Palermo Global Consulting

Joseph Salavarria

CEO & Founder

Joseph Salavarria is a retired Special Agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

A veteran agent for twenty-three years, he was a lead investigator for one of the first prosecutions nationwide to employ the sex trafficking statutes enacted under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and for a widely recognized labor trafficking investigation involving multiple victims from west Africa.

His experience includes leading numerous other successful investigations involving human smuggling, sex trafficking, forced labor and labor trafficking.  He has conducted extensive overseas work in connection with these transnational investigations and testified at trial multiple times. He has been recognized by the Attorney General of the United States for his investigative and prosecutorial work to combat international human trafficking.

Mr. Salavarria was assigned to the HSI National Academy as a senior instructor and course developer for the basic special agent course and the advanced training on Human Smuggling and Human Trafficking.  As an instructor and a recognized subject matter expert for global trafficking in persons (TIP), he has provided guidance and instruction to law enforcement and NGO personnel in the Americas and in Asia and has instructed at the International Law Enforcement Academies in El Salvador and in Hungary.

Mr. Salavarria has worked as a technical training consultant for the U.S. State Department in grant-funded programs in Costa Rica, Jamaica and Pakistan, with the U.S. Department of Justice in International Criminal Investigation Training programs in Kenya and as a subject matter consultant for litigation . Mr. Salavarria has also taught on the subject of Global Human Trafficking as an adjunct instructor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Mr. Salavarria is currently a part-time instructor with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s Behavioral Sciences Division.