Empowering Law Enforcement to Fight Sex Trafficking Demand Act

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank the chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee for the work that we have done in a bipartisan manner on human trafficking, sex trafficking. Let me thank the gentlewoman, the sponsor, and the cosponsor, Mr. Clay, for their leadership on this legislation and for recognizing that we must give direction, as Members of the United States Congress, to how grants are to be utilized. This is a very, very important initiative to be able to help our law enforcement.

Let me give you the real life of some of those who have been sex- trafficked.

The life of Esperanza: She was waiting for a cousin outside her high school in Mexico one day when a strange man drove up in a car and forced her inside with him and sped way. At that moment, Esperanza had, in effect, become a sex slave. ``He beat me; he raped me,'' she told

Mr. Speaker, second, we must provide our law enforcement with the necessary tools to fight the epidemic.

I would like to thank Agent Roskey, our fervent Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, and chiefs before him for their entire effort and collaboration. Houston law enforcement has been working diligently, but they have limited funds.

To be able to use the Byrne grants in this effective way to save one more life, to stop another little girl from detouring from high school involuntarily and then be steered off, become pregnant, and no mercy given, driven to another country to continue to be utilized, abused, victimized, beaten, I think this legislation clearly speaks to the millions of little girls and boys who are not in line but apt to be victims from all over the world coming to the United States, finding themselves in hot points, victimized, and maybe even tragically losing their life.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss H.R. 2480, the ``Empowering Law Enforcement to Fight Sex Trafficking Demand Act of 2017.''

This bill would amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to include an additional permissible use of amounts provided as grants under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, also known as the Byrne JAG Program, to combat human trafficking (including programs to reduce the demand for trafficked persons).

This legislation was introduced by Representative Vicky Hartzler (R- MO) on May 17, 2017 and I am proud to be a Co-Sponsor in this step forward to addressing concerns about sex trafficking in our cities.

Sadly, Sex Trafficking, like labor trafficking, is a modern-day form of slavery that includes U.S. citizens, foreign nationals, women, men and children as victims equally.

The epidemic of this abhorrent practice of sex trafficking is growing, which makes the need for consideration of all measures to help law enforcement prevent these crimes from occurring even more imperative.

First, sex trafficking occurs nationwide, and data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline show that reports of human trafficking cases have almost doubled in most states, including Texas, from 372 reported cases in 2012 to 670 reported cases in 2016; with sex trafficking accounting for more than 75% of all human trafficking cases reported.

Too often, thousands of young people--overwhelmingly women--have been kidnapped around the world and taken against their will to the United States, where they serve as sex slaves and become victims of these horrendous crimes--especially children--whom are afraid to seek help from law enforcement because of the risk that they will be treated as criminals rather than the victims they undoubtedly are.

Take Esperanza for example. She was waiting for her cousins outside of her high school in Mexico one day, when a strange man drove up in a car, forced her inside with him and sped away. At that moment, Esperanza had in effect become a sex slave.

Esperanza was an innocent child when she first became a victim of sex trafficking. Her 47 year old trafficker brought her to a madam at a Cantina, who taught her how to have sex with adult men for profit, and the trafficker would beat and rape this young child whenever she tried to escape.

Eventually Esperanza became pregnant and was driven across the Mexico-U.S. border onto Houston, Texas my congressional district, where her baby was taken by her perpetrator as insurance, in order to force Esperanza into his world of sex slave trade.

Like so many children living the daily nightmare of human trafficking, Esperanza was terrified to tell anyone what was occurring. ``I really wanted to speak up, to ask the police for help,'' Esperanza said. ``But I got caught up by the threats he would make towards my daughter. I didn't want anything to happen to her.''

After waiting for this horrific nightmare to end, Esperanza eventually was rescued in a raid of the Cantina, thanks to the bravery and steadfast approach of Houston's finest, like Agent Steve Roskey, a native Houstonian, then with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in Houston.

Esperanza's prayers were answered because once she started telling Agent Roskey and the other Houston officers her story of how she got here, what she was forced to do, the identification of her trafficker and the taking of her baby, Houston's finest and Agent Roskey immediately started knocking on the perpetrator's family members' houses, knocked on his friends' houses, and after the family and friends became irritated, they eventually dropped off the child to a cousin. The child was safe.

Thankfully, although traumatized, Esperanza survived the horrors of human trafficking but not all victims are as fortunate because there are many sad stories laced in this practice, which is why these unfortunate victims, like Esperanza, who fall prey to human trafficking, should absolutely not be treated as criminals for their involvement in these sex, and labor acts.

Second, we must provide our law enforcement with the necessary tools to fight this epidemic. I would like to thank Agent Steve Roskey, our fervent Houston Police Chief, Art Acevedo, his entire department, and various other entities for all the hard work they are doing daily to combat this epidemic in sex trafficking.

Houston's law enforcement are working diligently to take our city back from the grips of those who seek to perpetuate this appalling practice of sex trafficking.

Like Houston, law enforcement everywhere are fighting mightily oftentimes, with limited funds to crush the glaring statistics reported across this country by the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Hence we must provide them with meaningful resources to make this goal a reality, and ensure that victims are not penalized for the illegal enterprise of the traffickers that exploit them.

This is why we must empower our law enforcements everywhere, through the Byrne JAG Program, to fight the demand for sex trafficking by supporting this bill.

Finally, we understand it is already possible for state and local jurisdictions to use JAG Grant Program funding to combat human trafficking, including demand reduction, under the current purpose areas.

However, I support adding an additional purpose area for these grants that emphasizes the need to fund initiatives that target and fight human trafficking, as proposed under this bill.

H.R. 2480 will ensure that state and local law enforcement agencies have the funds needed to implement more programs to combat human trafficking such as that which occurred at the Cantina in Esperanza's case and all the trafficked victims rescued there that day.

The addition of this purpose area would allow state and local jurisdictions to target and penalize buyers who drive the demand for sex acts, human trafficking, and sexual exploitation; including the demand for sex trafficking involving children.

An example of a project that could be funded by the addition of this purpose area is training for a multi-jurisdictional task force to conduct proactive stings on buyers in an effort to combat human trafficking, like the Cantina raid in my home district in Houston.

Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguish gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass), a member of the Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, who has a long history of dealing with the vulnerable children, children who have been in the foster care system, and a leading voice on the issue of sex and human trafficking.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay), a colleague of the sponsor of the bill, Mrs. Hartzler from Missouri. I thank him for his leadership on the issues of sex trafficking and human trafficking.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me thank the sponsor of this bill for her leadership. I am delighted to work with her as a cosponsor. And the speakers on the outside who are cosponsors, I thank them for their important contribution.

I simply want to take this time to close and to say to all of us: Don't forget the Esperanzas--plural--and their little boys as well, who are sex trafficked. Let us not forget them.

The addition of this purpose area added to the Byrne grants would allow States and local jurisdictions to target and penalize buyers who drive the demand for sex acts, human trafficking, and sexual exploitation, including demand for sex trafficking involving children. An example of a project that could be funded by the addition of this purpose area is training for a multijurisdictional task force to conduct proactive stings on buyers in an effort to combat human trafficking, just like what was done at the cantina raid in my home community in Houston.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officer was one of those who helped bring this cantina, this substitute for sex trafficking kingpin down, and saved Esperanza.

Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2200) to reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the right word for the type of slavery we see today, the type of human trafficking that is slavery, is to focus on the fact that this is indentured servitude. This is human slavery, and traffickers around the world increasingly exploit over a million individuals--I am talking about women and children--in sex trafficking for commercial gain.

According to credible estimates, if we add to that those who are engaged in forced labor, that number that are actually enslaved is some 20 million. It is a coercive, multibillion-dollar industry that destroys families, destroys communities, strengthens brutal criminal networks, and tramples human dignity.

This plague is really global. It is not limited to the developing world. At a regular meeting of the Human Trafficking Congressional Advisory Committee I set up in southern California

nearly 4 years ago, I have met with brave survivors who endured forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation in my home State of California.

I think of Angela Guanzon locked into her abusive workplace, sleeping on the hallway floor. I think of Carissa Phelps being sold on the streets of Fresno at the age of 12 by a very violent pimp.

Meeting them and having them testify showed me and many others that the horror of trafficking lies not in statistics, but in stolen lives. In the words of the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, enslavement is such an affront to human conscience that, in his words, `` . . . to expose it, is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.''

Exposing the harsh reality of human trafficking to international daylight is a central tenet of the legislation here that we are reauthorizing today.

In the late 1990s, under the leadership of Congressman Chris Smith, the author of today's bill, the Foreign Affairs Committee initiated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which became law in 2000. That law created the annual Trafficking in Persons Report and the country tier rankings that put the issue on the radar screens of world governments for the first time and every year thereafter.

I was proud to have supported that legislation. It created the possibility of sanctions against the worst offenders. It also established law enforcement and other domestic initiatives to combat trafficking within the United States, which have been refined in the multiple reauthorizations that have followed.

The law has produced notable successes. More than 120 countries, in fact, have now enacted antitrafficking laws, and many are improving their prosecution and conviction of those who are involved in trafficking. Countless lives have been improved and have been saved as a result.

In the TIP Report released 2 weeks ago, 27 countries were upgraded to a higher tier, and that is progress. But sustained pressure and scrutiny are needed. Enacting a law is not the same thing as enforcing it, and, unfortunately, 21 countries slipped to a lower tier in last year's report.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 2200, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act, which continues and updates our fight against human trafficking. It extends until 2021 the current authorizations for our international and domestic programs, which expire at the end of September. It also contains multiple reforms and refinements to U.S. programs, and it strengthens the annual TIP Report and tier rankings.

I am pleased that this bill incorporates the text of a bill of mine, H.R. 1625, the TARGET Act, which I introduced earlier this year and the House passed in March. This important provision turns the tables on international traffickers by authorizing the State Department to offer and publicize bounties for their arrest and for their conviction.

I again want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass) for introducing this strong, bipartisan bill. I also want to thank the other seven committees of referral for the input and assistance they provided on the portions of the bill within their jurisdiction.

H.R. 2200 is a critical contribution to the cause of human freedom and the cause of human dignity. It deserves our unanimous support.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Committee on Foreign Affairs,

Washington, DC, July 10, 2017.

Hon. William M. ``Mac'' Thornberry,

Chairman, House Armed Services Committee,

Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Thornberry: Thank you for consulting with the

Foreign Affairs Committee and agreeing to be discharged from

further consideration of H.R. 2200, the Frederick Douglass

Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization

Act of 2017, so that the bill may proceed expeditiously to

the House floor.

I agree that your forgoing further action on this measure

does not in any way diminish or alter the jurisdiction of

your committee, or prejudice its jurisdictional prerogatives

on this resolution or similar legislation in the future. I

would support your effort to seek appointment of an

appropriate number of conferees from your committee to any

House-Senate conference on this legislation.

I will seek to place our letters on H.R. 2200 into the

Congressional Record during floor consideration of the bill.

I appreciate your cooperation regarding this legislation and

look forward to continuing to work together as this measure

moves through the legislative process.

Sincerely,

Edward R. Royce,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). He is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, and, of course, he is the author of the original Trafficking Victims Protection Act. He is also the author of this bill today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman

from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would just mention, Mr. Speaker, that 20 years ago, human trafficking was unknown, I think, to most Americans and there was little public awareness of the severity of what we are calling here today modern-day slavery.

Seventeen years ago, Congress led on this issue by passing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. We had very strong bipartisan support, and the rankings, the sanctions, the programs created by that law have been instrumental in building the momentum and awareness that exists out there today. And with each reauthorization, those laws have been fine-tuned, they have been strengthened. This bill continues that tradition. It is time to recommit ourselves to this noble fight against slave-like labor and sexual exploitation of underage children.

I have asked some of the victims why it is that so many of these criminal gangs move from drug running and other kinds of activity into this kind of behavior, and part of the response is: Because, you know, in a drug war, a gang member can get himself killed, but it is a lot easier to exploit a 14-year-old underage girl, it is a lot easier to be in that kind of business than it is in the more dangerous business.

We have got to overcompensate for this reality by passing legislation which allows these additional tools to be used to close down these criminal syndicates and to create real deterrence for those gang members who consider going into this line of work.

So I thank Mr. Smith, Congresswoman Karen Bass, and all my fellow cosponsors on this bill. It deserves our strong support.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman Ed Royce for yielding. I thank him for his leadership on trafficking, for this bill in particular, for the markup, and for all of the assistance he provided. I also thank Eliot Engel, our ranking member. I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

I want to thank Karen Bass, the lead Democrat on the bill, for her exceptional leadership and her collaboration on this legislation.

I want to thank Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McCarthy. I have to say--and I have been working on human trafficking since about 1995, chaired probably more than 30 hearings and written four laws--I have never seen such a deep commitment to fighting trafficking and protecting victims

than our leadership. It is unparalleled and it is inspired.

Kevin McCarthy helped ensure timely consideration. There are eight committees of referral. Sometimes that is a death knell for any bill. It is so hard to secure agreements and vote them out. Well, each of those chairmen and their staffs worked diligently and in good faith. At the end of the day, the leadership was there. They had our back on the legislation.

I want to thank Chairman Royce, again, for his extraordinary leadership as well.

Mr. Speaker, ever since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 became law in 2000, combating human trafficking has been a major priority in the United States and, indeed, globally.

Over the last 17 years, police and civil society organizations--many of them faith based--have identified and rescued more than 250,000 victims worldwide. Some put that number at close to 300,000. Prosecution of traffickers in the U.S. has increased by more than 500 percent, but, frankly, our task is far from accomplished.

The International Labor Organization suggests that nearly 21 million people in the world today are enslaved, most of them women and children. That is unconscionable. Every human life is of infinite value. We have a duty to protect the weakest and most vulnerable from harm.

The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2017 is comprehensive. It is bipartisan, and it is designed to strengthen, expand, and create new initiatives to protect victims, prosecute traffickers, and prevent this cruelty and exploitation from happening in the first place.

Title I of the bill focuses on combating trafficking in the United States. Title II focuses on the world. Title III authorizes appropriations of more than half a billion dollars over 4 years, including reauthorization of the TVPA of 2000.

The legislation, Mr. Speaker, is named in honor of the incomparable Frederick Douglass on the eve of his 200th birthday. Born a slave in 1818, he escaped when he was 20 and heroically dedicated his entire life to abolishing slavery and, after emancipation, to ending the Jim Crow laws in order to achieve full equality for African-American citizens. A gifted orator, author, editor, statesman, and Republican, he died in 1895.

Human trafficking, Mr. Speaker, is modern-day slavery that needs a Herculean effort to eradicate.

Among its numerous provisions and one that is of special interest to the Frederick Douglass Family Initiative--and we worked very closely with them on this--it authorizes HHS grant money to ``establish, expand, and support programs'' to provide age appropriate information to students all across America to avoid becoming victims of sex and labor trafficking as well as to educate school staff to recognize and respond to signs of trafficking.

It adopts a number of best practices, like for example making sure that when government employees book rooms, that we utilize hotels where they have initiated efforts and sponsored training to eradicate child sex trafficking. We do the same thing with airlines. The flight attendants--Delta is a classic example--once trained, can spot trafficking in progress, inform the pilot, and when that plane lands or jet lands, ensure that if there is a situation, there is an arrest of the traffickers and a rescue of the woman or children who are being trafficked.

We will now try, to the best of our ability, to hold the airlines to account. There needs to be reporting. It is already the law that they should provide this training. Now we want to ensure that training actually happens.

Chairman Royce talked about the TIP Report. Just a couple weeks ago, Secretary Tillerson announced the 2017 TIP Report. It is a voluminous and very accurate report about what is happening in 190 countries around the world, including the United States. Those countries that are designated Tier 3, egregious violator, are subject to sanctions.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to commend the Trump administration for finally holding China to account as a Tier 3 violator. A worst offender.

The pending bill makes a number of important reforms to the TIP Report and how it is prepared. My hope is that we will have an even better, more accurate, and more effective effort at holding countries to account.

Again, this legislation applies to the United States for labor and sex trafficking as well as to the world. Again, I do want to thank all those who have been involved in it.

Let me just say we worked on this bill for well over a year with ATEST; Polaris; IJM; World Vision; United; Humanity; ECPAT; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Shared Hope International; CATW; Ambassador Swanee Hunt; the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which provided valuable insight; and others. They were all very much a part of our effort.

I also want to thank critical staff, including Luke Murray and Kelly Dixon, from the Majority Leader's Office, who are outstanding--they get the job done, and they ask all the right questions about substance and process and helped us along--Doug Anderson, counsel of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs; Mary Noonan; my chief of staff, Piero Tozzi; Allison Hollabaugh; Krystal Williams, Karen Bass' staff member; and so many others on the committees that also made such a huge difference in enabling us to get this through all the committees to the floor today.

I urge my colleagues to pass the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2200, a bill to reauthorize $130 million in currently appropriated funds in order to continue, over the next 4 years, critical and necessary work to fight sex and labor trafficking. This bill builds upon the remarkable work of the original Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the cornerstone of Federal human trafficking legislation.

I want to thank my colleagues Chairman Royce and especially Chairman Chris Smith for his pioneering leadership.

Despite great strides and the tremendous progress we have made in exposing and beginning to understand the complexities and growing obstacles of human trafficking, we still have much to do.

I am particularly thankful for the inclusion of my language in section 103, which provides a modification to grants for victims services in order to provide a necessary focus on young victims in the child welfare system. Specifically, this section will amend the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to address a key reason children and women have difficulty leaving their exploiter: the lack of housing. They have nowhere to go.

As with all antitrafficking measures, I am particularly concerned about what we are doing to combat the devastating epidemic of young girls in the foster care system falling prey to child exploitation and sex trafficking. The average age of a girl entering into sex trafficking is 12 years old.

In 2016, an estimated one out of six endangered runaways reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children were likely child sex trafficking victims. Of these reported victims, 86 percent were in the care of social services or foster care when they ran.

One seasoned detective in Los Angeles recently reported during a demonstration on law enforcement technology used to identify victims that every single girl he has ever encountered through sex trafficking or commercially exploited sex activity has been in the child welfare system.

It cannot be overstated that the purpose of the child welfare system is to protect children who are abused or neglected. It is our responsibility to make sure these children do not fall between the cracks. It is devastating to know that we have failed many of them.

Just as if one of our own children in our family went missing, a child that is under the care of the government that goes missing demands our most aggressive response and effort to find, save, and protect them.

Our most urgent priority should be disrupting the child welfare-to- trafficking pipeline and finding better, more effective ways to meet the critical needs of this vulnerable population. In particular, as we continue to tackle child sex trafficking in the United States, it is imperative that we provide a special focus on the immediate and long- term housing needs of at-risk foster youth. Young girls and disconnected youth have particular and sensitive needs as trafficking victims.

Current funding for housing and shelter for victims of child sex trafficking is insufficient to meet the growing demand for youth services, especially young foster girls exploited through their emotional and financial vulnerabilities. At every level of government, we have an urgent responsibility to shut down pathways for child sex trafficking and to invest in critical housing needs for vulnerable youth and girls. This responsibility includes supporting and adopting

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), who is the ranking member on the Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Gabbard).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Beatty).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Frankel).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the author of this important legislation, Mr. Chris Smith; and I thank Chairman Royce for bringing it to the floor. I support this bill and I encourage my colleagues to do so as well.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back that balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask for support for H.R. 2480, the Empowering Law Enforcement to Fight Sex Trafficking Demand Act.

I would like to thank Chairman Goodlatte and Ranking Member Conyers for their support, as well as Congresswoman Karen Bass, Congressman Steve Chabot, and Congressman William Lacy Clay from Missouri, my friend, who have all co-led this effort with me.

The Empowering Law Enforcement to Fight Sex Trafficking Demand Act expands the authority of the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grants Program, or Byrne JAG, to enable law enforcement agencies to compete for Federal funding specifically to develop and execute sex trafficking demand reduction programs. Adding this provision provides State and local agencies more flexibility in balancing precious resources to address sex trafficking.

Today, when many Americans hear the term ``sex trafficking,'' they might envision a young woman in Eastern Europe being abducted or a far- away brothel in Thailand. While both of these instances, sadly, happen, Americans must realize that sex trafficking happens in thousands of neighborhoods and cities all across our great country.

As recently as May, in the city of Springfield, Missouri, there were two

young girls, ages 13 and 14, that were recently rescued. Those two innocent girls were locked in a neighborhood home and forced to do drugs and engage in sexual acts for money. After some heroic police work, the man responsible was caught, but not before he robbed these two young girls of their innocence and confined them to years of mental torment.

This type of event occurs all too often and serves as a stark reminder that this horrendous crime can occur anywhere. It is a domestic problem that we cannot ignore.

Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Hotline has reported 22,191 sex trafficking cases in the United States, and countless cases remain unreported.

According to leading researchers and law enforcement agencies, one of the primary causes of sex trafficking is consumer-level demand for commercial sex. Sex traffickers have discovered that illicit support of commercial sex is a lucrative business. In 2014, the Urban Institute estimated that the underground sex economy ranged from $39.9 million in Denver, Colorado, to $290 million in Atlanta, Georgia.

Despite the fact that demand is the ultimate cause of commercial sexual exploitation of women and children, buyers are frequently overlooked as offenders in crimes of domestic sex trafficking. Recently, leaders in the law enforcement community have discovered that the only effective practices for combating sex trafficking are those that include combating demand for commercial sex.

There are two primary ways to directly influence actual and potential buyers of commercial sex, and these are termed ``demand reduction programs.'' They are: education of actual and potential buyers of commercial sex, and law enforcement interventions aimed at deterring those who might buy sex and punishing those who do.

Many law enforcement agencies execute demand reduction programs, such as reverse sting operations, john schools, and community education. However, resource limitations preclude them from expanding these efforts. This bill provides law enforcement expanded funding opportunities to support demand reduction efforts.

This is a huge step in the right direction because the Byrne JAG grant is the cornerstone Federal crime-fighting program, enabling communities to target resources to their most pressing local needs.

Byrne JAG's hallmark is its flexibility; thus, States and localities are able to deploy Byrne JAG funding against their most pressing public safety challenges, such as sex trafficking. This allows communities to design complete programs, fill gaps, leverage other resources, and work across city, county, and State lines.

The crime of sex trafficking rips through the fabric of our communities and our country. We as Members of Congress must shed light on this horrendous epidemic and provide our law enforcement agencies with adequate resources to attack this problem at its source. H.R. 2480 will do that. It is a bipartisan solution to a nationwide problem.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support this effort.