human cargo
People as freight
Human cargo refers to people being transported, often in dehumanizing conditions.
The phrase most commonly describes victims of human trafficking or smuggling—people packed into shipping containers, truck beds, or boat holds: Border agents discovered human cargo in the back of the tractor-trailer.
The term deliberately echoes the language of freight transport, emphasizing how traffickers treat people as commodities.
Historically, it also describes the enslaved Africans transported during the Atlantic slave trade.
- traffickingIllegal transport for profit
- slave tradeCommerce in human beings
- slavesPersons owned by others
- smugglingIllegal covert transport
- holdMaintain in grasp
ship · passage · transport · shackles · captive · refugees · migrants · voyage · packed like sardines · chains · crossing · exploitation · desperate · crowded · suffocating · border · coyote · false papers
- slaverychattel slavery, enslaved, slave, enslavement, slave traders
- smugglingcontraband, smugglers, smuggling rings, people smuggling, smuggle
- slave tradeslave markets, slave auction, slave ships, slave trader, slave auctions
- human smugglingcoyotes, snakeheads, smuggling networks, smuggling rings, smuggling routes
- stowawaysstowaway, train hopper
- illegal migrantsillegal alien, undocumented immigrant, undocumented worker
human cargogoods
Things for sale
merchandise · commodities · raw materials · freight · bulk cargo
human, cargo, humans, humane, humanly, humanity, inhuman, inhumane, superhuman