Efforts to Fight Human Trafficking Fully Engaged, Working

July 13, 2007

Efforts to Fight Human Trafficking Fully Engaged, Working

COLUMBUS, OH – Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (R-Columbus) today submitted the following editorial:

Eighteen months ago, America took a significant step forward in an effort to eradicate within its own borders a scourge against human and civil rights that continues to fester across the globe – the trafficking of humans. By utilizing a broad arsenal of federal resources, agencies and expertise, America initiated a domestic zero-tolerance policy against human trafficking, understanding that we cannot with clean conscience condemn nations where trafficking exists, when it tragically occurs within our own borders.

The horrors of human trafficking are manifest. Each year, hundreds of thousands of women and children across the planet are held captive in a hideous underworld of modern day slavery. They are the victims of sex trafficking -- humans bought and sold as commodities by brutal purveyors of prostitution, and shipped around the world like cargo to a life of incomprehensible despair and degradation. The trafficking of people is a $9 billion industry which recently equaled illegal arms dealing as the second fastest-growing criminal activity in the world, and is now the third largest source of income for organized crime.

Last January, Congress passed an international anti-trafficking bill called the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which included provisions that I authored to combat the problem of trafficking in the U.S. Among other things, these provisions provide grants to establish and expand assistance programs for victims of sex trafficking, help state and local law enforcement agencies initiate programs to investigate and prosecute sex trafficking cases, and promote more effective means of combating unlawful commercial sex activities by targeting demand for trafficked victims. As a result of this new law, more than $28 million was appropriated for these efforts in FY 2006.

The new domestic focus on trafficking falls under three general categories: prosecution, protection, and prevention. Prosecution, in particular, requires a collaborative effort among various federal agencies, such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S Attorneys’ Offices and the FBI, but also with state and local law enforcement. The nature of the human trafficking industry – secretive, underground and itinerant – requires that all governmental resources be engaged in enforcement efforts. To that end, federal agencies continue to increase funding and training for local law enforcement task forces, coalitions and outreach efforts across the U.S. to fight trafficking, and by the end of 2006, 27 states had passed anti-trafficking legislation.

The second component of America’s anti-trafficking effort focuses on protection. Beyond the obvious humanitarian and moral obligation to help women enslaved by sex traffickers, women ensnared in this underworld are less likely to try to extricate themselves from it if they are not offered assistance and protection to come forward to authorities. The Department of Health and Human Services has certified 1,175 victims of human trafficking in America from 77 different countries since October of 2000, and has contracted with 93 social services agencies to provide an array of “anytime, anywhere” services to help victims attempt to transition from this nightmare. The overriding goal is to reunite victims with their families, either here in the U.S. or in the home country from which they were pilfered or coercively removed.

Finally, so much incomprehensible human misery resulting from trafficking in persons could be averted through proven prevention strategies. Under the new domestic trafficking focus, an invigorated effort was launched to raise public awareness on the issue and to solicit the help of the American people to identify victims and blow the whistle on trafficking operations. A National Human Trafficking Resource Center information hotline has now received more than 4,000 calls, and we now utilize the Department of Defense and its vast network of military resources around the globe to stop the flow of trafficked persons.

America remains the planet’s beacon of liberty. We celebrate our nation’s historically progressive understanding of the supremacy of individual rights and the intrinsic nature of individuals to live free from oppression. And we should take pride in our most recent extension of these philosophies – our commitment to end the modern day form of slavery that is human trafficking, both across the globe and in our own backyard.

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