Human Trafficking and its Intersections with
Violence Against Women Issues

This session is geared towards audiences who are already trained in trafficking identification and protections. The session will address some of the common challenges encountered when actually working with trafficking victims: how to develop and improve relationships with law enforcement, how to work with large victim groups, and how to advocate for systems that will best help criminal justice professionals to reach more victims and effectively connect them with their legal rights. The session will include a component on immigration, including updates in the law and rules for an audience of immigration practitioners or those who are fairly familiar with immigration law. This session is designed for attorneys with moderate knowledge of human trafficking and crime victims’ rights.

Kavitha Sreeharsha is a Staff Attorney at Legal Momentum’s Immigrant Women Program. She works on policy advocacy for immigrant women, focusing on the intersection of family law and immigration law for domestic violence survivors and human trafficking. She trains extensively throughout the United States. She is also a leading policy advocate on immigration issues affecting women and children, with a focus on immigrant crime victims. She successfully drafted provisions of the recently-passed TVPRA of 2008.

Prior to joining Legal Momentum, Ms. Sreeharsha was the Domestic Violence Coordinator at Asian Pacific Islander (API) Legal Outreach in San Francisco. She practiced immigration and family law with an emphasis in serving API immigrant domestic violence and human trafficking survivors. Ms. Sreeharsha is the author of a California Judicial Council bench manual on Immigration and Domestic Violence and has served as faculty for the Administrative Office of the Courts and Center for Judicial Education and Research in California. Ms. Sreeharsha has lectured and trained extensively throughout the country. She is widely regarded as an expert in the intersection of family law, domestic violence, and immigration law.

For six years, Ms. Sreeharsha served on the Board of Directors of Narika, an agency serving South Asian women who are victims of violence. Kavitha has also served on the Board of the South Asian Bar Association and as a co-chair to the Asian American Bar Association Civil Rights Committee. Ms. Sreeharsha received her J.D. from U.C. Hastings and her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley. She is a recipient of several awards, including the 2004 Unity Award from the Coalition of Minority Bar Associations and the 2007 Tanya Nieman Award from Partners Ending Domestic Abuse.

This conference is supported by Grant No. 2008-DD-BX-K001 awarded by the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.