Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act

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 move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2664) to direct the Secretary of Labor to train certain Department of Labor personnel how to effectively detect and assist law enforcement in preventing human trafficking during the course of their primary roles and responsibilities, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 2664.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2664, the Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act.

Labor trafficking is the illegal exploitation of an individual for commercial gain. It knows no geological limits. It happens across our country and around the globe, including in my home State of Michigan.

Victims of labor trafficking are not a uniform group of people. Victims are young children, teenagers, men, and women.

In my home State of Michigan, the National Human Trafficking Hotline reported over 38 cases in 2016 involving labor trafficking. This is a 52 percent increase in the number of reported cases since 2015.

Globally, the International Labor Organization estimates there are 21 million people trapped in forced labor.

The growing number of human trafficking cases is alarming and more needs to be done to identify victims, catch traffickers, and end this form of modern-day slavery.

In the course of inspecting workplace safety and labor law compliance within the United States, Department of Labor employees often have a front line to view and to identify patterns of labor exploitation. Providing these employees with the proper training to detect and respond to the signs of human trafficking is an important part of the larger comprehensive effort to eradicate this unthinkable crime.

The Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act would ensure the Department has a formal framework in place to detect trafficking and refer cases to law enforcement for prosecution.

Specifically, H.R. 2664 would:

Direct the Department of Labor to train appropriate staff on how to effectively detect instances of human trafficking;

Ensure personnel regularly receive information on current trends and best practices;

Allow flexible training options, including in-class and virtual learning options;

Establish a clear course of action for referring suspected instances of human trafficking to law enforcement; and

Require an evaluation and report to Congress on the implementation of the training and the metrics used to measure and track the agency's response to human trafficking.

Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest obstacles we face in the fight against human trafficking is awareness. H.R. 2664 will ensure Department of Labor employees have the right training so that they recognize and effectively respond to this modern-day slavery.

I also thank Ranking Member Sablan for his bipartisan support and work on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), the distinguished chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Costello).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Lance).

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

Mr. Speaker, each year millions of men, women, and children are trafficked around the world, including in the United States. It is important that we combat this epidemic.

The Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act is truly a bipartisan bill that will ensure that those who are in the field have knowledge, skills, and tools that they need to identify instances of human trafficking, assist victims, and properly refer cases so perpetrators can be brought to justice.

I would like to reiterate my appreciation to Representative Sablan for his support and work on this important issue. This is truly a bipartisan issue. It is an American issue. It is a human issue.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 2664, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2664, a bill to assist the United States Department of Labor in identifying and preventing cases of human trafficking.

I thank Chairman Walberg for his leadership on this issue and for introducing this legislation of which I am an original cosponsor. As chair and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions of the Education and the Workforce Committee, Mr. Walberg and I have found common ground on a number of important issues facing the American people, and human trafficking is one of them.

We may think that human trafficking is something that occurs in far- off countries. And, yes, according to the International Labor Organization, there are 21 million men, women, and children around the world who are currently subjected to forced labor. Unfortunately, however, the injustice of human trafficking happens right here at home in the United States as well.

Polaris, a nonprofit that operates the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline here in the United States received reports of over 8,000 cases of human trafficking in our country last year, an increase of 35 percent over the year before.

I have seen cases of this terrible scourge firsthand in my own district, the Northern Mariana Islands. A number of construction companies lured foreign workers to come to the Marianas with false promises and misrepresentations about pay and conditions.

The companies then withheld the employees' wages and confiscated their passports. The workers were subjected to horrible working conditions, crowded unsanitary barracks with barely enough food and water. They were forced to work in unsafe conditions, suffering serious injuries without access to adequate medical care. There was even a workplace fatality.

To their credit, the Department of Labor's OSHA and Wage and Hour divisions have worked to address these injustices, issuing fines and citations, recovering back wages. But we need to identify human traffickers and prevent cases like this before they happen.

That is the purpose of our bill, the Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act. H.R. 2664 directs the Department of Labor to train appropriate Department staff on how to detect human trafficking, and ensure that these staff people get regular updates on how traffickers are adjusting to avoid detection.

Our bill establishes training for a clear course of action for referring cases of suspected human trafficking to the Department of Justice and other appropriate authorities so these offenders are prosecuted.

And the bill requires the Department to report back to Congress within a year on the progress that is being made because Congress needs to do more than simply enact programs with lofty goals. We also need to build in mechanisms to tell us whether our programs are working as intended.

Mr. Speaker, the Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act will, I believe, give the Department of Labor the tools and resources it needs to combat human trafficking. I ask my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bill.

I would like to also thank the leadership of the House, especially Chairwoman Virginia Foxx and Ranking Member Bobby Scott of the Education and the Workforce Committee, for moving this bill to the floor. And again, I thank my friend, Chairman Walberg, for his leadership in this important area of public policy.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass).

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I urge all my colleagues to please support, vote ``aye'' on H.R. 2664.

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