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In the world · Migration · 28 January 2026

Slave labor in 2025: 2,772 rescues and withheld documents

In 2025, Brazil's Labor Ministry rescued 2,772 people from slave-like labor, 68% in urban areas. Withholding a worker's papers is a crime. Where to report.

bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published

Brazil rescued 2,772 workers from conditions analogous to slavery in 2025, according to a report by the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) released on January 28, 2026, the National Day to Combat Slave Labor. There were 1,594 inspection operations and more than R$9 million in payments made to the victims. Unlike in previous years, most rescues, 68%, took place in urban areas. One of the forms the law recognizes as contemporary slavery is the quietest: withholding a worker's documents to keep them on the job.

What happened

The MTE report shows a 26.8% increase compared with 2024, when 2,186 people were found in these conditions. The sectors with the most rescues in 2025 were:

  • masonry work: 601 workers;
  • general public administration: 304;
  • building construction: 186;
  • coffee growing: 184;
  • stone extraction and crushing: 126.

In addition to those rescued, more than 48,000 workers had their rights secured by the inspections, even in cases where slavery was not established. In October 2025, the semiannual update of the Employers Register, the so-called "dirty list", added 159 new names. The Special Mobile Inspection Group, which turned 30 in May 2025, has rescued more than 66,000 people over three decades.

Brazilian law is explicit about documents. Since Law 10,803 of 2003, Article 149 of the Penal Code includes among the forms of reducing someone to a condition analogous to slavery the conduct of whoever "takes possession of the worker's documents or personal belongings, in order to keep them at the workplace". Law 5,553 of 1968 already prohibited withholding anyone's identification document.

Why it matters

The image of slave labor as something distant, on an isolated farm, is a thing of the past. The 2025 data show construction sites, workshops and services within cities. And contemporary slavery, as defined by law, does not depend on chains: exhausting hours, degrading conditions, debt that never ends and withheld documents are enough.

Withholding documents hits hardest those who depend on the document to exist in the country. For a migrant, losing a passport means losing the ability to prove who they are, to regularize their status, to open an account and to leave. That is why the rule that applies is the victim's: whoever had their document withheld is not an offender, whatever their migration status. The 2017 Migration Law says that migrating is not a crime.

Reports can be made, including anonymously, through the Labor Ministry's Sistema Ipê and through Disque 100 (the human rights hotline, dial 100). The Federal Public Defender's Office and the Labor Prosecution Service also take cases. The practical step-by-step is in My employer kept my passport: what should I do?.

In Bairo's view

For Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez, a Colombian who has lived in Brazil since 2002, this is a social issue that belongs to everyone. In his reading, the document is the most basic asset of someone arriving in a country: it is what allows them to work, rent, open a business and, when necessary, say no. For Bairo, whoever keeps another person's document keeps their freedom along with it.

He often says the sun is for everyone, but shade, in the heat, is for few. In his reading, urban slave labor is the harshest face of that sentence: people who work under everyone's sun and have no right to any shade at all. For Bairo, the immigrant who starts a business only exists when the free immigrant existed first. The story of how he came to Brazil, across the bridge of capoeira, is in Capoeira was the bridge.

Where this meets the ecosystem

SOSPROCESSOS, the legal analysis system founded by Bairo, proposes connecting those who need guidance to a lawyer quickly, like a service call. For a victim who does not know where to start, the proposal is to shorten the path to someone who knows the right channels. Guidance always comes from a lawyer, and reports are still made through the official channels.

qrqbits protects files, images and text with layered post-quantum cryptography. In Bairo's view, a secure copy of one's own document, kept by the person themselves, is a small defense against those who try to hold on to it. Copying the document does not replace the original or the report.

Sources

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