On March 26, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law held a hearing on “Legal Options to Stop Human Trafficking.”
Describing human trafficking as “commerce in human misery,” Chair Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced a short video about human trafficking to show the “human face” of the issue. In the video, a 24 year-old woman told her story of being trafficked into prostitution at the age of 13; she is now dying of HIV/AIDS. Following the video, Sen. Durbin noted that it has been seven years since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 (P.L. 106-386). He said that he intended to introduce legislation to “further the fight against human trafficking” and asked, “What progress has been made? What are we doing right? What can we do better?”
Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Grace Chung Becker stated that “the Civil Rights Division has undertaken a comprehensive, robust, and aggressive strategy that includes infiltration of the dark places of prostitution and forced labor, rescue of victims, and prosecution of perpetrators.” Ms. Becker cited a 2005 case in which two defendants were sentenced to 50 years in prison: “The defendants, who often lured the women into romantic relationships, used beatings, rapes, deception, psychological manipulation, and false promises to overcome the will of the victims, compel them into prostitution, and force them to turn over virtually all the proceeds to the defendants. The investigation revealed extensive sex trafficking activity between Mexico and the United States, prompting initiatives to coordinate multijurisdictional, multi-agency investigations.” She added, “Some of these young [trafficked] girls had children that they left behind in Mexico with the recruiters’ families. Our team worked with the Mexican government to rescue the children and reunite them with their mothers, who now have started a new life through the generous restorative care services provided through our partners at the Department of Health and Human Services.”
Ms. Becker said that the Civil Rights Division “has prosecuted 360 human trafficking defendants, secured almost 240 convictions and guilty pleas, and opened nearly 650 new investigations since 2001,” a six-fold increase from 1995-2000. She described two crucial elements of the Civil Rights Division: the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, which focuses on cases involving child sex trafficking, and the newly-formed Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit, which “provides training, technical assistance and coordination” with the 42 locally-based Anti Trafficking Task Forces. Ms. Becker highlighted the collaboration of the Civil Rights Division, non-governmental service providers, and the Department of Health and Human Services to “ensure the victims’ safety and housing, to see that their medical and psychiatric needs are taken care of, and to cooperate in normalizing their immigration status to assist the prosecution and to prevent retaliation if they were to return home.”
Noting that “approximately 14,500-17,500 men, women, and children are trafficked in the United States every year,” National Immigration Justice Center Supervising Attorney Katherine Kaufka pointed out that during the past seven years about “400 trafficking cases have been prosecuted on human trafficking charges and 1,500 trafficking visas have been issued…these statistics show that we have failed to fulfill our goal of identifying victims and tracking down and prosecuting traffickers operating in the United States. We believe that a principal cause of this failure is that the burdens placed upon the victims are too high.” Ms. Kaufka proposed several changes to the TVPA: providing support for trafficking victims by allowing their immediate family members temporary “continued presence” immigration status; expanding access to protection and services to all human trafficking victims who make “a good faith attempt to cooperate with law enforcement,” rather than only to those whose cases are under investigation; and giving “exclusive authority to make prompt determinations of eligibility for assistance for unaccompanied children who may be victims of human trafficking” to the Department of Health and Human Services, instead of “leaving the child victims of trafficking in the hands of law enforcement officials who tend to exacerbate their fears.”
Martina Vandenberg, an attorney at Jenner & Block, focused her testimony on impunity for U.S. contractors and foreign diplomats in the United States who engage in trafficking. She cited a case in Bosnia where eight employees of a Department of Defense (DoD) contractor allegedly “purchased women and girls from brothels in 1999 and 2000. Some had used the women for sexual services and as domestic servants in their local housing units.” In another case, an American police officer in Bosnia allegedly “purchased a woman and her passport from a local brothel.” Ms. Vandenberg said that the DoD Inspector General (IG) “confirmed that the allegations of trafficking were credible.” She quoted a December 2003 IG report on Bosnia and Kosovo stating that “no requirements and no procedures [are] in place compelling contractors to gather such information regarding their employees or to report it to U.S. military authorities.” Ms. Vandenberg asserted that impunity is also enjoyed by diplomats trafficking domestic workers into the U.S. She detailed a recent case in Washington, DC, where the plaintiffs complained of working “seven days a week, sixteen to nineteen hours per day, and received less than fifty cents per hour.” To correct these gaps in U.S. law, Ms. Vandenberg made several recommendations, including investigation and prosecution of trafficking by “contractors and military personnel serving abroad” and “a GAO study into the incidence and prevalence of trafficking by diplomats in the United States.”
International Justice Center (IJM) Government Relations Vice President Holly Burkhalter described the TVPA as “one of the most useful human rights tools the Congress has ever enacted” and urged “close Congressional oversight…with respect to sanctions against recipients of U.S. foreign assistance that fail to meet the legal standard for eliminating trafficking/slavery.” She stated, “In IJM’s view, governments’ provision of data on prosecutions and convictions are the single most important indicator of governments’ alacrity in addressing slavery and trafficking. Every effort should be made to encourage governments to provide such data, including by providing them with technical assistance.” Regarding trafficking by American contractors abroad, Ms. Burkhalter said that the ability of the U.S. to fight trafficking is reduced by “our own inability to prevent abuses by those working abroad under U.S. Government auspices.” Ms. Burkhalter recommended that the labor rights provisions of the Trade Act and anti-trafficking provisions of the TVPA “be invoked simultaneously, so as to increase the effectiveness of each.” Additionally, she recommended that the Millennium Challenge Account, a foreign assistance program based on factors such as good governance, “require, as a precondition for assistance, that governments provide statistics and documentation on the number, type, and location of investigations, prosecutions, and most especially convictions under local law for the specific crimes of forced labor slavery, child labor, abusive working conditions, and sex trafficking.” In conclusion, Ms. Burkhalter commended the non-legislative Harkin-Engel Child Labor Initiative, which created a “credible, voluntary industry-wide standard of certification for the chocolate industry…to eliminate child labor from the growing and processing of cocoa.”
During questions, Sen. Durbin asked Ms. Becker why the government, which needs the cooperation of victims, only grants benefits to those whose cases are investigated. She replied that a “continued presence” and trafficking visa could be obtained for a victim of a severe form of trafficking who was cooperating with the Justice Department even if the case was not prosecuted. Sen. Durbin said he would pursue the suggestion of a GAO study on trafficking by diplomats and stated that the U.S. should not be a safe haven for traffickers who have amassed wealth overseas and then come here to live in luxury; non-U.S. citizens living in the U.S. who have engaged in trafficking should be liable for prosecution.
