county's purchasing office, updated as of June 30, 2026. The county has not yet disclosed a contract value or timeline for selecting a provider.
