On July 25, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Corrections, and Victims’ Rights heard testimony on the deterrence of alien smuggling and human trafficking.
Trafficking in persons, particularly women and children, has become one of the fastest growing areas of international criminal activity. The U.S. government estimates that as many as 800,000 people are trafficked each year for forced labor, domestic servitude, or sexual exploitation. Victims of trafficking are typically from less developed countries in Asia, the former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe.
As part of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 (P.L. 106-386), Congress mandated an annual State Department report on the global trends in trafficking. The annual reports rate countries according to whether they meet minimum standards for addressing the global problem.
Emphasizing the scope of the global trafficking problem, Charles DeMore of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security, said that international organized crime groups in a number of nations capitalize “on weak economies, corruption, and improved transportation infrastructure in order to facilitate the smuggling and trafficking of some 700,000 to 2 million people globally each year.” He further stated that some of these organizations “have abandoned their historic ethnic alliances to join together in criminal enterprises and to hinder U.S. government law enforcement efforts.”
All the witnesses agreed that the TVPA has been the key to successful investigations and prosecution of human trafficking offenses. Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Malcolm stated that, “as of July 15, 2003, there are approximately 122 open trafficking investigations nearly twice as many as were open in January 2001,” and “over half of these have been initiated as a result of the Department of Justice’s Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force Complaint Line, established in February 2000, and many involve charges under the TVPA.”
Sharon Cohn of the International Justice Mission explained why human trafficking is a more prominent problem in less-developed countries. “Certainly sex trafficking is exacerbated by poverty and economic desperation, but we do not find epidemic levels of sex trafficking wherever we find poverty in the world. Rather, sex trafficking flourishes on a large scale only in those countries where it is tolerated by local law enforcement.” She also noted that sex tourism has increased the demand for trafficked women, and recommended further utilization of the PROTECT Act, which allows the United States to prosecute sex crimes committed by Americans abroad. In response to Chair Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) inquiry, she said that approximately 25 percent of all global sex tourists are Americans.
Referring to the TVPA as a “wonderful tool for prosecutors,” Jane Boyle, a U.S. Attorney in Northern Texas, recounted the story of young Honduran females who were smuggled to the United States, then unwillingly forced to work in bars and as prostitutes in Fort Worth, Texas. After a cooperative investigation between the F.B.I., the former I.N.S., and other local law enforcement agencies, “nearly all of the thirty-nine trafficking victims we were able to identify…were placed in the ‘continued presence program,’ have done well in this country, and are working hard to achieve better lives.”
