President Trump signs anti-human trafficking bills
by Timothy Charles Holmseth on January 10, 2019 at 11:55 A.M. CST
On January 9, 2019 The White House announced President Trump signed four bills in recent weeks that demonstrate the bipartisan commitment to end human trafficking.
“This is an urgent humanitarian issue. My administration is committed to leveraging every resource we have to confront this threat, to support the victims and survivors, and to hold traffickers accountable for their heinous crimes,” said President Donald J. Trump.
“The heinous crime of human trafficking is a horrific assault on human dignity that impacts people here in the United States and around the world,” the White House said.
WHITE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE BELOW
- Today, the President is signing the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (S. 1862) which tightens criteria for whether countries are meeting standards for eliminating trafficking.
- The President signed the Abolish Human Trafficking Act in December, which strengthens programs supporting survivors and resources for combating modern slavery.
- President Trump signed the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act, authorizing $430 million to fight sex and labor trafficking.
- The President signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (S. 1312), establishing new prevention, prosecution, and collaboration initiative to bring human traffickers to justice.
- In addition to these efforts, Congress needs to pass legislation that strengthens border security and prevents human trafficking in all forms.
GOVERNMENT-WIDE EFFORT: President Donald J. Trump has dedicated the full resources of his Administration to work towards ending human trafficking.
- The President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons is working across the United States Government to prosecute traffickers, protect victims, and prevent these crimes before they take place.
- In one of his first acts in office, President Trump signed an executive order to combat transnational criminal organizations that engage in international trafficking and exploit people.
- The Administration is fully enforcing our laws to ensure human traffickers receive the full measure of justice they deserve.
- In FY 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) made 1588 Human Trafficking arrests while identifying and assisting 308 victims of the same heinous crime. ICE-HSI also made over 4,000 criminal arrests for human smuggling violations.
- 1543 of the 1588 arrests HSI made in FY 2018 for human trafficking were for sex trafficking violations.
- The new United States Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) negotiated by President Trump includes tough forced-labor provisions.
- The Department of Labor has led efforts to combat child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking by cataloging goods made with forced labor and child labor and developing tools for companies and other stakeholders to address these abuses in their global supply chains.
- Reaffirming this Administration’s commitment to abolish modern slavery, President Trump proclaimed January 2019 as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
THE HUMAN TRAFFICKING THREAT: The heinous crime of human trafficking is a horrific assault on human dignity that impacts people here in the United States and around the world.
- There are nearly 25 million victims of human trafficking worldwide.
- In the United States, more than 8,500 human trafficking cases were reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline last year alone.
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