[Senate Hearing 115-282]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 115-282
FORCE MULTIPLIERS: HOW TRANSPORTATION
AND SUPPLY CHAIN STAKEHOLDERS ARE
COMBATTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 12, 2017
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov
_________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
30-786 PDF WASHINGTON : 2018
SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota, Chairman
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi BILL NELSON, Florida, Ranking
ROY BLUNT, Missouri MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
TED CRUZ, Texas AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JERRY MORAN, Kansas BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
DEAN HELLER, Nevada CORY BOOKER, New Jersey
JAMES INHOFE, Oklahoma TOM UDALL, New Mexico
MIKE LEE, Utah GARY PETERS, Michigan
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
CORY GARDNER, Colorado MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire
TODD YOUNG, Indiana CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada
Nick Rossi, Staff Director
Adrian Arnakis, Deputy Staff Director
Jason Van Beek, General Counsel
Kim Lipsky, Democratic Staff Director
Chris Day, Democratic Deputy Staff Director
Renae Black, Senior Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on July 12, 2017.................................... 1
Statement of Senator Thune....................................... 1
Letter from Call to Freedom.................................. 137
Testimony from Chelsea....................................... 139
Statement from Tiffany Wlazlowski Neuman, Vice President,
Public Affairs, NATSO...................................... 139
Statement from Nancy L. Rivard, President, Airline
Ambassadors International.................................. 141
Statement of Senator Nelson...................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Statement of Senator Blunt....................................... 143
Statement of Senator Schatz...................................... 145
Statement of Senator Fischer..................................... 147
Statement of Senator Cortez Masto................................ 150
Statement of Senator Klobuchar................................... 153
Statement of Senator Cantwell.................................... 153
Statement of Senator Capito...................................... 155
Statement of Senator Sullivan.................................... 157
Ten City Study by Laura T. Murphy, Loyola University and
Covenant House entitled ``Labor and Sex Trafficking Among
Homeless Youth............................................. 159
Article dated April 17, 2017 from the New York Times
entitled, ``Homeless Youth at High Risk of Human
Trafficking'' by Tariro Mzezewa............................ 166
Statement of Senator Young....................................... 168
Witnesses
Keeli Sorensen, Director, Government Relations and Public Policy,
Polaris........................................................ 4
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Esther Goetsch, Coalition Build Specialist, Truckers Against
Trafficking.................................................... 120
Prepared statement........................................... 122
Samir Goswami, Technical Consultant, Technology Solutions to
Trafficking in Global Supply Chains, Issara Institute.......... 123
Prepared statement........................................... 125
Tomas J. Lares, Executive Director, Florida Abolitionist; and
Chairman, Greater Orlando Human Trafficking Task Force......... 131
Prepared statement........................................... 133
Appendix
Response to written questions submitted to Keeli Sorenson by:
Hon. Dan Sullivan............................................ 173
Hon. Bill Nelson............................................. 174
Hon. Richard Blumenthal...................................... 174
Hon. Catherine Cortez Masto.................................. 174
Response to written questions submitted to Esther Goetsch by:
Hon. Dan Sullivan............................................ 175
Hon. Bill Nelson............................................. 176
Hon. Richard Blumenthal...................................... 178
Hon. Catherine Cortez Masto.................................. 178
Response to written questions submitted to Samir Goswami by:
Hon. Richard Blumenthal...................................... 183
Hon. Catherine Cortez Masto.................................. 184
Response to written questions submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Tomas J. Lares................................................. 223
FORCE MULTIPLIERS:
HOW TRANSPORTATION AND SUPPLY
CHAIN STAKEHOLDERS ARE COMBATTING
HUMAN TRAFFICKING
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2017
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in room
SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. John Thune,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Thune [presiding], Nelson, Blunt,
Fischer, Sullivan, Capito, Young, Cantwell, Klobuchar, Baldwin,
and Cortez Masto.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN THUNE,
U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA
The Chairman. Good morning. Thank you all for being here.
Today we are going to hear from some remarkable leaders who are
working on the ground to combat human trafficking and to help
victims.
Human trafficking is a heinous crime that often hides in
plain sight. The coercion that traffickers use to manipulate
victims is not just happening overseas; it occurs right here in
the United States. As the National Human Trafficking Hotline
details, cases of human trafficking are annually reported in
each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. It is estimated that
human trafficking is a $150 billion industry globally.
Our hearing today will explore the role of transportation
providers, who are fighting the growth of trafficking in the
United States, and their ongoing efforts to reduce forced labor
in the global economy. Our witnesses have been asked to testify
about the challenges and successful strategies in combatting
this horrible crime.
Human trafficking takes on many different forms, and the
perpetrators use a variety of tools to recruit and control
their victims. Victims of human trafficking are often lured
with false promises of well-paying jobs, stability, or
education. Others are manipulated by people that they trust.
Because the ways in which humans are exploited differ
greatly, the responses needed to disrupt and eradicate
trafficking also differ. Solutions involve cooperation among
industry, the government, and NGOs. No single entity can tackle
this problem alone.
In the Senate, my colleagues Senators Cornyn, Grassley, and
Klobuchar have been working on legislation, including the
Abolish Human Trafficking Act of 2017, which increases the
scope of training, targets organized perpetrators, and improves
the national strategy to combat human trafficking. As a
cosponsor of this legislation, I hope to see it move quickly
through the Senate.
Our committee also plays a role in helping solve this
problem. The FAA Extension Act, signed into law last year,
included a provision requiring enhanced training for flight
attendants to recognize and respond to potential human
trafficking victims.
This week, Senator Klobuchar and I will introduce
complementary bills that would create a lifeline--lifetime ban,
I should say, for commercial driver's license holders convicted
of a crime related to human trafficking and improve education
and outreach efforts regarding trafficking prevention within
the transportation sector.
I anticipate that both of these measures will be on the
Committee's next markup agenda.
As we'll hear from our witnesses today, greater knowledge,
understanding, and awareness are essential for any forward
movement in combatting this crime.
Ms. Goetsch, from Truckers Against Trafficking, will
discuss her group's work to educate, equip, and mobilize the
trucking industry to combat trafficking as part of their
regular jobs.
As consumers, many of us are unaware, I should say, of the
potential victims who may come knocking on our door. As Ms.
Sorensen, from Polaris, will testify, these victims can often
be found in traveling sales crews, domestic work, and
commercial cleaning services, just to name a few.
We also may not realize that forced labor might have been
used to harness the seafood we regularly enjoy. Mr. Goswami
will testify about the Issara Institute's efforts to assist
those who are trapped at sea and oftentimes working without
food or pay. He will discuss Issara's efforts to work with
corporate partners who want to ensure their supply chain, not
only for seafood, but for all the goods that they sell is free
from forced labor.
There is also some significant work being done on the
ground in my home state of South Dakota. Organizations such as
Call to Freedom and Pathfinder are working to identify gaps in
services for human trafficking victims and provide housing and
support for victims to regain their lives and independence.
Other organizations in my state, such as Native Hope, are
on the ground working to educate and expand awareness during
events in South Dakota. They are also working with state and
tribal law enforcement to assist vulnerable communities often
targeted for trafficking. I commend the efforts of these
organizations and their leaders.
I am encouraged by the partnerships and innovative
solutions that our witnesses will highlight today. I want to
thank you all for being here and for the advocacy and work that
you're engaged in.
So I will turn now to Ranking Member Nelson for any opening
statement that he would like to make.
STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON,
U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This is a widespread problem that we need to put all the
potential solutions on the table. We're going to look today at
how transportation, technology and the supply chain can help
prevent the incidence of trafficking. Unfortunately, in my
state, we know all too well the consequences.
According to the trafficking hotline, Florida ranks third
in the country for the number of cases reported in 2016. The
Florida Department of Children and Families also said Florida
received more than 1,800 reports alleging the trafficking.
That's a 54 percent increase over the year before.
Obviously, this is shocking, but the stories are even
worse, especially when we look at the fact that many victims of
trafficking are women and children. Minors may be targeted
because they've run away from home or have substance abuse
problems. The traffickers promise these kids all kinds of
things--money, clothes, drugs, housing--and they have no idea
the price that they're going to pay.
Since the traffickers prey on desperate and vulnerable
people, they seek out places where people won't notice, where
it can be difficult to intervene, but then help comes from some
unusual places. A Florida truckdriver was traveling through
Virginia two years ago at a gas station, and he saw an old RV
that stuck out, and he noticed suspicious behavior that made
him concerned for a minor female. He called the police. Later
he learned that the woman he spotted was a trafficking victim.
She had been coerced from Iowa, held against her will, tortured
and raped. His quick thinking and attention definitely saved
her life.
Groups like the Truckers Against Trafficking train truck
drivers to spot signs of trafficking and report the concerns to
the hotline. Last Congress, the FAA bill included a provision
which Senator Klobuchar championed to require that all flight
attendants receive training on how to recognize and respond to
trafficking. This Congress, I joined the Chairman and Senator
Klobuchar on legislation to improve our response in the
transportation sector by increasing awareness, training, and
providing a new penalty to discourage trafficking.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here. I want
to thank Mr. Lares, who came all the way from Florida to speak
on the work he does to combat human trafficking in the Orlando
area.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Senator Nelson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Bill Nelson, U.S. Senator from Florida
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing.
Human trafficking is a horrific crime.
It is a widespread problem that requires us to put all solutions on
the table.
Today, we will look at how transportation, technology and the
supply chain can help prevent and respond to incidents of human
trafficking.
In Florida, we unfortunately know the consequences of human
trafficking all too well.
According to the human trafficking hotline, Florida ranks third in
the country for the number of cases reported in 2016.
The Florida Department of Children and Families also said Florida
received more than 1,800 reports alleging human trafficking.
That's a 54 percent increase over the year before.
These statistics are shocking.
But the stories of victims are even worse.
Especially when we look at the fact that many victims of
trafficking are women and children.
Minors may be targeted because they have run away from home or have
substance abuse problems.
The traffickers promise these kids all kinds of things--money,
clothes, drugs, housing--and they have no idea the price they will have
to pay.
Since the traffickers prey on the desperate and the vulnerable and
they seek out places where people won't notice, it can be very
difficult to intervene.
Help can sometimes come from unusual places.
I'll give you an example.
A Florida truck driver was traveling through Virginia two years
ago.
At a gas station, he saw an old RV that stuck out and noticed
suspicious behavior that made him concerned for a minor female in the
RV.
He immediately called the police.
Later he learned that the woman he spotted was a trafficking
victim.
She had been coerced from Iowa, held against her will, and
subjected to torture and sexual assault.
His quick thinking and attention to suspicious behavior saved her
life.
Groups like Truckers Against Trafficking train truck drivers to
spot signs of trafficking and report these concerns to the human
trafficking hotline.
Last Congress, the FAA bill included a provision, which Senator
Klobuchar championed, to require that all flight attendants receive
training on how to recognize and respond to potential human
trafficking.
This Congress, I joined Chairman Thune and Senator Klobuchar on
legislation to improve our response to trafficking in the
transportation sector by increasing awareness, expanding training, and
providing a new penalty to discourage human trafficking.
I thank all of our witnesses for being here today, especially Mr.
Lares, who traveled from Florida to speak on the work he does to combat
human trafficking in the Orlando area.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Nelson.
I'm going to turn now to our panel. I want to welcome our
witnesses this morning and thank them in advance for their
testimony, and ask them to, as much as they can, confine their
oral remarks to 5 minutes, and any written statements will
obviously be included into the completion in the record, and it
will give us an opportunity to ask questions.
But on my left, and your right, we have Ms. Keeli Sorensen,
who is Director of Government Relations and Public Policy at
Polaris.
Ms. Esther Goetsch, who is Coalition Build Specialist for
Truckers Against Trafficking.
Mr. Samir Goswami, who is Technical Consultant, Technology
Solutions to Trafficking in Global Supply Chains at the Issara
Institute.
And Mr. Tomas Lares, who is Executive Director of Florida
Abolitionist and Member of the Greater Orlando Human
Trafficking Task Force.
Thank you all so much for being here.
And we will start on my left with Ms. Sorensen, if you will
proceed with your remarks. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF KEELI SORENSEN, DIRECTOR, GOVERNMENT RELATIONS AND
PUBLIC POLICY, POLARIS
Ms. Sorensen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Nelson, and other distinguished members of the Committee. Thank
you for hosting the hearing on human trafficking, one of the
gravest human rights abuses in the United States and globally.
I am grateful for the invitation this morning and to have
submitted written testimony to you regarding how human
trafficking impacts commercial industries within the United
States.
Mr. Chairman, I am the Director of Government Relations and
Public Policy at Polaris, which operates the National Human
Trafficking Hotline you've already referenced this morning.
It's a project of the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. We also operate the Polaris-owned BeFree Textline.
Polaris also builds the capacity of other hotlines globally,
creating an environment in which victims of human trafficking
can safely signal for help anytime, anywhere.
Mr. Chairman, my written statement outlines an overview of
the human trafficking cases Polaris has learned about by
operating these U.S. helplines, specifically noting the cases
that are occurring in or facilitated by online technology,
transportation systems, and the hospitality sector, all
critical supply chain stakeholders. I ask that my full
statement be made part of the record.
With more than 10 years of experience assisting exploited
and trafficked populations in the United States and
internationally, I've seen firsthand how this issue impacts
vulnerable men, women, and children. Working with the survivors
in the United States specifically, I've witnessed the way that
the transportation and hospitality industries have facilitated
this crime.
Thomas is a survivor I met years ago whose name I've
changed to protect his identity. He had long dreamt of leaving
his home in South Asia to work in the United States. He was
approached by a labor recruiter who asked him for $5,000 to
secure a lucrative job at a hotel resort in the south, but when
he arrived in the U.S., he was told that the job no longer
existed. Instead, he was put on a bus to the Midwest and
traveled for 3 days with no money for food or water.
He arrived in a small town and was told that he had to
clean rooms for two different hotels for 15 to 18 hours per day
at a significantly lower wage than he was promised. He was
constantly monitored and threatened with deportation. He lived
with several other men in a dingy single room and was driven
from job site to job site with no independence. Thomas worried
for his family and was unsure how he would repay his debt to
his recruiter.
Thankfully, he learned about human trafficking and his
victim status, and he was able to seek help. He successfully
sought redress, and eventually was reunited with his family.
Thomas's story shares commonalities with other cases of
human trafficking, whether across the hospitality sector or
beyond. In many cases, there are multiple opportunities for
authorities and other stakeholders to intervene in order to
prevent or stop the crime. To do so effectively requires a
nuanced understanding of how human trafficking manifests across
the country.
Polaris recently published a report called ``The Typology
of Modern Slavery: Defining Sex Trafficking and Labor
Trafficking in the United States.'' The report analyzed 32,000
cases of human trafficking that we've learned about by
operating the U.S. helplines, and identified a framework of 25
unique types, 18 types of labor trafficking and 7 types of sex
trafficking. Through this research, Polaris identified 2,894
human trafficking cases that had some level of involvement with
website or Internet locations, 3,012 cases intersecting with
hotels and motels, and 909 cases involving transportation
systems.
The typology lays the groundwork for tailored prevention
and disruption efforts that can be organized by human
trafficking type or by issue area that frequently emerge across
types. We believe that supply chain transparency is one such
cross-type issue area that requires increased investment from
policymakers. Within the transportation and hospitality
industries, there has been recognition of the problems, and
there have been efforts to step up.
We have partnered with Marriott International and Wyndham
Hotels, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, and Delta
Airlines, to name a few. They work to identify and respond to
cases of human trafficking. Our hope is that we will expand the
nature of these partnerships in this and in other sectors to
increase basic supply chain prevention efforts as well.
A full list of recommendations for your consideration have
been submitted in my written testimony, but in conclusion, I'll
reflect just one more core thing. Congress has the ability to
require mandatory publication of supply chain information
across sectors. Federal legislation should build on the
California supply chain--sorry--California Transparency and
Supply Chains Act, and the more recent U.K. Modern Slavery Act
and French law on corporate vigilance.
Furthermore, Executive Order 13627 and the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 both require government
contractors to create compliance plans to prevent human
trafficking in the U.S. Government supply chain. Designating
training and enforcement within government agencies, which I've
seen in the draft of the bill that the Chairman and Ranking
Member Nelson and Senator Klobuchar are proposing soon would be
an example of this, designating training and enforcement within
government agencies, like the Department of Transportation,
would provide an extra layer of needed oversight to ensure that
compliance plans are effectively upheld.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the members of this Committee,
for your attention to this critical issue. Polaris looks
forward to working with you and to ensure that the U.S.
Government continues to be a global leader in the fight to end
human trafficking.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Sorensen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Keeli Sorensen, Director, Government Relations
and Public Policy, Polaris
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Nelson, and other distinguished
members of the Committee, thank you for hosting this hearing on human
trafficking, one of the gravest human rights abuses in the United
States and globally.
I want to thank the members of the Committee for the opportunity to
submit written testimony regarding human trafficking and how it impacts
select commercial industries within the United States.
Mr. Chairman, I am the Director of Government Relations and Public
Policy at Polaris, a leading anti-human trafficking organization that
works to eradicate all forms of modern slavery. Grounded in data
gathered from the lived experiences of survivors, Polaris responds to
victims of human trafficking effectively and immediately, equips key
stakeholders and communities to address and prevent human trafficking,
and disrupts the business of human trafficking through targeted
intervention initiatives grounded in the data Polaris collects and
analyzes about the crime.
Polaris operates public channels of communication, including the
National Human Trafficking Hotline (The Hotline), a project of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, and Polaris's BeFree Textline.
We also build the capacity of other hotlines globally, creating an
environment in which victims of human trafficking can safely signal for
help--anytime, anywhere. In doing so, Polaris contributes to the
creation of a safety-net for survivors, connecting them to life-saving
services, while also collecting data about the crime of human
trafficking that is then analyzed for actionable insights aimed at
disruption.
Polaris cultivates and stewards trusted partnerships across a
region, mapping the ecosystem and establishing response protocols with
relevant stakeholders (e.g., law enforcement, service providers,
survivors, etc.), building a safety-net that can effectively serve
survivors and pursue tips. Secondary benefits of ecosystem mapping
include a detailed understanding of where gaps in services and trained
professionals exist, thus informing public policy, influencing the flow
of funds to communities, and encouraging multi-stakeholder
collaboration.
Having responded to over 155,000 signals (calls, texts, webforms,
and e-mails), Polaris now has one of the largest data sets on how and
where human trafficking occurs in the United States. Recognizing that
this data provides strategic insights for how to disrupt human
trafficking networks, for the past three years, Polaris's Data Analysis
Program has worked to standardize our data collection, package these
standards for other hotlines and organizations around the world, and
create global data sharing partnerships. Over time, these data-sharing
platforms and analytics will offer Polaris and the broader field a
global map and taxonomy of human trafficking operations, informing
collaborative and holistic regional response and intervention
activities.
Codifying and implementing a data collection process, while an
important first step, will not alone flip the low risk/high profit
equation. The analysis of the data--and more specifically, identifying,
mapping, and naming the unique sub-types of trafficking--is what
enables meaningful disruption.
In March of 2017, Polaris published The Typology of Modern Slavery:
Defining Sex and Labor Trafficking in the United States (Typology
Report). This report identified a framework of 25 unique types of human
trafficking, each with the potential for numerous sub-types. This
framework creates a new organizing principle that lays the groundwork
for tailored prevention and disruption efforts, providing actionable
insights to critical stakeholders seeking to inform and spur systemic
action, better enabling diverse stakeholders to combat the crime within
their spheres of influence.
The Typology Report analyzed more than 32,208 cases of human
trafficking documented between December
2007 and December 2016 on the National Human Trafficking Hotline
and BeFree Textline. This is the largest data set on human trafficking
in the United States ever compiled and publicly analyzed.\1\ Data from
55 percent of potential human trafficking cases are classified into
distinct types. Case types range from escort services to domestic work,
traveling sales crews to construction and landscaping. Some cases
involve both commercial sex and forced labor. Some traffickers may use
only one business model, while other traffickers may use several. For
example, a trafficker sometimes may force a victim to engage in
commercial sex in outdoor locations such as truck stops, and other
times use an escort service model to force the victim to engage in
commercial sex at hotels.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The data do not represent the full scope of human trafficking--
a lack of awareness of the crime or of these hotlines in certain
geographic regions, by particular racial or ethnic groups, and by labor
trafficking survivors can lead to significant underreporting.
Nonetheless, this information allowed us to expose the vulnerabilities
in network business models and understand the ways that traffickers
leverage and exploit legitimate businesses or institutions--such as
social media, hotels, financial institutions, transportation systems,
and government visas.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The types tend to be more fluid in sex trafficking cases, and
traffickers can be nimble and responsive to disruption efforts by
changing their business models. Because many victims of labor
trafficking are unaware that they are the victim of a crime or that
there is a hotline to call for help, and because public awareness of
labor trafficking is limited, the National Human Trafficking Hotline
and Polaris's BeFree Textline received fewer calls about labor
trafficking than sex trafficking. Only 16 percent of the cases
identified on these hotlines involved labor trafficking. However, it is
important to note that, globally, the International Labor Organization
statistics state that labor trafficking is more prevalent than sex
trafficking.\2\ Polaris strongly believes that labor trafficking cases
in the United States are chronically underreported due to a lack of
awareness about the issue and a lack of recognition of the significant
vulnerability of workers in many U.S. labor sectors.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/
WCMS_182109/lang-en/index.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of the data classified into distinct types, a range of sectors,
both illicit and legitimate, were represented in the cases of human
trafficking. The most reported type of human trafficking was escort
services, a broad term used widely in the commercial sex trade,
referring to commercial sex acts that primarily occur at temporary
indoor locations. We received 4,651 reports of this type of sex
trafficking. Following that type was illicit massage, health and beauty
with 2,949 cases. This type of trafficking presents a facade of
legitimate spa services, concealing that their primary business is the
sex and labor trafficking of women. We received 1,643 cases of human
trafficking related to outdoor solicitation for commercial sex and
1,290 cases related to forced commercial sex within residential
brothels. We also noted 1,190 cases of domestic or homecare workers
providing cooking, cleaning, and caretaking services.
Over the course of our research, Polaris noted the trafficker
profiles, recruitment methods, victim profiles and methods of control
unique to each type of trafficking. This research also enabled us to
record the frequency with which human trafficking occurs in, or
intersects with a variety of sectors. Some of these venues willingly
engage in exploitation, but in most cases they unwittingly facilitate
human trafficking due to a lack of oversight or a failure to understand
the signs. Three key sectors that traffickers take advantage of include
online technology, transportation systems, and the hospitality industry
(hotels and motels).
Human Trafficking and the Internet
The Internet plays a significant role in the recruitment of victims
and the advertisement of human trafficking. Between December 7, 2007,
and April 30, 2017, Polaris learned about 2,894 human trafficking cases
that had some level of involvement with website/Internet locations at
any point during the exploitation. Examples of human trafficking types
include:
Remote Interactive Sexual Acts
Illicit Massage, Health, & Beauty Services
Escort Services
Arts & Entertainment
Bar, Strip Clubs, & Cantinas
Domestic Work
Illicit Activities
Personal Sexual Servitude
Residential Sex Trafficking
Outdoor Solicitation
Pornography
During this time, Polaris also received reports of 104 cases of
cybersex trafficking--where minors and adults are made to perform sex
acts in front of a webcam as it is livestreamed to consumers.
The Internet has become a place where traffickers advertise
commercial sexual services with relative anonymity, providing an easy
and cost-effective way to reach a wide selection of customers. Polaris
regularly hears from survivors that they were advertised for commercial
sex on a number of websites. One website which advertises commercial
sex services listed nearly 12,000 national ads on a single day in 2014.
In escort service sex trafficking alone, Polaris learned about 1,795
cases that involved victims being advertised online. For more than five
years, Polaris has raised serious concerns about how sex trafficking
victims have been advertised online. We have served victims sold on
websites in our programs, and we received nearly 2,000 reports of
likely sex trafficking cases involving advertising websites through the
National Human Trafficking Hotline. There are numerous online sites
operating programs advertising commercial sex and we suspect that many
of those advertised are sex trafficking victims.
Polaris also received reports from 693 victims who specifically
stated that they were recruited into their situation via the Internet.
However, we've also found that victims are using the Internet to reach
out for help, as in the case of the National Human Trafficking Hotline
reporting webform. From helpline victim record data, Polaris learned
that 679 victims had access to mobile applications and social media
during their trafficking situation. This access can and should be
leveraged to help victims find assistance.
Organizations assisting at-risk populations have also built online
education tools to better protect individuals from severe exploitation.
A close partner to Polaris called Centro de los Derechos del Migrante
collaborated with internationally recruited migrant worker leaders
across Mexico and the United States to build Contratados.org, a website
that provides migrant workers with a space to share and access
previously unavailable information about recruitment and employment
under the H-2 visa program. The project makes the recruitment system
transparent and gives workers and advocates access to a Yelp-like
review that migrant workers write based on their personal recruitment
and employment experiences. Creative tools like Contratados can help
transform the Internet from a place of potential exploitation to a
source of education and empowerment.
Furthermore, Polaris encourages law enforcement to bring charges
against online platforms that knowingly create content that facilitates
the sale of minors or adults being sex trafficked. In 2016, the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published a report describing
evidence that Backpage had edited or modified ads before they posted
them--sometimes in order to conceal that commercial sex acts were being
offered for money, and sometimes even to conceal the sale of someone
who was a minor. It's been suggested that that's proactive facilitating
behavior and negligence by Backpage, including clear knowledge that
they knew sex trafficking was happening on their site. These are
alarming findings and require immediate additional investigation.
Hospitality Industry (Hotels & Motels) Intersection with Human
Trafficking
Between December 7, 2007, and April 30, 2017, Polaris operated
hotlines identified 3,012 cases of human trafficking that intersected
with hotels and motels (at some point during the course of the crime)
including:
Traveling Sales Crews
Outdoor Solicitation
Escort Services
Hospitality (labor)
Begging and Peddling Rings
Arts & Entertainment
Construction
Domestic Work
Commercial Cleaning Services
Residential Sex Trafficking
Illicit Massage, Health, & Beauty Services
Bars, Strip Clubs, & Cantinas
Personal Sexual Servitude
Restaurant & Food Service
Pornography
Illicit Activities (labor)
Hotels and motels are the most commonly reported venue for sex
trafficking situations involving U.S. citizen victims. These sites
allow for buyer confidentiality, since buyers can park at and enter
these establishments without oversight. These locations also allow for
traffickers to function without being responsible for facility
maintenance, enabling them to move between locations avoiding
detection. Of the 5,199 escort services cases Polaris learned about
operating the National Human Trafficking Hotline and the BeFree
Textline, 2,225 of these cases were based in hotels and motels.
Stopping this type of trafficking is heavily dependent on eliciting the
support and intervention of hospitality staff.
As discussed in Polaris's Typology Report, labor trafficking is
both present in the hotel industry's workforce and in its product
supply chain. Since 2007, Polaris has learned about 124 cases of labor
trafficking taking place directly on the grounds of hotels and motels.
Traffickers have included hotel management or those who manage labor
recruitment agencies that subcontract with hotels to provide cleaning
or groundskeeping services. If the trafficker is a contractor, the
hotel may not be aware of the abuse. Most commonly, workers were
recruited with job offers that misrepresented the working conditions,
wages, and the ability to safely leave the job. In other cases, workers
were recruited via other fraudulent promises. Most victims are women
and men from Jamaica, the Philippines, and India, and typically they
are told that they will make lucrative wages to support family back
home. Most victims enter the job with an H-2B visa, which restricts
visa portability, tying victims to their abusive employer. J-1 visas
are also used, though less frequently. U.S. citizen victims have also
been reported.
In addition to labor trafficking happening in hotels and motels,
one lesser known type of labor trafficking that is extremely reliant on
the hospitality sector to maintain operations is traveling sales crews.
Polaris operated helplines identified 605 cases of labor trafficking
occurring within traveling sales crews, which rely almost exclusively
on hotels and motels to house their victims. Sales crews move between
cities and states and go door-to-door, often selling fraudulent
products such as magazine subscriptions that customers may never
receive. The young salespeople (one-third of which have been minors)
sell from morning until night and are controlled by traffickers who
deny them food and restrict after-hours activity, including their sleep
arrangements at hotels and motels. Data shows numerous linkages between
sales crews and a larger national business network. It can be
challenging to find these links because many organizations,
particularly those with a long record of fraud-related complaints,
frequently change their names and operating locations while remaining
under the same ownership. (Please see Knocking At Your Door: Labor
Trafficking on Traveling Sales Crews for more information.)
With the input of survivors, industry leaders, and subject matter
experts, Polaris has developed a set of recommendations that we believe
can help raise awareness and, in turn equip and empower hotel owners
and employees to help put a stop to human trafficking. Those
recommendations are as follows (from Hotel Industry Fact Sheet):
Recommendations for the Hotel Industry
1. Formally Adopt A Company-Wide Anti-Trafficking Policy: Adopt a
policy that articulates your company's commitment to combating
all forms of human trafficking (sex and labor, adult and minor
victims, U.S. citizen and foreign national victims) at all
levels of your business. The Code of Conduct for the Protection
of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism and
the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human
Rights, are good places to start. Once adopted, the policy
should be clearly communicated and implemented at all levels,
to ensure there is no human trafficking on-site, within your
workforce, or within your company's sourcing/procurement supply
chains.
2. Train Staff On What To Look For And How To Respond: Training is
essential to identify and respond to human trafficking in your
business. Education should occur annually, at the point of
hire, and include staff at all levels (property owners, general
managers, and line staff), to identify when a suspicious
situation may be human trafficking. Trainings should
incorporate internal processes and protocols for how to respond
to and report human trafficking.
3. Establish A Safe & Secure Reporting Mechanism: Frontline staff,
franchisees and vendors/suppliers need a safe and secure method
to report concerns as they arise without fear of retaliation.
4. Develop A Response Plan For Your Business: Concerns of human
trafficking or severe labor exploitation need to be taken
seriously, investigated in a timely fashion, and remediated as
quickly as possible. Develop an internal process for responding
to and reporting human trafficking when it is suspected on-
site, within your workforce, or within your supply chains.
5. Directly Hire Employees Whenever Possible: It is well documented
that the more removed or tenuous an employment relationship is,
the more vulnerable workers are to abuse, including debt
bondage and forced labor -two forms of human trafficking that
have been found in the hotel industry. If it's not possible to
directly hire, know your subcontractors and their recruitment
practices well; don't tolerate abusive practices.
6. Work With Suppliers And Vendors Who Responsibly Source Their
Products: Human trafficking can occur within your hotel's
procurement or vendor's supply chains. Whenever possible,
strive to purchase from businesses using fair trade and
responsible sourcing models, such as GoodWeave, The Fair Food
Program, and Servv. Hotels can start by switching to fair trade
certified coffee, or inviting these alternative businesses to
attend your next trade show.
7. Contact The National Human Trafficking Hotline (1-888-373-7888)
and BeFree (233733) Texting Helpline: These national resources
are available nationwide, toll-free, 24 hours a day, with tele-
interpreting in over 170 languages for help or to report a
situation of trafficking. Our trained call specialists are
equipped to assess, provide safety planning, and refer to our
network of trafficking experts across the United States for a
targeted, victim- centered response.
Polaris partners with leaders in the hospitality sector who have
taken strides to tackle this issue, including Wyndham Hotels. Of
particular note is our partnership with the American Hotel and Lodging
Association (AHLA), Marriott International, and ECPAT-USA to make
available a co-created training that addresses the issues of human
trafficking as they intersect with the hospitality industry. The
program defines human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of
children, helps employees identify individuals who are most at risk for
human trafficking, builds an understanding between labor and sex
trafficking specific to the hotel sector, and explains the role of
hospitality employees in responding to this issue.
Moving forward, Polaris recommends that--at a minimum--hotels,
franchisees, and smaller independent lodging establishments mandate
trainings including the identification of victims and establishing and
enforcing policies for obtaining goods and services free of forced
labor.
Transportation Industry Intersections with Human Trafficking
Almost every type of human trafficking, at some point in the
recruitment or exploitation phase of the situation, involves the
trafficker or victim using transportation routes. Victims find
themselves taking buses, taxis, trains, and planes during the course of
their trafficking experience. It is therefore imperative that
transportation industry actors--bus operators, train conductors, toll
booth operators, highway patrol officers, airline staff, and truckers
take every step possible to educate themselves on the signs of human
trafficking.
From December 7, 2007, until April 30, 2017, the National Human
Trafficking Hotline and the BeFree Textline learned about 909 human
trafficking cases involving the following transportation systems (non-
cumulative, some cases involve multiple systems):
Buses: 407 Cases
Taxi/Commercial Driving Service: 142 Cases
Train/Rail: 76 Cases
Train/Metro: 42 Cases
Airlines: 317 Cases
Cruise Ships/Cargo Ships: 21 Cases
Of these cases, 24 represent labor trafficking cases directly
occurring within the transportation industry (e.g., trucking, shipping,
taxi drivers, cruise ships, etc.).
As mentioned above, there are several labor trafficking types that
rely heavily on mobile contract labor also known as ``crews.'' Crews
tend to be transported frequently from one worksite to another and are
often found in human trafficking cases related to construction,
landscaping, forestry, commercial cleaning services, and home health
care. While we lack sufficient information on what exact modes of
transportation contractors use to transport victims, it's clear that
they rely on the infrastructure of streets, tolls, tunnels, bridges,
etc. Carnival crews, while they are not sub-contractors, engage in
regional travel as a core component of their business model and are at
high-risk of trafficking. Additionally, Polaris has noted 142 cases
human trafficking for domestic work that have connections to
transportation systems such as airlines, taxis, buses, and trains.
These systems were accessed at every phase of the trafficking
situation: to facilitate a victim's entry into the exploitative
situation, used during the exploitation (we often see domestic workers
take taxis and public buses to grocery shop and run errands), or to
escape a trafficking situation.
Traffickers are also dependent on transportation systems and
roadways to facilitate sex trafficking. Between December 7, 2007, and
April 30, 2017, Polaris identified 1,179 cases of trafficking in the
escort delivery model, whereby traffickers deliver victims to a buyer's
hotel room or residence. We also identified 1,079 cases of street-based
commercial sex and 667 cases of truck stop sex trafficking. Cases of
sex trafficking related to illicit massage businesses recruit many
victims from Southeast Asia who often intersect with airline services
when coming to the U.S., either at the start of, or immediately prior
to being trafficked. However, further research is needed to determine
which percentage of these interactions act as entry points to the
trafficking situation versus a new location. There is anecdotal
evidence of traffickers using interstate bus lines to move women
between illicit massage businesses. More research is required to
understand the level of involvement, if any, that these companies and/
or drivers have with the traffickers.
Buyers also engage transportation systems to access victims of
forced commercial sex services. For organized residential brothels,
limited data may suggest that buyers are using taxis and other
commercial driving services in their visits to brothels in order to
conceal their identity and not expose their license plates to possible
detection.
Thankfully, the transportation industry has acknowledged the
presence of human trafficking in this sector and is taking steps to
address it. Polaris has worked with industry leaders to improve
awareness about human trafficking. We consulted as key advisors to the
U.S. Department of Transportation's ``Putting the Brakes on Human
Trafficking'' campaign, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's
``Blue Lightning'' campaign, partnered with taxi associations to
identify trafficking in the City of Houston, and partnered with
organizations like Truckers Against Trafficking as they engage truckers
across the country, to name a few. Many of these partners encourage
victims or those reporting tips to contact the National Human
Trafficking Hotline. As a result, the Hotline continues to receive an
ever increasing number of reports from victims or those wishing to help
intervene in a situation.
In 2017, Polaris launched a partnership with Delta Airlines to
highlight and increase general awareness about the 25 types of human
trafficking and how the airline industry might be exploited or used
illicitly to facilitate it. Delta also established a special SkyMiles
program offering its customers the ability to donate SkyMiles to
Polaris to provide airline tickets to support survivors of trafficking
to travel to their home country, to receive critical services, reunite
with children or family, or engage in survivor leadership
opportunities.
To date, much of the private and public transportation sector
engagement has focused on building awareness about the issue and
increasing victim identification. However, it is common on the Polaris
operated helplines to engage with victims and survivors who lack
transportation to shelters or other critical resources. For example,
the National Human Trafficking Hotline managed a case of two male labor
trafficking victims in a rural town whose closest access to shelter was
a three-hour drive away. The men had no money to reach the shelter. The
Hotline had to work with local police to drive the men to the shelter.
Where possible, we would encourage the public and private
transportation sectors to identify ways to increase cost-effective or
free transportation options to connect victims and survivors with
critical resources and services.
Conclusion
In 2016, reports of human trafficking cases in the United States to
the National Human Trafficking Hotline jumped 37 percent, reaching over
7,500 cases for the year. The Hotline received almost 27,000 calls in
2016, up 22 percent from 2015. In just under a decade, we have seen
calls to the National Hotline increase by nearly 650 percent.
As awareness about this issue grows, Polaris expects human
trafficking reports to increase. It will be critical for Congress to
continue to provide adequate financial assistance to direct service
programs to ensure support for the brave individuals seeking help. The
Senate has introduced two complimentary bills: S. 1311, the Abolish
Human Trafficking Act of 2017 led by Senators John Cornyn and Amy
Klobuchar; and S. 1312, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2017
led by Senators Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein, which among other
things, reauthorize critical funding for victim service programs
through the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and
Human Services. Most significantly, both of these bills reauthorize the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 in a bipartisan,
uncontroversial manner. Polaris urges Congress to continue working to
ensure this legislation remains bipartisan and focused on consensus-
based ideas aimed at combating trafficking and most specifically,
assisting victims.
Congress should also make every effort to build a comprehensive
understanding of the ways that this crime manifests in the United
States. Polaris encourages congress to authorize funding for a holistic
national prevalence study to try to determine the true size of the
human trafficking issue in the United States. Making this a priority
will provide both government, private sector, and advocates with an
accurate account of the crime so we can best direct resources to
prevent and disrupt it.
In the meantime, Polaris continues to work with other international
and national organizations to build out new datasets on human
trafficking. One such initiative is the Counter-Trafficking Data
Collaborative (CTDC), led by the International Organization for
Migration and Polaris. The CTDC, launching later this year, will
provide an open source, multi-stakeholder repository of data on human
trafficking. Initially, the dataset will comprise information from
IOM's global victim assistance database and Polaris's data. Anonymized
datasets will be available for download and will be compatible with
analysis software. We encourage Congress to support data efforts like
this wherever possible.
Private industry sectors should make every effort to ensure that
their supply chains (made up of labor services and procured goods) are
free of forced labor. Congress has the ability to require mandatory
publication of supplier information. This should build on the
California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and the more recent U.K.
Modern Slavery Act and French law on corporate vigilance. Furthermore,
Executive Order 13627 and the National Defense Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2013 both require government contractors to create
compliance plans to prevent human trafficking in the U.S. Government
supply chain. Designating training and enforcement within government
agencies, including the Department of Transportation and others would
provide an extra layer of oversight to ensure that compliance plans are
effectively upheld.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of the Committee, for your
attention to this critical issue. Polaris looks forward to working with
you to ensure that the U.S. Government continues to be a global leader
in ending human trafficking.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Sorensen.
Ms. Goetsch.
STATEMENT OF ESTHER GOETSCH, COALITION BUILD SPECIALIST,
TRUCKERS AGAINST TRAFFICKING
Ms. Goetsch. On behalf of Truckers Against Trafficking, I
would like to thank Chairman Thune, Ranking Member Nelson, and
the other distinguished members of this Committee for inviting
us into this important hearing.
We want to applaud the Committee's efforts to bring
attention to the horrific crime of human trafficking, and
recognize that it's going to take all of us--legislators,
survivor-leaders, nonprofits, law enforcement officers,
industry members, state agencies, and the general public--all
doing our part to truly assist victims as well as prevent
future ones.
On January 6, 2015, an RV pulled into a truck stop in
Virginia. Police were soon called to the scene. When they
arrived, and after interviewing the occupants of the vehicle,
the horrific story made headlines. A young woman, 20 years old,
had been kidnapped 2 weeks prior out of Iowa. She had been
beaten, raped, her whole body burned by instruments heated on
the RV stove, branded, and starved.
She was being sold by her traffickers, Laura Sorenson and
Aldair Hodza, through sex ads on Craigslist, where men were
purchasing her and then arriving to the RV to rape her. She was
dying from malnutrition and the torture she was subjected to.
Had the call not been made that brought law enforcement out
to that truck stop, doctors said she would have died within the
next few days. That call was made by professional truckdriver
Kevin Kimmel, who recognized that something was off, something
was wrong, and instead of turning a blind eye, he picked up the
phone. She calls him her guardian angel. He calls himself a
Trucker Against Trafficking.
People ask us, why truckers? And there are actually quite a
number of reasons why. At any given time, there are more truck
drivers out on the roads than there are law enforcement
officers. There are over 3 million CDL holders in America,
making them truly the eyes and ears of our nation's roadways.
Moreover, they are trained to be vigilant, and along with truck
stop employees, can often find themselves intersecting with
victims in a myriad of places. That's why we created TAT, to
educate, equip, empower, and mobilize the United States
trucking industry to combat human trafficking as part of their
regular jobs.
We have three main goals. The first is to saturate the
trucking and related industries with our training materials,
which are free of charge, readily available, and industry-
specific. To date, over 424,400 trucking industry members have
been registered on our website as TAT trained. All 50 state
trucking associations have now partnered with us, as well as
the vast majority of the national associations.
Our second goal is to partner with law enforcement and
government agencies to facilitate the investigation of human
trafficking. We work continuously to bring together trucking
industry members with their local law enforcement and state
agencies in an effort to close loopholes to traffickers. One of
the ways we do this is through our coalition builds program,
which are designed to establish an effective and sustainable
working relationship between trucking and law enforcement
statewide.
We have held 29 coalition builds in 20 states across the
Nation, partnering with 11 Attorneys General offices, as well
as Homeland Security investigations, FBI, state police, and
local law enforcement agencies. As a result, thousands in the
trucking industry and hundreds of law enforcement officers have
been trained on human trafficking.
Thirty-one states have now adopted TAT's Iowa Motor Vehicle
Enforcement model, in part or in whole. This model allows TAT
to utilize the pre-existing overlap between commercial vehicle
enforcement units and the trucking industry through weigh
stations, ports of entry, interdiction stops, and mandatory
safety compliance meetings within trucking companies.
And our third goal is to marshal the resources of our
partners to combat this crime. This is why in 2014, we created
our Freedom Drivers Project, which is a 48-foot-long custom
show trailer outfitted with actual artifacts from human
trafficking cases as well as the stories of the real Truckers
Against Trafficking and the many companies behind them that are
out there on the frontlines every day across our Nation.
In addition, TAT will be launching a demand campaign
centered around the connection between purchasing commercial
sex and sex trafficking, as it is imperative that buyers of
commercial sex understand that they are driving this market. It
is our hope that the professional drivers at the forefront of
this campaign will create inspiration for more of these
conversations to occur.
And the great news is these programs have been working.
According to the National Hotline, truckers have now made over
1,836 calls identifying 525 likely human trafficking cases
involving 972 victims, 315 of which are minors. And that's just
one slice of the data pie, as we know that many drivers still
contact 911 or their local sheriff's office.
It is my great honor to appear in this important hearing.
And TAT hopes to be a continued advocate and partner with all
of those in attendance. It truly is going to take all of us. We
must continue to turn critical populations who were once
passive about this crime into a disruptive force. That is why
TAT has taken steps to replicate its model across borders,
across industry sectors, and across modes of transportation.
We applaud the members of this Committee for the good work
they are doing to strengthen laws that protect the vulnerable
and exploited and see to it that their traffickers and those
who purchase them are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
We also want to applaud the United States trucking
industry, who serves as a model for what is possible when
people know and care what is really going on, people who are
willing to take that second look and be change-makers right
where they're at.
In closing, I would like to use the words of professional
truckdriver and everyday hero Kevin Kimmel, who said, ``We need
to get back to a place where if somebody is in need, we step up
to help. There are a lot of things in life that aren't obvious,
but this isn't one of them.''
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Goetsch follows:]
Prepared Statement of Esther Goetsch, Coalition Build Specialist,
Truckers Against Trafficking
On behalf of Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT), I'd like to thank
Chairman Thune, Ranking Senator Nelson, and the distinguished members
of the committee for inviting us to take part in this informational
hearing. We applaud the committee's efforts to bring attention to the
horrific crime of human trafficking, and recognize that it is going to
take all of us . . . legislators, survivor-leaders, non-profits, law
enforcement officers, industry members, state agencies, and the general
public . doing our part to truly assist victims, as well as prevent
future ones.
On January 6, 2015, an RV pulled into a truck stop in Virginia.
Police were soon called to the scene. When they arrived, and after
interviewing the occupants of the vehicle, the horrific story made
headlines. A young woman, 20 years old, had been kidnapped two weeks
prior out of Iowa. She had been beaten, raped, her whole body burned by
instruments heated on the RV stove, branded and starved. She was being
sold by her traffickers, Laura Sorenson and Aldair Hodza, through sex
ads on Craigslist, where men were purchasing her and then arriving at
the RV to rape her. She was dying from malnutrition and the torture she
was subjected to . . . had the call not been made that brought law
enforcement out to that truck stop, doctors said she would have died
within the next few days. That call was made by Florida-based,
professional truck driver Kevin Kimmel, who recognized that something
was off--something was wrong--and instead of turning a blind eye, he
picked up the phone. She calls him her guardian angel. He calls himself
a Trucker Against Trafficking.
People ask us, why truckers? And there are actually quite a number
of reasons why. At any given time, there are more truck drivers out on
the road than there are law enforcement officers. There are over 3
million CDL holders in America and they truly are the eyes and ears of
our Nation's highways. Moreover, they are trained to be vigilant, and
along with truck stop employees, can find themselves intersecting with
victims of human trafficking in a myriad of places. That's why we began
TAT . . . to educate, equip, empower and mobilize the United States
trucking industry to combat human trafficking as part of their regular
jobs.
We have three main goals. The first is to saturate trucking and
related industries with training materials which are free-of-charge,
readily available and industry-specific. To date, over 329,800 trucking
industry members have been registered as TAT Trained on our website.
All 50 state trucking associations have now partnered with TAT, as well
as the vast majority of national trucking associations.
Some of our partners include the American Trucking Associations,
the Truckload Carriers Association, the Owner Operator Independent
Drivers Association and the National Association of Truck Stop
Operators.
Our second goal is to partner with law enforcement and government
agencies to facilitate the investigation of human trafficking. We work
continuously to bring together trucking industry members with their
local law enforcement and state agencies in an effort to close
loopholes to traffickers. One of the ways we do this is through our
coalition build program which is designed to establish an effective and
sustainable working relationship between the trucking industry and law
enforcement statewide, in order to combat the crime of human
trafficking. TAT has held 29 coalition builds in 20 states across the
nation, partnering with 11 Attorney's General offices, as well as
Homeland Security Investigations, FBI, state police and local law
enforcement agencies. As a result of these meetings, thousands in the
trucking industry and hundreds of law enforcement officers have been
trained on human trafficking.
Thirty-one states have now adopted TAT's Iowa Motor Vehicle
Enforcement model, in part or in whole. This model allows TAT to
utilize the pre-existing overlap between commercial vehicle enforcement
units and the trucking industry through ports of entry, weigh stations,
interdiction stops and mandatory safety compliance meetings within
trucking companies.
This model also allows TAT to activate often overlooked state
agencies in combating human trafficking, insofar as the Department of
Transportation, Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Revenue,
Department of Licensing and Department of Public Safety now have
specific pathways to help equip and educate an industry on the front
lines of combating human trafficking.
Our third goal is to marshal the resources of our partners to
combat this crime. This is why in 2014, we created the Freedom Drivers
Project, a 48,-long custom show trailer outfitted with actual artifacts
from human trafficking cases, as well as the stories of the real
Truckers Against Trafficking, and the many companies who are on the
front lines everyday combating this crime across our Nation.
The FDP has already completed 88 events in 28 states, traveling
over 89,900 miles, with 20,700 people walking through its doors, making
it a very innovative and effective tool in educating critical
stakeholders, and rallying members of the media and the general public
to this cause.
Moreover, with the help of the American Trucking Associations Road
Team Captains, as well as Walmart, CFI Industries, and additional
trucking companies, industry ambassadors have begun to train rotary
members, their local churches and schools, as well as each other on the
realities of human trafficking and how to report it effectively. In
addition, TAT will be launching a demand campaign centered around the
connection between purchasing commercial sex and sex trafficking, as it
is imperative that buyers of commercial sex understand that they are
driving this market. It is our hope that the professional drivers at
the forefront of this campaign will create inspiration for more of
these conversations to occur.
And the great news is, these programs are working. According to the
National Human Trafficking Hotline, truckers have now made 1,836 calls,
reporting 525 cases of potential human trafficking identifying 972
victims, with 315 of those being minors.
And that's only one slice of the data pie, as we know that many
drivers still contact 911 or their local sheriff's office to report
this crime. To that end, TAT conducted its own survey in 2016 and found
that out of the 1,500 truck drivers and truck stop employees who
responded, that an additional 521 victims of sex trafficking were
identified, with the vast majority of these cases being reported via
911 or to their local sheriff.
If every driver and truck stop employee had this life-saving
information and training, imagine how many more calls will be made,
imagine how many victims will be recovered out of this horrible
reality, how many perpetrators--both the traffickers AND the buyers of
commercial sex--will be arrested.
It is my great honor to appear in this important hearing, and TAT
hopes to be a continued advocate and partner with all of those in
attendance today to combat human trafficking. It truly is going to take
all of us. We must continue to turn critical populations who were once
passive about this crime into a disruptive force. This is why TAT has
taken steps to replicate its model across borders, across industry
sectors, and across modes of transportation. We applaud the members of
this committee for the good work they are doing to strengthen laws that
protect the vulnerable and exploited, and see to it that their
traffickers, and those who purchase them, are prosecuted to the fullest
extent of the law. We also applaud the United States trucking industry
who serves as a model for what is possible when people know and care
about what is really going on out there. People who are willing to take
a second look and become change-makers right where they're at. In the
words of professional driver and everyday hero Kevin Kimmel, ``We need
to get back to a place where if there's somebody in need, we step up to
help. There are a lot of things in life that aren't obvious, but this
isn't one of them.''
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Goetsch.
Mr. Goswami.
STATEMENT OF SAMIR GOSWAMI, TECHNICAL CONSULTANT, TECHNOLOGY
SOLUTIONS TO TRAFFICKING IN GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS, ISSARA
INSTITUTE
Mr. Goswami. Chairman Thune, Ranking Member Nelson, and
members of the Committee, thank you for inviting the Issara
Institute to discuss human trafficking and working conditions
in the seafood industry in Southeast Asia. We are grateful that
this body is exploring ways that it can assist the hundreds of
thousands of victims of forced labor and human trafficking who
are exploited every day in the process of satiating a global
appetite for seafood.
I'm an advisor to the Issara Institute, an independent U.S.
nonprofit based in Southeast Asia tackling the issues of human
trafficking and slavery through technology, partnerships, and
innovation. Today, I will highlight some of the pervasive
challenges faced in Thailand's seafood industry and the
solutions that we deploy in partnership with the private
sector, including many U.S. retailers.
The great majority of the estimated 4 million migrant
workers in Thailand, many of whom are working in factories or
farms making products that are exported to the United States,
are from the poor neighboring countries of Myanmar, Cambodia,
and Laos. Among these workers are an estimated 500,000 victims
of trafficking and forced labor that remain unidentified and
unassisted, especially in high-risk fishing and the seafood
industry. We have found that debt bondage, illegally low pay,
and excessive working hours are experienced by over 75 percent
of the migrant workforce.
The Thailand seafood industry has an annual worth of
approximately $7.3 billion, exporting roughly 500,000 tons of
shrimp alone, an estimated 40 percent of which comes to the
United States. Additionally, ``trash fish,'' about a third of
all fish caught in sea, is processed into feed for shrimp,
fish, and poultry, farmed for export to American supermarkets.
A huge challenge to concerned U.S. retailers and brands has
been knowing exactly which of the thousands of farms and plants
and fishing boats across Asia are in their supply chain.
The first-tier processing plants selling the products that
end up in our grocery shelves are well known, however, the deep
supply chains behind them generally are not, even though the
California Transparency in Supply Chains Act encourages
businesses to disclose efforts to eradicate human trafficking
from across their supply chain, and even the U.S. Tariff Act
prohibits the importation of goods made by forced and child
labor. This puts U.S. supply chains and consumers at great
risk.
To quote Detective Chief Phil Brewer, the head of Scotland
Yard's anti-slavery police unit, ``Everyone realizes now we're
never going to police our way out of this.'' This is our
conclusion in Asia as well. The hundreds of thousands of
victims and exploitative brokers, agents, and employers cannot
possibly all end up in shelters or behind bars. It simply might
not be possible to help all the victims and prosecute all the
criminals solely with a criminal justice-based approach.
There are other ways to tackle trafficking supply chains.
Exploitative labor conditions can and should be transformed
into decent working conditions through supply chain leverage.
We are developing new models of collaboration between other
U.S. NGO and leading American brands and retailers with the
support of key donors, including the U.S. Agency for
International Development and the U.S. State Department's
Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking. Together, we
are using partnerships with business, data and technology, and
on-the-ground solutions to identify labor risks and root out
illicit practices in the production of products that reach the
U.S.
For example, since most migrant workers in Thailand own and
use smartphones, we run a 24-hour helpline in four languages,
and social media and chat applications that leverage
smartphone-based communication channels that workers already
use. With the support from USAID and the Walmart Foundation, we
have developed a Yelp-like app in Burmese that allows workers
to rate, review, and comment on their employers and recruitment
agencies. These multiple technology-enabled channels generate
data, providing Issara with a constant pulse on labor
situations across many multitiered supply chains.
Issara is currently partnering with about 14 leading global
brands, retailers, supermarkets, and restaurant chains to
identify and eliminate risks of trafficking and forced labor in
their Thai supply chains. These business partners share their
supplier data confidentially with us, and we work directly with
those suppliers to identify labor risks and provide solutions.
We find forced labor and human trafficking where most
audits and government inspections do not because their systems
are not designed to collect information directly from workers.
They mostly rely on what employers tell them, which can be a
rosier story than what the truth is. Our data channels enable
government--multinational businesses to get a direct view of
labor conditions across their supply chains no matter how
complex.
However, it takes more than just data and technology. Staff
have to be on the ground to constantly validate incoming data
and to help push suppliers to respond to it. In Southeast Asia,
suppliers receive free technical advice from Issara to address
urgent labor issues. If they fail to respond to validated
findings, they risk being cut out from our partner companies'
supply chain. Together, we make sure all workers have their
passports in hand, are not debt-bonded, have legal contracts,
are paid legally, and pay back remediation if needed. We also
promote decent living conditions and safe access to grievance
mechanisms without fear of reprisal.
Responsive suppliers get to stay linked with U.S. key
supply chains and distinguish themselves by having greater
transparency and superior ethical sourcing through independent
worker voice and worker data-centered systems.
In conclusion, in the past year, the Issara model has
directly and positively impacted the lives and working
conditions of over 600,000 migrant workers. Over 5,000 were
once in forced labor conditions and are now in decent work
being paid fairly.
Most American brands should fully incorporate credible,
effective due diligence and remediation systems into core
sourcing functions. It's a better and more efficient way to do
business, and it's a more American way to do business, given
our longstanding moral commitments to ending human trafficking
and slavery.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Goswami follows:]
Prepared Statement of Samir Goswami, Technical Consultant, Technology
Solutions to Trafficking in Global Supply Chains, Issara Institute
Introduction
Chairman Thune, Ranking Member Nelson, and Members of the
Committee, thank you for inviting the Issara Institute to be here today
to discuss human trafficking and working conditions in the seafood
industry in Southeast Asia, and exciting emerging models for
identifying and eliminating forced labor and human trafficking in
global supply chains.
The International Labor Organization reports there are more than 20
million people in forced labor today--about double the number in
bondage during the transatlantic slave trade. Human trafficking is as
much a moral issue as an economic one--pervasive in Thailand's seafood
sector, an issue that I will speak to today. We are grateful that this
body, with its oversight of shipping, transportation security, merchant
marine, the Coast Guard, oceans and fisheries, is exploring ways that
it can assist the hundreds of thousands of victims of forced labor and
human trafficking who are exploited daily in the process of satiating a
global appetite for seafood.
I am an advisor to the Issara Institute, an independent U.S.
501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation based in Southeast Asia tackling
issues of human trafficking and forced labor through technology,
partnerships, and innovation. The Institute was established in 2014 by
a team of anti-trafficking experts coming out of the United Nations who
created an alliance of private sector, civil society, and government
partners to address labor issues in global supply chains. Today, I will
highlight some of the pervasive challenges that we observe in
Thailand's fishing industry, and the solutions that we deploy, often in
close partnership with the private sector, including leading U.S.
retailers.
Traffickers often exploit the economic and social vulnerability of
those migrating within Southeast Asia, looking for better economic
opportunity. For example, the great majority of the estimated 4 million
migrant workers in Thailand--many of whom are working in factories or
farms making products that are sent to the United States and Europe--
are from the poorer neighboring countries of Myanmar, Cambodia, and
Laos. Our experience and research strongly suggests that the scale of
the forced labor issue has proven to be simply too large for government
and criminal justice-oriented approaches alone to drive down. Hundreds
of thousands of victims of trafficking and forced labor remain
unidentified and unassisted annually, and extremely high rates of labor
abuse plague high-risk industries such as fishing--3 out of 4 fishermen
on Thai vessels are debt-bonded, for example.
Certainly, more can be done by the destination-side governments in
Asia to vigorously enforce local laws and international protocols to
punish traffickers and protect the rights of exploited and trafficked
migrant workers. However, I am here today to discuss some of the most
promising and exciting emerging models to eliminate forced labor and
human trafficking in global supply chains, including multi-tiered and
complex supply chains such as shrimp. These new emerging models center
on partnership with American and European brands and retailers to fix
the broken business systems--that is, primarily, migrant labor
recruitment and management--within global supply chains that have
allowed such high rates of forced labor and debt bondage to persist.
These models have developed on the other side of the world, through
collaboration between our American NGO and leading American (and now
also European) brands and retailers, and with the support of key donors
including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S.
State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking.
Together, we are using partnerships with business, data and technology,
and on-the-ground solutions to empower worker voices, identify risks
and root out illicit practices in supply chains leading to the U.S. We
also encourage local suppliers to reform their systems, and create fair
and just worker recruitment and workplace experiences for hundreds of
thousands.
The Scale and Severity of the Trafficking Problem in the Fishing
Industry
According to the World Wildlife Fund, more than 85 percent of the
world's fish stocks are at risk of illegal, unreported and unregulated
fishing. While much attention is paid to over fishing, traceability,
depleted fish stocks, and unhealthy toxins that contaminate the seafood
we consume, there is increased awareness of the labor exploitation that
is also endemic in the industry.
Thailand's seafood industry has an annual worth of approximately
$7.3 billion exporting roughly 500,000 tons of shrimp alone, an
estimated 40 percent of which are to the United States. The Thai
government estimates that up to 300,000 people work in its fishing
industry, the great majority of whom are foreign migrant workers. The
United Nations estimates that the industry faces a shortage of about
50,000 workers every year, which is often filled by illicit recruiters
who use deceptive practices to enlist desperate migrant job seekers
from Myanmar, Cambodia, or Laos, or even employ force and coercion to
traffic migrants to work in the industry. Migrant workers'
vulnerability at the fisheries level is exacerbated by informal bans
imposed by the Myanmar and Cambodian governments, which prohibit
recruitment of their citizens on to Thai fishing vessels through formal
channels. This means that, with the labor recruitment systems currently
set up by the source and destination governments, there is currently no
formal, regulated channel through which migrants can be recruited and
placed into the Thai fisheries.
About 90 percent of the seafood consumed in American households is
imported; and, ``forage fish'' or ``trash fish'', about a third of all
fish caught at sea, ends up being made into feed for shrimp,
aquaculture, poultry, and other animals farmed and raised for export
into American supermarkets. This puts us at risk of inadvertently
supporting illegal and often unconscionable practices. The shortage of
workers and the high prevalence of debt-bonded fishermen (76 percent,
according to the Institute's latest prevalence estimates), along with a
high demand from the U.S. and Europe for inexpensive seafood products,
drives the need for cheap labor that is met by exploitative and often
unregulated and illicit labor practices. Thus, the exploitation of
those employed in Thailand's seafood industry, both on-shore and on
Thai fishing vessels fishing in Thai waters and beyond, to the coasts
of Indonesia, Australia, and Africa, has global implications.
Issara Institute's research and ongoing fieldwork in the factories,
ports, and piers of Thailand's seafood industry clearly demonstrates
that labor abuses on Thai fishing vessels is systemic. Rates of debt
bondage, illegally low pay, and illegally excessive working hours are
found in over 75 percent of the commercial fishing migrant workforce.
This includes vessels going out to sea for just days or a couple weeks,
in addition to those more famously known for being out at sea for
months or years at a time. Working conditions are intense and hazardous
and tightly controlled by boat captains and net supervisors, both when
vessels are at sea and when they are at port, where the men often have
very little freedom of movement and are made to mend nets and perform
other tasks. Labor risks are highest by far on trawlers as compared
with purse seiners, squid boats, or long-liners. Trawlers catch the
low-value ``trash fish'' that is made into animal feed, as well as
anything and everything else that gets trapped in the trawling nets
that are dragged along the ocean's surface for hours at a time.
Conditions on-shore are far from perfect but generally better than
at sea. Obviously, factories and farms are easier to inspect and
regulate than fishing vessels--not only by government inspectors, but
also by auditors and representatives of concerned retailers,
restaurants, supermarkets and the food service industry. The main
challenge to concerned retailers and brands has been knowing exactly
which of the thousands of farms, feed mills, and fishmeal plants across
Thailand and Southeast Asia are in their supply chain. The first-tier
processing plants from which they purchase the products that end up on
our grocery shelves are well known, but the deep supply chains behind
them generally are not--even though the California Transparency in
Supply Chains Act mandates that businesses make efforts to eradicate
human trafficking from across entire supply chains and not just the
first tier.
Take for example the case of Maung Nge, a young, orphaned Burmese
boy who, after losing both his parents, migrated to Thailand at the
encouragement of a family friend. At age eleven, Maung Nge started work
on a Thai long-haul fishing vessel that travelled into Indonesian and
Malaysian waters, spending over a year out at sea, only returning to
shore when the boat broke down. He spent the next six years working on
different fishing vessels, all as a child. One day he was arrested by
Thai police who exploited his lack of documentation and demanded a
bribe of 4,000 Thai Baht ($114) in order to be released. When he could
not pay, he was beaten and `sold' by the police to a broker, who
demanded he work on a fishing boat to pay off his debts. This broker
took all of Maung Nge's earnings, and for the next 15 years, he was
forced to work 16-20 hour days on a fishing boat to pay back his debts.
Maung Nge was beaten frequently, witnessed the torture and murder of
his fellow fishermen, was threatened at gun point, and was forced to
take illicit amphetamines to stay awake and work harder.
Sadly, Maung Nge's experience is not uncommon, as demonstrated not
only by Institute research but also verified by a recent New York Times
investigation. They found that fishermen on Thai boats worked 18 to 20
hours in over 100 degrees in the summer. Their Thai fishing boat
captains had paid a ``fee per head'' to smugglers and traffickers which
trapped migrants in a system of debt bondage, working years to pay off
an artificial and often illegal debt, enduring much suffering along the
way.
The experiences of Maung Nge are illustrative of the exploitation
that recruiters, traffickers, boat captains and corrupt police
officials perpetrate, establishing a system of collusion that leaves
workers, especially migrants, with very few options and access to
remedy. From Issara's extensive fieldwork, casework, and research, it
is clear that illegal overwork, underpay, and debt bondage--key
elements of human trafficking--are widespread in Thailand. Make no
mistake, this is a system of indentured servitude being practiced today
with local victims and global ramifications. Yet, according to the
recently released Trafficking in Persons Report by the U.S. State
Department, despite the prevalence of forced labor in Thailand, the
government reported that it only conducted a woefully small 83
investigations and 62 prosecutions involving suspected cases of forced
labor. A seemingly minuscule number compared to the scale of
exploitation that has been documented.
Impact on American Consumers
While exploited, debt-bonded, and trafficked migrant workers toil
in Thai fishing vessels and processing facilities, the product reaches
American restaurants, kitchen tables and the cafeterias of military and
civilian facilities. Americans consume 1.3 billion pounds of shrimp per
year, about 4 pounds per person--much of which is impacted by forced
labor or other forms of exploitation in its harvesting or processing.
Undoubtedly we all agree that this defies our values, however, an
Associated Press investigation revealed that supermarkets in all 50
states sold shrimp products from supply chains tainted with forced
labor. Such shrimp was found by the AP in the products of 40 U.S.
brands, in more than 150 grocery stores across urban and rural
America--exposing millions of American consumers.
Groundbreaking Solutions Through Partnership, Data and Technology, and
Innovation
Last Saturday, on July 8 2017, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-
slavery police unit, Detective Chief Inspector Phil Brewer, stated to
media about forced labor and human trafficking that ``Everyone realizes
now we're never going to police our way out of this.'' This is
certainly the conclusion we have come to in Asia as well. With millions
of victims and thousands if not millions of exploitative brokers,
agents, employers, and other criminal elements, what is the vision--
that the millions of victims are identified and put in shelters, and
the perpetrators are all put in prisons? If all victims cannot be
assisted, what fraction do we aspire to help, and who gets prioritized
and deprioritized--if we can even imagine having to make such
decisions, which are actually being made every day? How many dedicated
law enforcement officers, social workers, and prison and shelter beds
would be required for this kind of justice?
When we can see how the slavery in Asian supply chains touches us
in America, it is fair and high time for us to be involved in creating
the vision for the solution. This, at least, was the attitude of
Walmart and nine UK retailers and seafood importers in 2014, when the
newly established Issara Institute formed the first pilot partnerships
to end slavery in seafood supply chains. Issara's system is basically
one where we incentivize and enable multinational businesses to get a
direct view of labor conditions across their supply chain, no matter
how complex; pressure local suppliers to either eliminate their labor
risks and abuses or get cut from the supply chain; and, offer technical
assistance to progressive suppliers to fix broken labor recruitment and
management systems. That is, make sure all workers have their passports
in hand, are not debt-bonded, have legal contracts, are paid legally,
have decent living conditions, safe access to grievance mechanisms
without fear of reprisal, and so on--from the biggest processing plants
to the smallest piers. Just in the past year our model has directly and
positively impacted the lives and working conditions of over 60,000
migrant workers, over 5,000 of whom were in forced labor conditions and
who are now in decent work--being paid fairly and with freedom of
movement, with no shelters, no separation from families or other
ethical dilemmas, and no protracted and corrupted court cases. And we
did it all on a budget of approximately $1 million, coming from a
combination of development donors and corporate partners. No other
anti-trafficking NGO response has been able to achieve this level of
effectiveness or efficiency in eliminating forced labor, perhaps
because we have been able to get to the root of the broken business
systems that create and perpetuate forced labor, and force change
through supply chain leverage. The three key elements of the model are
partnership with business, data and technology, and on-the-ground
solutions: Taking a collaborative and science-driven approach but also
an on-the-ground, within-supply chains-based methodology that draws
upon the leverage that multinational brands have to drive improvements
in their supply chains.
Technology Innovation for Human Rights and Business Due Diligence:
Worker Voice
In Southeast Asia, the majority of migrant workers own and use
smartphones. Over 90 percent of the estimated nearly 4 million Burmese
migrant workers in Thailand own smartphones with data packages. Mobile
phone usage is similarly saturated in Cambodian and Lao populations in
Thailand. This mobile penetration has greatly enhanced Issara's ability
to reach out to and listen to workers to ensure that their actual
experiences inform the solutions that we deploy with our brand
partners.
Issara Institute runs a 24-hour helpline in four languages, and
utilizes social media and chat applications like Line, Viber and
Facebook that leverage smartphone-based communication and social media
channels that workers already use. Through these multiple technology-
enabled channels, in 2016 over 60,000 workers were linked to Issara,
communicating with our staff in their own language and enabling us to
have a constant pulse on the voice of thousands of workers across
multi-tiered supply chains. These multiple channels enable us to
successfully access remote and hard-to-reach populations, including
migrant workers at sea. We aggregate the data collected from these
various sources to uncover risks in complex supply chain operations--
pinpointing specific exploitative actors.
With support from USAID and Walmart Foundation, Issara has also
recently launched the Golden Dreams Burmese-language smartphone app, a
Yelp-like platform for Burmese current and prospective migrants to
learn and exchange information, reviews, ratings, comments, and advice
about employers, recruiters, and service providers, in both home and
destination countries.
While technology provides unprecedented insight, it complements and
does not replace on the ground action. Thus, Issara field teams
establish rapport with workers and communities to ensure that we are
addressing their stated needs and priorities. Online and offline,
continuous communication with workers builds relationships and trust,
enabling better data collection. The information and feedback is then
turned into action: It directly shapes the interventions and
improvements made by the hundreds of suppliers of the 14 brands we
partner with and support.
Partnership with Business & Solutions through Inclusive Labor
Monitoring
Issara is currently partnering with 14 leading brands, retailers,
and importers, including Nestle, Walmart, Mars, Red Lobster, Tesco,
Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's and Waitrose, to identify and address
risks of trafficking and forced labor in their Thailand export-oriented
supply chains. We do this through a new approach we call Inclusive
Labor Monitoring, whereby business partners share their confidential
supply chain data, and our team on the ground works directly with their
suppliers (all tiers) to identify labor risks and support solutions
that are ``owned'' by the supplier. The approach is inclusive because
all workers have the opportunity to individually share information in-
confidence at their own time and location of choosing, and receive
assistance and support via Issara's multiple worker voice channels.
Issara builds trust with workers by engaging with them at the
factory, in the community, and sometimes pre-departure in their home
countries before migrating, and provides meaningful and timely
information to help them navigate their journey. Trust is key because
it underpins successful worker voice systems, and provides the concrete
details for business and suppliers to understand what is happening in
their factory and to take action. This is particularly important when
it is a foreign migrant workforce that does not speak the same language
as the supplier's human resources and management staff, as in the case
of Thailand. Lack of trust is why social audits, where an auditor
visits a factory for a few hours or days, or internal supplier
grievance mechanisms or government-run hotlines are not always
successful at exposing many of the complex and hidden issues related to
forced labor, debt bondage, and trafficking in persons.
Once worker voice information comes to Issara, we validate the data
and then provide the supplier with the anonymized feedback for action.
Corrective and preventive actions are developed in collaboration with
Thai suppliers when labor issues are found. Suppliers have been
supportive of this approach because Issara Inclusive Labor Monitoring
is of no cost to them; they receive reliable business intelligence
about what is happening in their workplace and workforce; there is free
technical advice from Issara to help address issues; and, findings are
kept confidential. But the suppliers are also held accountable to
implement reforms since the brands and retail partners receive reports
of issues in their supply chain, as well as the actions and progress
suppliers are taking to address them.
The end result is an integrated model where both workers and
business see benefits, and there is impact to address trafficking in
persons at scale. Having started out as a pilot in 2014, the Issara
Inclusive Labor Monitoring approach has already made fundamental
changes to exploitative working conditions for over 60,000 workers last
year, with over 5,000 of those directly helped out of situations of
trafficking or forced labor.
Conclusion: Scaling Solutions and Driving Change through Global Supply
Chains
Technology has greatly increased our ability to uncover once-hidden
exploitation and hear directly from victims by the thousands.
Importantly, it is their experiences that can now inform interventions
and solutions. Too often we gravitate to the most horrendous stories of
exploitation and violence and develop extreme responses such as raid,
rescue, and forced shelter that often do harm and impinge on the
fundamental rights and dignities of workers. It is time to simply
change the system--to transform workplaces--and transform exploitative
labor conditions into decent working conditions through supply chain
leverage and technical assistance.
Most labor exploitation occurs in places like Southeast Asia not
because of thousands of ``bad guys,'' but because of decades' absent
industry regulation or enforcement of basic labor standards such as
giving workers contracts, pay slips, discrimination-free environments,
and the right to voluntarily accept or decline overtime. Issara has
extensive experience working with Thai suppliers of seafood and
agricultural products to the United States. When suppliers are offered
model contracts, pay slips, and other tools that are multi-lingual and
designed in compliance with relevant laws and buyer standards, and
trained on how to manage workers, their documents, and so on, these
businesses often readily adopt these tools and new approaches, and
change their systems to be more compliant with the law and buyer codes
of conduct. These businesses are not running highly informal,
substandard systems for the purpose of being horrible greedy people,
but rather because it's the way business has been done for decades
absent effective government regulation. And if they were audited,
especially beyond the first tier, it was not likely on social issues or
with independent feedback mechanisms, like a worker helpline, in place
where these issues would come to light. The good news is that in our
experience once these businesses adopt new systems, policies, and
approaches to recruiting and managing workers, and build their
institutional capacity, they are extremely unlikely to backpedal back
into not using contracts and pay slips, or not using systems they
themselves created (with our assistance). There is no incentive to
actively break down what has been built up, and in fact there is
incentive from their global customers to maintain their higher
standards.
So, how to foster this positive behavior from global customers--
such as American retailers and supermarkets--to incentivize their
suppliers in global supply chains to adopt less exploitative systems?
How do they open themselves up to collaboration with NGOs that can help
them build and reform their systems to drive trafficking risk out of
these supply chains that touch American customers? Government can play,
and has played, a key role in incentivizing and stimulating such
adoption. The California Supply Chain Transparency Act and UK Modern
Slavery Act have compelled many companies to investigate and disclose
their own diligence processes and procedures. USAID's Supply Unchained
Initiative and U.S. State Department funding to organizations with
boots on the ground and science and technology capacity such as Issara
Institute has enabled the development of the tools and innovation
needed to actually root out and crowd out exploitative labor practices.
What else needs to be done to capitalize on these recent
advancements and successes? Only a few multinational companies who face
these supply chain risks have adopted such solutions at an enterprise
level. Despite increasing regulatory frameworks and fears of
reputational risks, conducting systematic due diligence for human
trafficking does not appear to have become part of standard operating
procedure for many brands and is often relegated to separate, limited
corporate responsibility or ethical sourcing departments. Brands and
retailers need to fully incorporate credible and effective diligence
for human trafficking and forced labor into core sourcing functions,
and invest in the optimal products and partnerships for their business
needs. Knowing and mapping your supply chain, and conducting due
diligence--preferably utilizing worker voice mechanisms as a more
effective means to generate primary data and business intelligence--
will help identify the solution areas that need to be focused. New
technology tools and migrant worker access to smart phones is unlocking
opportunities to identify trafficking and forced labor risks, and to
interact with workers, in ways that were simply were not possible just
a few years ago. American business investment in supply chain
improvement, and seeking (and rewarding) suppliers that are open to
change and workplace transparency, will spur further innovations, drive
down costs, enable expanded data collection and sharing, and fuel
scaling. Most importantly, U.S. brand investments and commitments can
ensure that workers' rights are protected and violations prevented, and
that long term responsible sourcing practices are advancing to drive
solutions and change through global supply chains.
Further support is also needed to the refinement and expansion of
technology to connect and empower vulnerable workers, giving voice to
their experiences and providing data-informed insights to corporations
and suppliers about labor conditions across complex, multi-tiered
supply chains. Boots on the ground with multilingual and multi-cultural
labor expertise are also vital to verify and validate labor risks and
abuses. This local expertise can help supplier businesses transform
their contracts, labor recruitment systems, and labor conditions, and
report to global buyers where risks are and are not being eliminated,
to bring on the supply chain leverage that so strongly motivates
positive change. While Issara has scaled rapidly, and continues to
experiment and learn, we have benefited greatly from the assistance of
the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State
Department's Trafficking in Persons Office, which has enabled us to
innovate and expand the reach of our technology and our partnerships to
support American retailers and supermarkets. We hope the U.S.
Government will continue to use all of the tools at its disposal to
foster commercial environments that safeguard worker's rights and
prevent their exploitation.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Goswami.
Mr. Lares.
STATEMENT OF TOMAS J. LARES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
FLORIDA ABOLITIONIST; AND CHAIRMAN, GREATER
ORLANDO HUMAN TRAFFICKING TASK FORCE
Mr. Lares. Good morning. My name is Tomas Lares. I am the
Executive Director of Florida Abolitionist and also the
Chairman of the Greater Orlando Human Trafficking Task Force.
I would like just to highlight in my brief comments today
the power of collaboration at the grassroots, including some of
the board members that are a part of my nonprofit, including
Dr. Richard Lapchick, who is a civil rights pioneer and
champion in our country; Commissioner Pete Clarke, from Orange
County Government; Commissioner Tony Ortiz, from the City of
Orlando; Judge Wilfredo Martinez, from our Orange County
courts; Dick Batchelor, a Florida welfare--another champion and
advocate in our state and former legislature; and most of all I
want to highlight the importance of having survivor advocates
at the table of every conversation. Amy Smith is one of those
on our board.
On behalf of Florida Abolitionist, I want to give a special
thanks to Chairman John Thune, Ranking Senator Bill Nelson,
from my state, and all the members of the Committee for the
invitation to this informational hearing.
Unfortunately, the horrific crime of human trafficking,
also known as modern-day slavery, is evident in each of our
communities. Only through the partnership and collaboration of
governmental and non-governmental organizations, faith
communities, and the private sector can we adequately and
efficiently address this issue.
It was 13 years ago this week that former U.S. Senator Sam
Brownback of Kansas introduced me to the issue of human
trafficking while presenting to his staff the ``Trafficking In
Persons'' report of 2004. Upon my return to Central Florida, I
began to research what was occurring in my state pertaining to
awareness, advocacy, prevention, prosecution, and who were the
stakeholders in my backyard. You can imagine the level of
awareness in 2004 was not too high.
What I discovered was that Florida had one of the first
successful prosecutions, ``The United States vs. Tecum''. This
was a historic case, and the survivor was the first recipient
of the T-visa. Since then, dozens of cases of both sex, labor,
and domestic servitude have been successfully prosecuted in our
state.
Upon moving to Orlando, I was living in Central Florida. I
was on the coast, and I moved to Orlando in 2006. I began to
see the need for more collaboration, especially around the
hospitality-tourism industry. As many of you know, Orlando is
now the number one tourist place, destination, in the world.
As a victim advocate, I began to partner with our Orlando
Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation, which is a very unique
vice unit really in our country since 1978. Both Federal,
state, and local law enforcement work together in narcotics,
street crimes, and now human trafficking. We began to go out on
stings and recoveries as the victims were identified. This was
the beginning and creating of a 24/7 human trafficking hotline
in our region that we now staff in key partnership with the
National Human Trafficking Hotline and through the Polaris
Project.
In 2009, we began aggressive awareness in our region. And I
mention this because this is going to be key to why most of our
hospitality and tourism industries have been educated in the
greater Orlando. In the last 10 years, tens of thousands of
citizens, businesses, and other groups have been educated. We
have a monthly hotel outreach where we go to the hotels, a
chain of hotels, and we train or present before their
management and/or staff, depending on what the hotel is needing
at the time. We have partnered with the Hotel and Lodging
Association. And our mayor of Orange County, Mayor Teresa
Jacobs, has committed to really addressing the issue of
trafficking within our businesses in the county.
What has happened in Florida is evident by what Senator
Nelson has mentioned with Florida being number three in the
number of calls. Many of them are coming from Central Florida.
And also for the new maltreatment code through our child
welfare system, the Florida Department of Children and
Families, where over 1,800 calls were made just last year.
In 2014, as a result of our collaboration, we relaunched
our coalition as the Greater Orlando Human Trafficking Task
Force. This Task Force has grown to dozens of members,
subcommittees, working groups, and a multitude of community
volunteers. This is the power of collaboration that makes our
communities stronger, advocates for the most vulnerable, and
works alongside our law enforcement and first responders.
At Florida Abolitionist, our mission is to end modern-day
slavery. We accomplish our mission through networking and
facilitating preventative and restorative solutions. We believe
that awareness and education is vital to inform and equip
students, parents, administrators, and teachers. We have
partnered with our Orange County School Board, Superintendent
Barbara Jenkins, and she has allowed us to come in the
beginning of this year to train guidance counselors,
psychologists, resource officers, social workers, and other
frontline staff.
Our Seminole County, Osceola County, and other counties
have now followed that same training, and this fall we'll be
launching a major awareness campaign in our schools. And we
have partnered with the schools already on what they have done
with anti-bullying. It's called SpeakOut. And we've created a
whole campaign for the students.
We believe that reaching this young generation is vital.
And so we'll be launching later this year an app for our state
to identify trafficking that will be user-friendly for the
students. We know the Millennials are not calling the hotlines;
they're not wanting to call anyone, as a matter of fact. So we
believe this app is going to be very critical in reporting.
We are also committed to the restoration of victims and
survivors, whether they are male, female, foreign-born,
domestic, sex, or labor trafficking victims.
Throughout all these years of advocacy, I believe more than
ever in the African proverb, ``It takes a village to raise a
child.'' This is also true if we're going to be abolitionists
in the 21st century and stand together to fight this horrific
crime.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lares follows:]
Prepared Statement of Tomas J. Lares, Executive Director, Florida
Abolitionist and Chairman, Greater Orlando Human Trafficking Task Force
On behalf of Florida Abolitionist, Inc. (FA), a special thanks to
Chairman John Thune, Ranking Senator Bill Nelson, and all the members
of the committee for the invitation to this informational hearing.
Unfortunately, the horrific crime of human trafficking also known as
modern-day slavery is evident in each of our communities. Only through
the partnerships and collaboration of governmental, non-governmental
organizations, faith communities and the private sector can we
adequately and efficiently address this issue.
It was 13 years ago this week that former U.S. Senator Sam
Brownback of Kansas introduced me to the issue of human trafficking
while presenting the Trafficking In Persons 2004 report to his staff.
Upon my return to Central Florida I began to research what was
occurring in my state pertaining to awareness, advocacy, prevention,
prosecution and who were the stakeholders in my own backyard. What I
discovered was that Florida had one of the first successful
prosecutions, ``The United States vs. Tecum''. This was a historic case
and the survivor was the first recipient of the T-visa in the United
States. Since then dozens of cases of both sex, labor and domestic
servitude have been successfully prosecuted in our state.
In 2005, I facilitated the first human trafficking seminar in
Brevard County, FL. where over 100+ individuals and organizations
attended. An outcome of this seminar was the formation of the Space
Coast Human Trafficking Task Force. (Formerly the Space Coast Rescue &
Restore Coalition).
Upon moving to Orlando in 2006 there was a need to begin organizing
key stakeholders in the fight against human trafficking. As a victim
advocate I partnered with the Orlando Metropolitan Bureau of
Investigation and began specialized advocacy upon the recovery and/or
identification of victims. This was the beginnings of creating a 24/7
human trafficking hotline that my agency staffs and the key partnership
with the National Human Trafficking hotline through the Polaris
Project.
In 2007, I cofounded the Orlando Rescue and Restore Coalition to
network law enforcement, civic groups, service providers, educational
entities and community/faith based agencies to work together to create
a safety net and make preparations as victims are identified, rescued
and restored in Greater Orlando region.
In January of 2009 a small group of abolitionists facilitated the
first Human Trafficking Awareness march in downtown Orlando at the
famous Lake Eola park. Preparations are being made to celebrate the
10th Annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 27, 2018. Since
that first march tens of thousands of Central Floridian's have been
educated and made aware of the issue. This is evident by the number of
calls documented by the National Human Trafficking hotline and the
calls made to the Florida Department of Children and Families abuse
hotline as well.
In 2014, as a result of our collaboration the Orlando Rescue and
Restore Coalition was relaunched as the Greater Orlando Human
Trafficking Task Force, Inc. whose mission is to provide human rights
based, victim centered community forum and mechanism to combat all
aspects of human trafficking in the Greater Orlando area through
collaboration and partnerships with key stakeholders. The task force
has grown to include dozens of members, subcommittees, working groups
and a multitude of community volunteers. This is the power of
collaboration that makes our community stronger, advocates for the most
vulnerable and works along side our law enforcement and first
responders.
At Florida Abolitionist, Inc. our mission is to end modern-day
human slavery. We accomplish our mission by networking and facilitating
preventative and restorative solutions. We believe that awareness and
education is vital to inform and equip students, parents,
administrators and teachers in our communities. We are also committed
to the restoration of victims and/or survivors whether they are male,
female, foreign born, domestic, sex or labor trafficking victims.
Throughout all these years of advocacy I believe more than ever the
African proverb, ``It takes a village to raise a child.'' This is also
true if we are going to be true abolitionists in the 21st Century as we
stand together declaring, ``Not On Our Watch''.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Lares.
Ms. Goetsch, truckers are the eyes and ears of our nation's
roadways and are well positioned to spot and help prevent human
trafficking, as you noted. Can you tell us more about how
truckers hear about your education program and how your
relationship with industry contributes to the success of that
program?
Ms. Goetsch. Yes. So our program has been successful
because of the industry's incredible response to the
information. There were some leaders early on that really
helped open doors to other stakeholders. So one of the largest
travel and truck stops in America, Travel Centers of America,
in 2011, came on as a partner.
We've also had other TAT champions that have really pushed
our work forward in the industry. UPS just finished training
90,000 drivers and registering them as TAT trained. They, along
with Walmart, have also donated to haul our Freedom Drivers
Project all across the Nation, getting in front of more
audiences within the industry. Ryder, one of the largest
trucking companies, was an early partner of ours, and they
serve on our board of directors as well, as well as
Bridgestone, the tire manufacturer, who has opened doors in the
industry that have been hugely helpful as well as financially
supporting us.
The Chairman. As I understand it, and again hearkening back
to some of your testimony, Truckers Against Trafficking has
been successful in conducting outreach and education at the
state level with more than half of the states adopting the
group's proven model, including my home state of South Dakota.
Ms. Goetsch. Mm-hmm.
The Chairman. So could you kind of describe how your group
works with departments of transportation in states like mine?
Ms. Goetsch. Yes. So it definitely is at the state level.
So every state is different, and our inroads in each state have
been different. So our IOWA MVE model is a model that any state
can adopt primarily looking at those key locations, rest areas,
weigh stations, and then working with highway patrol or state
police within that state.
So we do work with Department of Transportation heavily. We
train officers who run weigh stations and ports of entry on
human trafficking so that they are also aware of the multiple
indicators and the signs. We have worked Department of
Licensing, Department of Public Safety. So whatever agency in
the state can really have the right connections both with law
enforcement and have that overlap with the trucking industry,
that's where we come in and we present the program and then
just continue with our partners to get the materials out on the
ground level.
The Chairman. And the number of states participating today
is how many?
Ms. Goetsch. Thirty-one states.
The Chairman. Thirty-one states. OK. Good. And I assume
you're trying to get all the others out there.
Ms. Goetsch. Yes, that would be our goal.
The Chairman. All right. Well, hopefully, they'll follow
through on that.
Mr. Goswami, the challenges that you've identified seem
daunting. How has the development of technology made it easier
for businesses to track the supply chains to reduce the risk of
forced labor? And how can we better leverage technology moving
forward to ensure that more businesses are better able to
monitor their supply chains?
Mr. Goswami. Yes, the challenges are quite daunting, and
the victims and survivors are probably in the tens of
thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, but technology has
enabled us to get better insight and deeper insight into
victims and survivors who often go unhidden.
For example, most of the migrant workers who are caught up
in trafficking situations or other illegal situations in the
Thai seafood industry, they happen to have smartphones or they
happen to have Nokia feature phones, and there are many
providers, including Issara, who have launched apps and other
applications to survey such workers on their phones and ask
them directly what their conditions are and provide that data
directly to businesses who want to get that deeper insight into
their workforces across their supply chains.
And what we find is that it's difficult to send people down
everywhere to do audits announced or unannounced to go into
every facility and check on a piece of paper what is happening
and speak the local language. However, you can bypass that
infrastructure by going directly to using mobile phones or
other technologies to get directly to the workers. I should
add, though, that even though we are sourcing good credible
data from such tools, mobile tools, nothing replaces the on-
the-ground work to take that data and turn it into positive
solutions and work with suppliers to listen to the voices of
the workers as they're telling us what changes they would like
and what grievance mechanisms they need in implementing those
measures.
The Chairman. Thank you. My time is up.
Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. Ms. Goetsch, how did an advertisement in
Craigslist soliciting for sex not catch the eye of law
enforcement?
Ms. Goetsch. That's a good question. I'm not law
enforcement, so I don't know that I can speak to that
precisely, that individual case. I think law enforcement is
working on tracking those kinds of sites more closely in order
to identify. But the reality is--and both my colleagues here
could speak to this as far as the sheer volume of ads that are
typically out there and the high percentage of those that are
trafficking situations.
I would just add that as I work with law enforcement across
the United States, there does still need to be more training to
help law enforcement identify what is a human trafficking case
so that they can respond quickly and appropriately.
Senator Nelson. Well, when you train truckers, give me an
example of what your training is like. What do you teach them?
Ms. Goetsch. Yes. So we have a training video which has a
survivor who was trafficked at a truck stop. She shares her
story. We have a wallet card. That's the primary tool we use to
educate and equip the trucking industry. So it has red flag
indicators specific to the trucking industry and the truck stop
and travel plaza industry. So looking for things that are
abnormal. Truckers are already observant. They know the layout
of their surroundings.
And so in that particular case, the RV was parked in an
unusual spot. He watched. He noticed men coming back and forth
from the RV. He noticed the curtains were blacked out. All of
those things were indicators because he had been trained that
this was not a normal family situation.
You know, if there are minors traveling with someone that
they don't look related to. Maybe they're not answering for
themselves or in control of their own documents. So there are a
lot of indicators that we train truckers to be on the lookout
for.
Senator Nelson. Right.
Mr. Lares, you were telling how you all have very
successfully reached out to the school system in Orange County.
What degree of success have you had reaching out to the
business community in Florida to get them willing to
participate?
Mr. Lares. Well, Senator, particularly in Central Florida,
it has been a little challenging because we are the tourist
destination that a lot of businesses do not want the image of
being--having trafficking associated. And so we have had to
really be just very strategic in how we approach the
businesses. And that's where I was mentioning Mayor Teresa
Jacobs, Orange County Mayor, has really helped us along with
the other commissioners and introducing us to the businesses in
our region, that we want to be proactive, especially the Hotel
and Lodging Association, that we want to help them identify any
of these--this activity so that we can keep our community a
family friendly tourist attraction. And so reaching out to
those----
Senator Nelson. Have they been a willing participant?
Mr. Lares. The Hotel and Lodging Association, yes; yes,
sir. We're reaching out to the other sectors now and we've
asked Mr. Rosen to facilitate hospitality training for all the
other sectors we're trying to reach.
Senator Nelson. What other businesses in the Central
Florida area do you see the most traffic?
Mr. Lares. One of the key, I think, trainings is going to
be some of the taxi companies, particularly the Mears. I have a
story of a Mears driver who came into----
Senator Nelson. That is to spot.
Mr. Lares. Yes.
Senator Nelson. Train the taxi drivers to spot trafficking.
Mr. Lares. Yes, sir.
Senator Nelson. What businesses in the Central Florida area
would be susceptible? Mr. Goswami talked about the seafood
industry over in Asia. What in Central Florida? What
businesses?
Mr. Lares. I think--okay, so particular businesses, I think
particularly would be, besides the hotels and any of those
related tourism industries, I think that some of the
restaurants. We have gone to those already. The other
industries would be particularly with the supply chain, that
has been something that we--I want to speak with him to see
what we could be--who we should reach out to. Because we've
been focused on, sir, more the tourism and the hospitality
industry, to be honest.
Senator Nelson. So you're not talking about a specific
restaurant, you're talking about the supply chain that supplies
the restaurants; in the case of Mr. Goswami, with the shrimp
that they provide.
Mr. Lares. Yes, sir.
Senator Nelson. Thanks.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Nelson.
I want to, before I forget, enter into the record some
letters from stakeholders, including a letter from Call to
Freedom, an organization combatting human trafficking in South
Dakota; a testimony from Chelsea, a victim of human trafficking
and saved by Call to Freedom; written testimony from NATSO,
which represents travel plazas and truck stops around the
country on their efforts to prevent human trafficking; and
written testimony from Airline Ambassadors International, which
works with the airline industry on human trafficking awareness.
So those will be entered without objection.
[The information referred to follows:]
Prepared Statement of Call to Freedom
Dear Chairman Thune and Members of the Committee,
Defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision,
or obtaining of a commercial sex act that is induced by force, fraud,
or coercion, sex trafficking is the second largest and fastest growing
criminal industry in the world. Although it is the second largest in
the world, it often goes unnoticed.
Within the state of South Dakota, the number of sex trafficking
related calls, arrests, and sentencing of traffickers has increased
significantly over the last decade. Through prevention education
programs, the news media, and victims sharing their stories, this
injustice is being recognized; more victims are surfacing and seeking
help. The U.S. Attorney's Office has worked to prosecute those who have
sex trafficked juveniles and women and arrests continue to be made
during the Sturgis rally and around the state. Some shocking statistics
include:
2nd to drug dealing, sex trafficking has surpassed the gun
trade as the largest and fastest growing criminal industry in
the world.
An estimated 14,500--17,500 victims are trafficked into the
U.S. every year.
South Dakota has the 2nd highest trafficking-related calls
in the U.S.
50 Federal cases have been reported in South Dakota.
Interstates 29 & 90 (in South Dakota) make up ``The Midwest
Pipeline.''
1 out of 3 youth are susceptible to being sex trafficked
within forty-eight hours of being homeless.
More important are the faces and lives impacted.
One of the most vulnerable populations to sex trafficking are
Native American women and children. Native American women experience
domestic and sexual violence two and a half times more than their non-
Native counterparts, which makes them more susceptible to sex
trafficking. Additionally, because Native American women often face
obstacles like a lower rate of education and generational poverty and
trauma, this heightens the likelihood that they will be sexually
exploited. Native American women often come from broken families and
are surrounded by alcoholism and substance abuse within their
communities. Within the Native American communities in South Dakota,
victims are more likely to experience homegrown trafficking. Within the
Native populations in South Dakota, the victims more than likely know
who their traffickers are, whether it be a uncle, father, boyfriend, or
sibling.
Another population that is vulnerable to sex trafficking are
impoverished and foster youth, runaways, or youth who have been a part
of the juvenile justice system. Within these populations, there is a
lack of programs that provided trauma-informed care and mental health
counseling to youth who have experienced sex trafficking. Without
programs like these, youth are likely to be revictimized. As vulnerable
youth often go without basic needs, like food and shelter, they accept
help from traffickers who perpetuate a ``nice'' and ``caring'' persona.
However, once these youth are dependent on traffickers for basic needs,
they are either threatened or coerced into sex trafficking.
Furthermore, the Department of Justice reported that annually, one
hundred and fifty thousand youth will be approached by a trafficker
within forty-eight hours of being homeless.
In August 2015, Call to Freedom's executive director, Becky
Rasmussen, went out on an outreach in Sturgis, South Dakota, that
changed the direction of Call to Freedom. The outreach team would go
and connect with those that seemed vulnerable. Becky felt that she
should approach a young woman; she said ``Hi, my name is Becky'' and
the young girl replied ``Hi, my name is Marissa.'' She began to connect
with this young lady and towards the end of the conversation, Marissa
was crying and kept saying ``you have no idea what kind of day I've
have, you have no idea what kind of day I've had'' and then Marissa was
gone.
Becky learned the next day from an international search and rescue
group that Marissa was suspected of being sex trafficked and missing
out of the Sturgis area. Marissa was in a situation where she was
pulled into sex trafficking a few years ago, got out for a few months,
but unfortunately was pulled back in. The group that Becky met with
said it's common for victims like Marissa to be pulled back in due to
gaps in services and resources. If these women are unable to find
assistance, they remain vulnerable and an easy target to be pulled back
into sex trafficking.
In order to close the service gaps, Call to Freedom was founded as
a nonprofit in 2016. Call to Freedom is an organization that provides
supportive services for victims of sex trafficking by creating a strong
network of frontline providers who offer safe housing, mental health
counseling, medical assistance, addiction treatment, transportation,
and other services. Within the past year and a half, Call to Freedom
has provided intensive case management and supportive services to woman
and children of diverse ages and ethnicities.
In 2016, Call to Freedom served:
30 victims of sex trafficking.
30 families who were affected by sex trafficking, or
had a family member that was affected by sex trafficking.
60 percent were Native American,
30 percent were Caucasian,
And 10 percent were of other ethnicities.
From January 2017 to June 2017, Call to Freedom served:
51 victims and family members of sex trafficking.
This population has diverse and complex needs. In order to provide
services to meet client needs, Call to Freedom has reached out to the
community and built effective collaborations in areas of mental health
and addiction counseling, occupational therapy, employability, medical
and dental care, and emergency shelter. Upon discovering a significant
and permanent gap in safe and affordable housing, Call to Freedom
rented an apartment building with eight efficiency apartments and from
then on, Marissa's Project House became a safe haven for sex
trafficking and sexual exploitation victims. Marissa's Project is safe
environment that offers support and stability, which are necessary for
successful long-term transitions out of sex trafficking and sexual
exploitation situations. Not only are the women offered shelter, but
they are also provided access to support services like occupational
therapy, intensive case management, employment search and training
support, and transportation. With the help of community donors, Call to
Freedom has furnished the apartments and transitioned key case manager
time to house/client case management. Since October 2016, Native
American, Caucasian, Latino women, and two children have called
Marissa's Project home. Only a few of the women came in with
employment, but all are now employed (at least part-time), sober,
receiving mental health counseling, and transitioning out of the
controlling abusive situations they have endured.
In order to successfully transition victims of sex trafficking out
of dangerous situations, Call to Freedom partners with local and
Federal law enforcement, the U.S. Attorney's Office, community
partners, and organizations that work to prevent sex trafficking and
educate vulnerable populations. As a result of identifying the gaps in
services when navigating next steps for victims of sex trafficking, we
plan to implement more trauma-informed resources through facilitation
and training of the East River Human Trafficking Task Force. We have
also identified gaps when it comes to providing minors and victims with
specialized treatment. We need to make sure that these youth are not
revictimized and are able to successfully transition out of sex
trafficking. In order to address this gap, Call to Freedom wants to
develop a specialized program for youth with an emergency crisis
shelter that is fully staffed with trauma and addiction counselors,
mental health assessment, and other vital services to successfully
assess and treat victims.
We truly appreciate your attention to strengthen services to
victims of sex trafficking. We are grateful for the opportunity to
provide insight on this epidemic within the state of South Dakota.
Sincerely,
Becky Rasmussen,
Executive Director,
Call to Freedom.
______
Chelsea's Testimonial
I grew up in a home of childhood sexual abuse. My dad raised me
when my parents divorced, I was four. The first memory that I have of
life was my dad molesting me; that continued as I got older. Soon after
that happened he began to sell me to his friends and other people who
were around the house. There were a lot of drugs and parties and people
were everywhere, all the time.
Whenever he [dad] would sell my body and I would see a guy pay for
me, I would like that the guy liked me and wanted to invest in me; it's
where my worth came from. That continued until I was fourteen. By that
time, the worth I had felt worthless. When I turned fourteen, I left
home and tried to get away from it. Though I tried to get away from
that life, it kept drawing me [back] in and I started to crave that
worthiness.
When I first came to Call to Freedom, I knew that I wanted to help
but I was also afraid to take it. When I walked into Call to Freedom's
doors, I connected with a certain staff member and said ``that girl
looks like an angel.'' Since that day, that angel has stuck by my side.
When I came to Call to Freedom, I thought my life was ending. I
couldn't see how I got out or how I would get out, but Call to Freedom
has taught me that my life is only beginning. I have entire life ahead
of me. Since coming to Call to Freedom, I've been sober for the first
time since I was fourteen and can have dreams and shoot for bigger
things.
______
Prepared Statement of NATSO
Introduction
NATSO, the national association representing America's travel
plazas and truckstops, submits this statement for the record with
respect to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and
Transportation's (``Committee's'') June 12, 2017, hearing titled
``Force Multipliers: How Transportation and Supply Chain Stakeholders
are Combatting Human Trafficking.''
As discussed further below, the truckstop and travel plaza industry
takes seriously the fight against human trafficking, and has invested
significant resources to help travel plaza owners and operators
identify and report such unlawful activity.
Background
NATSO is a national trade association representing travel plaza and
truckstop owners and operators. NATSO's mission is to advance the
success of truckstop and travel plaza members. Since 1960, NATSO has
dedicated itself to this mission and the needs of truckstops, travel
plazas, and their suppliers by serving as America's official source of
information on the diverse industry. NATSO also acts as the voice of
the industry on Capitol Hill and before regulatory agencies.
NATSO currently represents more than 1,500 travel plazas and
truckstops nationwide, comprised of approximately 1,000 chain locations
and several hundred independent locations, owned by more than 200
corporate entities.
NATSO also operates the NATSO Foundation, which is the research,
education and public outreach subsidiary of NATSO, Inc. The NATSO
Foundation provides education and research for the truckstop and travel
plaza industry as well as programs and products aimed at strengthening
travel plazas' ability to meet the needs of the traveling public
through improved operational performance and business planning.
Travel Plaza Industry Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking
For nearly six years, the NATSO Foundation has been helping members
of the truckstop and travel plaza community engage in the fight against
human trafficking. Because human trafficking has been reported across
all modes of transportation, it is critical that the Committee conducts
this hearing, and we applaud the Committee's participation in this
effort.
Human trafficking perpetrators utilize many legitimate businesses--
unbeknownst to the business owners and employees--in connection with
their crimes. The truckstop and travel plaza industry is united along
with other transportation providers to stop the flow of human
trafficking using America's transportation system.
Human trafficking victims are frequently transported via the
Interstate Highway System. As an industry that caters to millions of
highway travelers every year, truckstops and travel plazas and their
employees are in a key position to help identify and report suspected
incidents of human trafficking along America's highway system. The
industry is taking meaningful action to ensure that it is prepared to
respond.
At the NATSO Foundation, one of our goals is to provide our members
with the tools they need to train their staff so that those individuals
are equipped to help if they encounter a victim of this horrible crime.
Travel plaza and truckstop owners and operators have a vested interest
in their businesses and are highly focused on crime prevention. The
safer the environment a truckstop creates for its customers, the more
customers a truckstop will have. Operators keep a trained eye on
everything that happens at their locations.
The NATSO Foundation has taken a lead role within the
transportation sector, creating public awareness and educational
materials that help truckstop owners, operators and their employees:
understand what human trafficking is;
recognize signs of human trafficking; and
appropriately respond to and report suspected incidents of
human trafficking.
More specifically, the NATSO Foundation has developed an online
education tool called ``The Role of Truckstops in Combating Human
Trafficking.'' The program is designed to strengthen the Nation's
truckstop and travel plaza industry by delivering comprehensive online
educational and safety training materials to truckstop owners,
operators and employees. The course, which is free to any member of the
truckstop and travel plaza community, teaches truckstop owners,
operators and employees how to identify and respond to suspected
incidents of human trafficking. Since its launch, several hundred
truckstops and travel center locations throughout the country have
incorporated this training into their new employee training programs.
In addition to this education tool, the NATSO Foundation since 2012
has:
Co-sponsored regional coalition meetings with Truckers
Against Trafficking, state trucking associations and law
enforcement that provide an opportunity to educate members of
the business community, transportation and law enforcement
about human trafficking. These meetings serve as an open forum
to discuss human trafficking trends in regional areas and to
explore ways to combat this crime. To date, the NATSO
Foundation has co-sponsored nearly 25 regional coalition
meetings across the United States.
Worked closely with the Department of Transportation,
Polaris Project, the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children and other national and local organizations to gain
insight into best practices on how to educate members of the
travel plaza industry about human trafficking.
Partnered with the Department of Homeland Security's Blue
Campaign, which is that Agency's comprehensive effort to end
human trafficking. Through this alliance, the NATSO Foundation
provides the DHS Blue Campaign's training and awareness
materials--such as posters and handouts and other education
materials--to the Nation's truckstops and travel plazas to
enhance the NATSO Foundation's educational resources.
Worked in support of the U.S. Department of Justice's AMBER
Alert program and the National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children (NCMEC) as a secondary AMBER Alert distributor so
that Amber Alerts containing information about abducted
children can be displayed at truckstops and travel plazas
across the country.
Similarly, the NATSO Foundation encourages its member
companies to participate in the National Center for Missing &
Exploited Children's High-Risk Child Poster Listserv so that
truckstop owners and operators can share posters with their
customers that help increase the visibility of missing children
at high risk for sex trafficking.
Conclusion
Private enterprises can make a meaningful difference in the fight
against human trafficking if they take the time to learn about and
invest resources toward combatting it.
The NATSO Foundation is committed to investing the time and
resources necessary to help the truckstop and travel plaza industry do
all it can to combat human trafficking.
NATSO and the NATSO Foundation commend the Committee for focusing
on this important issue and for allowing the truckstop and travel plaza
industry an opportunity to share information about the many ways in
which this industry is taking a lead role to stop the flow of human
trafficking using America's transportation system.
Please feel free to reach out to me directly if I can answer any
questions or provide any additional assistance.
Tiffany Wlazlowski Neuman,
Vice President, Public Affairs,
NATSO.
______
Prepared Statement of Nancy L Rivard, President, Airline Ambassadors
The critical infrastructure of our transportation system can no
longer be used as a tool to implement human trafficking, or modern day
slavery. This is also the fastest growing crime in the world. It is
linked to drug trafficking, human smuggling, arms trafficking and
terrorism, also; human trafficking aboard aircraft is a cabin safety
issue.
Traffickers often use the speed, convenience and comparative safety
from detection of commercial air travel. The International Air
Transport Association (IATA) shows 3.6 billion global passengers in
2016 and U.S. serving airlines carried 928.9 million domestic and
international passengers.
Airline personnel can be `eyes in the skies'' providing vital
intelligence to law enforcement. They can be a force multiplier in the
fight against human trafficking. One flight attendant interacts with a
minimum of over 500 passengers per week. This translates to 24,000
passengers per year.
Airline Ambassadors International (AAI) was established in 1996 as
a non-profit organization made up of members in the airline industry.
AAI has led advocacy on human trafficking awareness since correctly
identifying trafficking on four flights in 2009. Working with
Congressional members and government agencies they developed an
``industry specific'' training, which has been provided to 5,000
frontline personnel at 57 U.S. airports and international locations.
This training is provided by volunteer flight personnel and survivors
of human trafficking and is consistent with the ``Blue Lightning''
protocol of the Department of Homeland Security.
The story of an Alaska Airlines flight attendant, Shelia Fedrick
who saved a little girl with a note in the bathroom, went viral in
February 2017 with over 2,000 media citations. Shelia is an AAI trainer
and this is only one of dozens of stories of victims who have been
saved as a result of these prevention efforts.
Airline Ambassadors International commends the leadership of
Senator Thune for the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2016 (S. 2658) which
includes the requirement that flight attendants be trained to identify
and report potential trafficking aboard flights. Since the new
legislation, most airlines have now adopted a human trafficking policy
and have implemented a minimum level of training for flight attendants.
However, there is still more work to do to strengthen this momentum.
Problems Still Needing Solutions Airline Industry
Oversight
There is not adequate oversight evaluating effectiveness of
training on human trafficking awareness in the airline industry. There
is not motivation for companies to ensure maximum effectiveness of such
training of flight attendants, or to train other critical employee
groups at major human trafficking transit hubs, including airports.
Flight Attendants
Positive momentum has begun with several airlines adopting the DHS
Blue Lightening computer based training, or a few slides in the on line
portion of recurrent training. However many airline professionals have
said they do not pay close attention to on line trainings and the
typical flight attendant glosses through on line trainings as fast as
they can, and very little of the information is retained. The issue of
human trafficking awareness is not even mentioned by the training staff
of most U.S. based airlines during annual training. Emphasis by
trainers is needed in recurrent training.
Pilots
When flight attendants report suspected trafficking situation on
board they are to inform the pilots, who are to radio the upcoming
airport, to contact law enforcement for evaluation. However, in two
recent cases the pilots refused to report despite the fact that flight
attendants were concerned and the procedure was in their ``In Flight
Manual''. The pilots stated that they were reluctant to cause a problem
for the passenger and the suspected trafficker and victim deplaned
unhindered. . This issue needs to be addressed in pilot recurrent
annual training so pilots will feel comfortable following the
procedure.
Operations personnel
Operations personnel are also not trained. Their responsibility is
to monitor hundreds of flights arriving at each major airport location.
When questioned recently on what action would be taken if a pilot
radioed in a potential human trafficking on the flight, one supervisor
replied that he would take no action, as this issue was not related to
aircraft security.
Passenger Service Agents
Agents also see trafficking indicators when interacting with
customers checking in for flights and are not trained how to respond.
Some have shared that they have seen many potential cases but did not
know who to report to and were even concerned about risking their jobs.
Many have said they would like training so that they know what is
expected of them, and most are quite willing to act.
Lack of Corporate Commitment
Although the private sector is critical in this fight, most
airlines truly do not understand the importance of human trafficking
awareness and hesitant to integrate new actions into their corporate
cultures. They are nervous that vigilante flight attendants will make
false accusations and cause a lawsuit. They have no motivation to
ensure proper training for employees, eliminate trafficking in the
supply chain or adopt policies on this issue that include providing of
training and job opportunities for victims. When AAI sent a letter on
April, 2017 to the CEO's of 24 airlines and hospitality companies to
support human trafficking policies and being open to hiring survivors--
there was no response.
Data Sharing--Law Enforcement
The Department of Homeland Security was created under the Patriot
Act to coordinate information among agencies and partners to secure our
critical infrastructure, but this information is not shared. Despite
formal FOIA requests for how many tips came from airports where
trainings were given, no information was shared and thus, evaluation of
training programs cannot be measured. Although details of law
enforcement cases should remain confidential, the sharing of
information on how many tips were received, and if they led to arrests
or prosecutions would provide valuable data for NGOs, airlines,
academia and the American public.
Reporting Mechanisms
The current public reporting systems for receiving human
trafficking ``tips'', cannot receive data rich information from the
partners that is seeks to empower. For example, AAI employs a
smartphone application that can transmit encrypted trafficking data in
critical real time, but law enforcement and NGO partners cannot receive
such data, including video, recordings, text and pictures.
Department of Homeland Security has spent millions of dollars on an
excellent advertising campaign on human trafficking awareness with
posters highlighting sex, domestic servitude and labor trafficking, but
1. The reporting phone number is different from the National Human
Trafficking Hotline (NHTH) # which is confusing for the general
public.
2. The DHS Hotline is not a direct number
3. Although the National Human Trafficking Hotline can receive texts
there is no mechanism to receive data rich information by
either Hotline, which many AAI trained professionals are
equipped to provide.
Recommendations
Oversight
1. The relevant critical infrastructure oversight agency (FAA or
DOT) should be established to provide minimum results based educational
standards to oversee compliance to human trafficking training for
airline transport industry.
Enhanced Training for Airline Personnel
2. Minimal, on line training should be supplemented with classroom
mention and training should be required for all frontline or relevant
employee groups--flight attendants, pilots, operations personnel and
passenger agents.
3. Legislation to require airlines to train staff could provide
resources for live Train the Trainer programs on human trafficking to
training staff of major U.S. based airlines. Such training should
include live participation of survivors of human trafficking to make
the issue come alive for trainees, so training staff of each airline
will understand the issue and emphasize it during annual recurrent
trainings.
Corporate Commitment
4. Legal protection offered to airline and employees who report
potential trafficking be established along with a reporting protocol to
FAA or the Department of Transportation.
5. Tax incentives be considered for companies for providing minimum
standards in compliance to combat human trafficking, (including
training of employees, elimination of trafficking in the supply chain
and willingness to provide jobs to victims of trafficking.)
6. Federal Government consider providing incentive to airline
companies by deciding to book government travel only on those air
carriers meeting minimum standards for corporate social responsibility
in this area.
Data Sharing
7. A system be established to measure the number of trafficking
tips received from airports, airlines and airport employees and number
of ``tips'' which lead to actual cases and prosecutions.
a. That data be shared with relevant partners or academic
institutions for evaluation.
Strengthen Reporting Mechanism
b. Establishment of an e-mail address to be monitored 24/7 as a
system for reporting potential human trafficking ``tips'' for
quick response and the ability to receive data rich
information--phone, text, e-mail, pictures, video and geo-
location to ensure prompt action and the ability to receive
rich data--rather than just a phone call or text
In the words of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants,
APFA:
largest flight attendant union in the United States:
``We are committed not only to preparing our membership to recognize
and report suspected instances of human trafficking, but also to raise
public awareness of the problem. Flight attendants have thwarted these
criminals in the past, but putting an end to human trafficking will
require a coordinated and sustained effort as well the commitment of
the entire transportation industry.''
The Chairman. Senator Blunt.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROY BLUNT,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSOURI
Senator Blunt. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you and Senator
Nelson for holding this hearing.
We've been increasing funding the last couple of years for
this topic. Hopefully, that's beginning to have an impact. I
think the Health and Human Services Victims of Trafficking
program went from $15.8 million to $18.8 million in the last 2
years. The hotline, the human trafficking hotline, got a 50
percent increase.
And, Ms. Sorensen, I think Polaris operates that hotline
for HHS. Would you give us a little sense of how you're using--
how the hotline is being used and how important that funding
may be?
Ms. Sorensen. Sure. Thank you. So we've had a 24 percent
increase in calls, texts, and other signals on the hotline in
the last year. Since Polaris got the program, so that was
December 7, 2007, we've had a 650 percent increase in contacts.
So that money was vastly important and continues to be vastly
important for the basic functioning of that hotline.
The kinds of signals that we receive from people tend to be
multilayered. So we will hear from someone who is experiencing
the sense that something is wrong, and that might be the first
of six or seven calls before they're ready to leave a
situation.
Our calls from victims directly have gone up exponentially
over the last few years from something like 5 percent to around
20, but I could get you the exact figures. So those calls just
take a lot more time because they often involve a very delicate
situation.
But we do hear also just as often from community members
reporting a tip. And reporting tips is complicated. You want to
make sure that those tips are actionable by law enforcement,
and so seeking out the correct level of information, the
correct details, is of paramount importance to us as well. Our
calls from victims directly have gone up by 241.4 percent
between calendar year 2012 and calendar year 2016. In 2016,
calls from potential victims made up 16.7 percent of all
substantive calls that year.
Senator Blunt. So 80 percent of the calls you get are from
people who think they've seen something happen that shouldn't
be happening? You said 20 percent are from----
Ms. Sorensen. I can get you the exact number. I actually
have that percentage broken out by state.
Senator Blunt. OK.
Ms. Sorensen. I don't have it nationally right now.
Senator Blunt. OK. I don't know that I need that.
Ms. Sorensen. Yes.
Senator Blunt. But most of the calls are from people who
think they've seen something. But you've got an increasing
number of calls from people who are victims?
Ms. Sorensen. That's correct.
Senator Blunt. How do they know to call? Where do they find
that information?
Ms. Sorensen. Yes.
Senator Blunt. Where do they find that number?
Ms. Sorensen. So, gratefully, we've worked with the Federal
Government and with Congress specifically to ensure that we
have additional places for educating people about the risks to
trafficking, posts in Federal buildings, posts in airline
centers or in transportation hubs. We actually worked for years
to pass State laws so that we could specifically proliferate
the hotline number in important locations where we saw the most
calls from those centers, whether they were rest stops, whether
they were maybe strip clubs, other areas where we thought
someone was vulnerable or at risk.
There's a lot more to be done on public awareness. We know
that we're still not reaching some of the most at-risk
populations, particularly those who are working as
subcontractors on agricultural crews or other kinds of labor
settings. So there is still a lot to do.
Senator Blunt. Let me get another couple of questions in
here.
Ms. Goetsch, in your testimony, you said that 31 states
have adopted the Iowa model for Truckers Against Trafficking.
Would you submit those states for the record? If we have those,
I don't know that we have them, and it wouldn't hurt us to have
them twice if we don't.
Mr. Goswami, you noted that a number of companies were
trying to proactively look at their supply chain, and I think
I've heard this mentioned a couple of times already, where the
supply chain for major companies are much more likely to be a
problem than the stores themselves. And what are they doing at
the--stores, like you mentioned, Walmart, what would a store
like that be doing to verify that their supply chain has the
integrity for workers that they would like it to have?
Mr. Goswami. Thank you for that question. So obviously, as
you can imagine, Walmart has a very large and complex supply
chain with tens of hundreds of suppliers that also provide
goods in their retail outlets. And I can speak to what Walmart
has done with the Issara Institute in Thailand in our Asia--in
our region.
We face a hurdle where there are multiple smaller
operations that are providing fielding services, fishing
services, et cetera, to suppliers that may eventually end up in
seafood products that are in U.S. stores and Walmart, and it's
hard for Walmart to get visibility into the very bottom rungs
of that supply chain.
So they have been partnering with us to develop technology
tools, including this app that I mentioned called Golden
Dreams. It's a Burmese language app. And with their funds,
we've been able to outreach this app out to various populations
in their own language. About 3,000 folks, workers, have signed
up to it, and they're giving us data every day on what their
experiences are, which we can then take back to Walmart and
match that with their suppliers who may be impacted by that
data, and then drive improvements.
And Walmart, at least in our region, has been very good
about using their supply chain leverage to ensure that their
suppliers, if they want to continue to do business with
Walmart, are acting upon the data that we provide.
Senator Blunt. Thank you.
Thank you for the time, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Blunt.
Senator Schatz.
STATEMENT OF HON. BRIAN SCHATZ,
U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII
Senator Schatz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to thank all of you for the work you do. It's
not often that we have unanimity on this Committee, but you
certainly have it here in terms of our commitment to solve this
problem.
I would like to just go down the line and get some data,
and if you're not able to give it to me in the moment, I'll
take it for the record. But I just want a sense for the scope
of the problem, the size of the problem. In your testimony, you
didn't give numbers, and it may be that those data don't exist.
But if we could just talk about the extent of the problem by
sector in the United States, that would be great, starting with
Ms. Sorensen.
Ms. Sorensen. Yes. Give me a moment because I did prepare
some stats for you. So in terms of--so there are a lot of
calls--I should be clear. There are calls we get where someone
does not give us information about the sector, does not give us
information about the trafficker, doesn't give us information
about themselves. So when I tell you that there are over 32,000
calls where we've pulled data, I want to be clear that out of
all of those, we've been able to run venue and sector
information on 18,786 of those. OK? Because there just wasn't
that information for everyone.
Senator Schatz. That's in one year. That's in one year?
Ms. Sorensen. No. This is all-time human trafficking cases.
So December 7, 2007 to April 30, 2017.
Senator Schatz. OK.
Ms. Sorensen. That's my timeframe for you. So we've got
related to the labor trafficking sectors, which I mentioned
were 18, we've got domestic work is the leading sector where we
see the most human trafficking. After that, I'm looking at
traveling sales crews, followed by restaurants and food
service----
Senator Schatz. Sorry. What is a traveling sales crew?
Ms. Sorensen. Sure. A traveling sales crew is typically
someone who comes door-to-door to sell cleaning products,
magazines, candy, et cetera. It's typically a network of
illegitimate businesses, and it's usually runaway kids.
Senator Schatz. Yes. Yes.
Ms. Sorensen. OK. After that, we have records from the
health and beauty services, so that's labor trafficking within
those, not just sex trafficking, which we also see. And then
it's agriculture and animal husbandry.
Senator Schatz. Before we go down the line, it seems to me
you're getting data coming in----
Ms. Sorensen. Yes.
Senator Schatz.--and those are the calls that come in. They
may or may not be proportionate----
Ms. Sorensen. That's absolutely right.
Senator Schatz.--to sort of the problem by sector. So maybe
instead of going down the line, it seems to me that there's a
data problem. We don't----
Ms. Sorensen. Oh, there's an enormous data----
Senator Schatz. We actually don't know the scope of this
problem. We don't know in terms of raw numbers or by sector
necessarily in which sectors this is the biggest problem. We
don't know if it's hundreds of thousands of people or tens of
thousands of people. You may have a sense of it at the line
level, but we just don't know, do we?
Ms. Sorensen. Senator, that's totally correct, and that's a
huge problem that Polaris and others in the field have been
highlighting for years. We actually have a proposal for a
prevalence study that we would love Congress to consider
because we think that this data is absolutely insufficient to
form our policies around. It is incoming data only.
Senator Schatz. OK. So rather than go down the line, I want
to get to one other question. In Hawaii, we had an instance of
trafficking in the construction context. And the way that the
bad guys were nailed was with a partnership with a carpenters
union.
And so I'm wondering if any of you can comment on the
partnerships actually with labor or with the chamber, because
it seems to me that they have, both at the management and at
the labor level, that that's the most logical approach. And I'm
wondering, there was not a mention of organized labor or
unions, and it seems to me that that would be a smart place to
start because they have both an ideological alignment with
what's happening and an imperative in terms of their organizing
that aligns with this. So do you have any thoughts? And I'll
start over here.
Mr. Lares. In Florida, the Farm Workers Association, the
Coalition of Immokalee Workers, those are some of the more of
the agricultural--what we have, I would say, the more organized
groups in Florida because of how our state--the various laws,
and the limited or lack of unions. But those would be the ones
that have organized our state. For example, right now with the
tomatoes, they are asking for some of our stores--one of the
biggest grocery stores in Florida is Publix, to give a penny
more toward the workers.
So they're organizing our communities and the agricultural
industry. That's the extent that I've seen.
Senator Schatz. And very quickly, Mr. Goswami and Ms.
Goetsch.
Mr. Goswami. Thank you, Senator. I'm going to actually try
to answer the first question you had about data and numbers.
Senator Schatz. Sure.
Mr. Goswami. Yes, there definitely is a need for better
numbers, but I would also argue that we do have enough numbers
that we need to act upon and act more rigorously on with more
resources.
I can tell you that in the Thai seafood sector, there are
about 4 million or so migrant workers in Thailand, that the
government estimates that about 300,000 of which work in the
seafood industry. And there were a couple studies that have
been done recently both by Issara and by Johns Hopkins that
show that roughly a third or so are victims of exploitation
that could be forced labor and trafficking. I know for Issara
itself, through our hotlines, we get about 6,000 calls a year,
and many of whom are, if not victims of forced labor, other
egregious forms of illegal labor conditions that they're in. So
we know enough and we have better tools to collect that data,
but we do have to respond to the information that we get.
Senator Schatz. Excuse me. My time has expired. I
appreciate it. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Schatz.
Senator Fischer.
STATEMENT OF HON. DEB FISCHER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEBRASKA
Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Sorensen, as you noted in your testimony, the Polaris
Project has identified and defined 25 different types of
trafficking. And can you talk about why it is important that we
understand the different forms of trafficking and how
identifying the forms can help us to understand and then combat
the traffickers?
Ms. Sorensen. Yes. Thank you, Senator, for the question. I
think there are two ways that we see it. The first is the
importance of understanding the types. Each type has its own
network of traffickers, recruiters, smugglers maybe, and
individuals who make up an at-risk vulnerable population. Each
type tends to take advantage of certain kinds of vulnerable
classes, whether they're foreign national or U.S. citizen.
When we understand the types in their most comprehensive
forms, we have the ability to direct policy to actually
dismantle them most effectively, whether that's targeting
prevention education toward a particular class that might be
migrating, or whether that's figuring out how to create better
AMLs, so that financial institutions can look for certain signs
that would only be present in particular types of trafficking.
So I think in building out that understanding, we can be very
targeted in our response.
The other thing I would highlight is that there are cross-
type issues we can leverage, whether it is the supply chain
transparency provisions, whether it's child protection
provisions, whether it's gender equity provisions. There are
things we can do that would actually help us to dismantle types
through this unique grouping strategy. And so the strategy from
our perspective is doing both, being able to tackle these
things holistically in any way we can.
Senator Fischer. And you briefly mentioned the Department
of Transportation's Transportation Leaders Against Human
Trafficking Initiative, and specifically the campaign that's
put the brakes on human trafficking. Can you elaborate on the
work that the Polaris Project is doing with the Department of
Transportation? And is it effective? Is that program effective?
Ms. Sorensen. So Polaris's work with the Department of
Transportation was a few years ago. I can absolutely get you
notes on what we did, but it isn't current, so I wouldn't be
able to comment on that.
[The information referred to follows:]
Polaris was involved as an advisor to the U.S. Department of
Transportation in 2013 and 2014 when they were working on a human
trafficking public awareness raising initiative. They had launched a
group called Transportation Leaders Against Human Trafficking, and we
were part of that group, and attended the group meetings hosted at DOT
as an NGO representative. We also advised the public awareness campaign
that came out of this group as a recommendation called Putting the
Brakes on Human Trafficking. What was unique about this effort is the
number of new stakeholders it brought to the table. Through TLAHT, we
were able to meet new government agencies and new major players in the
transportation industry whom we had never met or engaged with before.
We were pleased to see the DOT public awareness campaign promote the
U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline number at 1-888-373-7888 at
unique new locations and with new stakeholders across the country. A
number of new corporate relationships emerged from this initiative, and
the effort helped to connect the dots to inform different government
agencies of the role they can play in combating human trafficking.
Senator Fischer. OK. And for the panel, we have several
Federal agencies that are tasked with different grants and
objectives to train and equip state and local governments to
better address human trafficking. And do these agencies
coordinate among themselves? Do they do so adequately? Do they
work with state and local law enforcement? If we can begin down
here, please.
Mr. Lares. Sure. We, in the greater Orlando area, we have a
very unique vice unit that both the Federal, the state, and the
local law enforcement are comprised of. It's called the
Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation. And so we have amazing
collaboration because of that unique vice unit that we have in
the City of Orlando. And that way if it's across state lines or
whatever jurisdiction, that it can address that potential
victim or get that trafficker without--you know, it's more
seamless.
So from that level, I know that the funding sources don't
necessarily mix, but because of our unique vice unit, we are
working together. So I couldn't really address the funding
source or who's getting what.
Senator Fischer. Have you seen an increase in arrests? And
is that due to more activity by the vice unit and working with
others, or is it an uptick in activity with human trafficking?
Mr. Lares. I think it has been really key with the
awareness more and more as the awareness gets out there,
especially with the Polaris hotline, that we've been able to
really post just every stakeholder. So the dozens of
stakeholders that comprise our task forces a lot of times put
on their websites.
So I think, Senator, it's more of a--I don't think the
problem is getting worse, I think that people are reporting,
and as she stated earlier, we've seen more victims self-
identify in the last year than I've seen in the last 13 years.
So they're getting the information where it's on the street
that there's help.
Senator Fischer. Thank you.
Sir.
Mr. Goswami. Thank you, Senator. I can only speak to again
Southeast Asia, where we operate. And unequivocally, the
funding and assistance and partnership we receive from USAID,
specifically their supply chain initiative, and the U.S. State
Department has really helped us both innovate in the technology
arena so we can capture more stories of workers through
technology, but also do on-the-ground programming working with
suppliers and taking an act upon those stories and make the
necessary changes.
Senator Fischer. Thank you.
Ms. Goetsch. Yes. So we do work with the Federal agencies
across the Nation, but I would say it varies state by state as
far as our public-private partnership with them and how that's
fleshed out on the ground level. So we do really look to
activate local law enforcement because typically they're going
to be the first responders when you're talking about travel
plazas or truckers making calls.
And, you know, with the hotline, all of our material that's
going out to the trucking industry has a hotline because we
want to continue to seamlessly work with law enforcement who
are trained on human trafficking and who are going to respond
appropriately and arrest the trafficker and the buyer and
hopefully recover the victim.
Senator Fischer. Thank you.
Ms. Sorensen.
Ms. Sorensen. Sure. So I just wanted to speak to the
integration of law enforcement with the National Hotline
specifically. And so one of the responsibilities in operating
the hotline is not just to assist the victim with their real-
time concerns, but also to make reports where appropriate. And
so while we have confidentiality policies and reporting
policies, unless--most of the time victims do choose to report,
and so we have protocols, hundreds of protocols, throughout the
country that are locally based, but national in scope, that
cross Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of
Investigation, local police.
And it's really up to the state and locations how they want
to integrate their policy so that they work on the ground,
whether it's a call at 3 a.m. about a domestic minor sex
trafficking victim or maybe it's about a foreign worker who's
in agriculture. Right? We need to make sure that they can
appropriately respond and that that victim is safe.
Senator Fischer. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Fischer.
Senator Cortez Masto.
STATEMENT OF HON. CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEVADA
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking
Member. This is a great conversation. Let me just first of all
say this. I'm from Nevada. I was a former Attorney General
there for 8 years. Thank you to the Polaris Project. You are
instrumental in my state in helping us address this issue,
which I look at as human trafficking, really breaking it down
to labor trafficking and then sex trafficking, and then
further, different types underneath. And in Nevada, we really
focused on the domestic side of human trafficking. So thank you
for what you do.
Thank you to the Trucking Association. Because of your help
and support, our Nevada Trucking Association has an incredible
program to educate our truckers. And I went through every
single truck stop in Nevada with our Trucking Association to
educate and talk about how we address this issue in human
trafficking.
But before I forget, let me ask a couple of questions. The
hotline is instrumental. And I agree, we do not have enough
data collected nationally. There is data locally. The vice
units. I know in southern Nevada, our vice unit collects data
and has been over 10 years, so that has helped us, but we don't
have enough of it nationally.
The hotline is a great help. And you're absolutely right.
One of your partners that I think is key are the Attorneys
General because of the work through the Attorneys General and
the data that we've collected, you give that back to the
states, and we do something with it.
The hotline calls that you get, though, are not necessarily
victims, though. They could be from anyone. And they don't
necessarily always pan out as a human trafficking incident, but
we want to make sure people know about it. Is that correct?
Ms. Goetsch. That's absolutely correct.
Senator Cortez Masto. Right. And in the state of Nevada,
not only did we work to pass State law to make sure that the
hotline is located in many of our buildings, many of our task
forces, many of our groups are working under the same premise
that the hotline is key. So we should use that at a national
level and promote it everywhere we go, so thank you for that.
So it's a space that I've worked in for a number of years,
and we still have work to be done. One is on the demand side,
which we really need to focus on. And so I appreciate the
Chairman. And I heard that you're looking at addressing this
potentially. I would love to work with you on that.
But the other is the training, and this is sort of my pet
peeve. Training is absolutely necessary. And there are
different types of training, however. I know working with
victims, not every victim, particularly of sex trafficking,
realizes they're a victim. And then there is a level of trust.
And the training we provide to a first responder versus a
training we provide to somebody in the trucking association or
in our airports is going to be different. And there is always
this talk about we need to fund training, we need to promote
it, but we don't talk about what the training should be, what
it should look like. And because of it, there are so many
people that want to help, but I don't know if we're doing the
right by those victims and the responders in identifying this.
So what I would like to see, and I'm curious about your
thoughts on this, is to have some sort of national standardized
training model or a center of excellence where we can actually
bring people together to figure out the type of training that
is necessary for the type of human trafficking we see, and then
send them back to their states or wherever where they're
providing that type of training that is specific. I'm curious
your thoughts on whether that is needed or not?
Ms. Sorensen. Sure. Thank you for the question. And I would
love to hear Esther's response to this as well, given her very
particular lens.
So we have--yes, we have encountered a problem about
quality in training for years. And one of the responses that
the Federal Government set up was in instituting the Office of
Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center that
specifically focused on human trafficking training for task
forces and local communities. It has been very successful in
its efforts to create a level of quality for those audiences
and associated audiences.
Health and Human Services recently also built a pilot
training for health care providers, and their method of going
about this was to bring survivors to the table, bring medical
professionals to the table, dental professionals, psychiatric
professionals, and NGO advocates, and take about a year and a
half to actually build and test something that they're now
feeling fairly confident about. That was the first time that I
saw something really thoughtfully integrated into the community
for specific audiences, but to do so in all of the--I would
say, going back to Senator Heller's question, the idea of these
cross-purposed types, like when we're looking at vulnerable
populations, how do we address for that? How do we address for
the sectors that are most influenced or impacted by human
trafficking? I love the idea.
I think a group that I would love for you to float that
idea by is the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking. I
think they're going to have a lot of thoughts on this. And
since they are already giving feedback to Federal agencies
specifically on training, I think they're going to be able to
reflect for you the challenges that are currently facing the
agencies and how you might be able to address those from a
policy lens.
Senator Cortez Masto. I appreciate that. I'm really
curious, though, in bridging that gap between what's happening
at the Federal level and the State level. So let me address
this as somebody who came from the law enforcement side. In the
state of Nevada, we had no sex trafficking crime. Most of the
sex trafficking was prosecuted at the Federal level because
there is sex trafficking crime at the Federal level. So we
passed a state crime of sex trafficking, which then gave our
DAs, the Attorney General's Office, the ability to now
investigate and prosecute and go after it at the State level as
well because unfortunately there's enough work to go around.
I think--I can't speak for every state. I know that's what
was different in Nevada, and that's why now we have the ability
to do it at the State level and the Federal level. I want to
make sure, though, the Federal training that is still needed
out there, whether it's for law enforcement or whoever, that
the state--the folks, the nonprofits, that are also providing
the training, are doing the same thing. They should be
collaborating. There should be this networking and connection,
and that's why this kind of idea of a center of excellence or
the standardized training is important. So I appreciate that.
Any other comments other than I appreciate the conversation
today?
[No audible response.]
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cortez Masto.
Mr. Lares. Could I ask the Senator a question? Yes. That--
did you--was it mandatory in Nevada for law enforcement to
report the data?
Senator Cortez Masto. It was not mandatory, but because we
came together as the Task Force, and this was a focus of
everyone in the state, we shared the data. So law enforcement
in southern Nevada automatically was collecting, the vice unit
was already collecting that data for over 10 years--both on the
child side and the adult side. Northern Nevada, they started
collecting some of the data. The challenge we had, though, is
not apples and oranges, right? So somebody might be collecting
data in northern Nevada that is different than southern Nevada,
so you couldn't put the two together. So there still needs to
be that standardization, and that's what the task forces should
be working to do.
Mr. Lares. Yes, ma'am.
Senator Cortez Masto. Yes.
Mr. Lares. Thank you.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
The Chairman. We're just discussing, though, that's a first
whether someone on the panel asks a Senator a question, so----
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. We may be creating a new precedent here, who
knows.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Senator Cantwell is up next, but I understand
you're yielding some time to----
STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA
Senator Klobuchar. Yes. I'm just going to thank all of you.
We have the FBI hearing. I'm not just leaving because I don't
want you to ask me a question.
[Laughter.]
Senator Klobuchar. And I'm actually going to ask
Christopher Wray about human trafficking. But I just want to
thank you for your work. As you know, we've been long involved
in this, and it's always been bipartisan. Senator Cornyn and I
passed the major bill, and I want to thank Senator Thune and
Nelson for their work, Ms. Cortez Masto and many people here.
And I really believe this work we're doing now training people
in the private sector is going to be very important as well.
Two reasons, one, more eyes, ears, on the ground; but, two, it
makes more people aware of this problem, which is still a huge
problem in our country when you talk to police officers that
are in undercover operations. It's unbelievable numbers. So
thank you so much for your work.
Thanks.
STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again I also
want to thank you and the Ranking Member for holding this
hearing and for our panel and the discussion. It is so, so
important, and so I thank you for the work that you're doing.
Mr. Goswami, I wanted to ask about obviously the victims of
trafficking. You've talked about how oftentimes they are
brought here illegally from various countries or put into
slavery-type conditions. And obviously this is one of the
things we have to crack down, and obviously lots of things that
we need to be doing.
What about the actual victims once they are brought out of
the situation, what do we need to be doing to make sure that
they get the medical services they need? Because I'm worried
that some of them being the victims of this are afraid to come
out of the--we were involved several years ago with our
colleague Senator Brownback on some legislation on the male
order bride industry, and we found out that people, women, were
being recruited to come to the United States and be married to
somebody, but they would very rarely feel comfortable in coming
out of the dark when abusive treatment and all sorts of things
happened because they thought, well, I'm going to be deported.
And so they would not come out of the shadows. And we were able
to successfully put some new regulations into that area of the
law so that, first of all, women knew who these individuals
were so that they weren't just, ``Oh, yes, come to America and
get married to somebody.'' We wanted to make sure it was
disclosed if they had any kind of criminal backgrounds, all
this. But, anyway, it exposed this coming out of the shadows
effort. So what are we doing to help these victims when they
can come out of the shadows and get the kind of medical and
social services treatments that they need?
Mr. Goswami. Thank you, Senator. That's a very interesting
question and probably requires more than 5 minutes. I'll talk
briefly about the experiences we've had working with primarily
Burmese, Cambodian, and Lao migrants in Thailand who do come to
Thailand because there are better economic opportunities for
them there. Sometimes they migrate willingly on their own
because they are pursuing a job, or sometimes they are
trafficked into Thailand as well.
One thing that we've done, many surveys of workers and
migrants in our areas, to determine what their needs are so
that we are adequately meeting those needs, or referring them
to organizations I can. And we find that time and time again
most of them want compensation for the labor that they did,
that they were not paid to do or that they were forced to do in
slavery-like conditions, even unpaid overtime, et cetera. So
they do want--they want their just due. They also want access
to jobs.
And that's why our methodology of working with global plans
and U.S. companies to put pressure on their suppliers to
improve working conditions so that those workers can continue
to work but in decent, fair, and legal conditions so they can
provide for themselves and their families.
We do find, by and large, that after those first two needs
of getting decent employment and fair wages, their needs are a
whole host of social as well, which I think the Polaris Project
can probably talk more to in the U.S., but it could be family
reunification, it could be medical issues, it could be other
issues as well. However, I think one thing that I would like to
leave with is I think it's very important to not assume what
their needs are. They may have PTSD, they may have other
trafficking-related issues that they deal with, but it's
important to listen to them and say, ``What are the top three
things that you want immediately and then we can work on the
other stuff later?'' and not impose what we may think the
solutions are.
Senator Cantwell. Is there a supply chain of medical help
that's available to these individuals?
Mr. Goswami. Issara does rely on the network of local
nonprofits and some government-backed institutions in the
Thailand area to provide medical assistance. And Thai law also
requires that if a migrant is, quote/unquote, escaped from a
situation of slavery or trafficking, they are entitled to
certain medical benefits as well. They, as you can imagine,
including in this country, they are far and few in between and
not enough to meet all the needs of----
Senator Cantwell. So is that something that we should, I
don't know what the right word is, try to make sure that there
is an awareness of the availability of services?
Mr. Goswami. I think definitely an awareness, but also more
resources for services in general.
Senator Cantwell. OK. All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cantwell.
Senator Capito.
STATEMENT OF HON. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA
Senator Capito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank the
ranking member as well. And thank all of you for your
dedication to a really tough issue.
You know, I've been in Congress now for a fairly long time,
and we've done quite a bit, I think, to raise awareness, to
focus more resources, but we couldn't do it without help that
we're receiving from folks like you.
I'm from a rural state, and I thought, well, I'm going to
have a community meeting on human trafficking, thinking I'll
probably get 10 people to come. But it's an interesting topic,
we were doing something on the floor of the House at the time.
I was amazed at the number of people and the different and
divergent folks who waited from law enforcement and social
agencies, and youth. A woman came and testified about her
daughter who had been sexually trafficked for years and the
ups-and-downs of her life.
So my first question is, you know, you assume this is
happening in big cities, but it's happening in rural America.
And I'm wondering, Ms. Sorensen, what is your perspective in
terms of what you're seeing in the data and anecdotally in
terms of rural America versus more urban areas?
Ms. Sorensen. It's going to be dependent on what part of
the country we're talking about rurally.
Senator Capito. Yes.
Ms. Sorensen. Obviously, different kinds of agriculture
institutions, different kinds of labor historically or
otherwise, being present in certain rural locations, but I
would say that generally speaking the awareness is much lower.
And so when we are looking at rural communities, we are just
not getting the kinds of responses that we are from urban
communities. That's a major concern to us, that we don't have
that level of engagement--I mean, it sounds like perhaps the
meeting you held was very different, which is wonderful, but
that's not consistently true.
We certainly don't have the resources available----
Senator Capito. Right.
Ms. Sorensen.--for victims in rural locations in the same
way that we do in urban locations. That's most concerning
particularly when we talk about males being trafficked, and we
can't rely on maybe domestic violence shelters the way we would
for women or for girls. It's also going to be concerning when
there hasn't been some level of intimate abuse because then
there is also just a dearth of housing services in particular.
We also are concerned about the lack of transportation
generally. One of the things that I noted in the written
testimony is that while we have a lot of awareness with
transportation partners and with the Department of
Transportation itself, in rural communities even when we do
identify a shelter we are unable to get someone to the
location. So we end up relying on local police or on donations
to get someone to that critical resource.
Senator Capito. Right.
Ms. Sorensen. So it's a different issue. We actually have a
staff member whose role right now is focused on building
awareness and integrating the understanding of what the hotline
can provide with rural communities in particular. And we have
another staff member focusing on the American Indian/Alaska
Native communities. And in combination, we're hoping to address
some of the issues that we see across those two vulnerable
populations.
Senator Capito. Well, I mean, I would love to work with you
on that issue. I think what was mentioned earlier about
training is absolutely critical, and it is more difficult. A
lot of these smaller areas cycle through their law enforcement
folks rather quickly, and they've got a lot of different
issues.
One of the things that--I have two kind of other questions,
and anybody can jump in here--the relationship between
trafficking and drugs and the drug trade and drugs being used
to further enslave people or to be used as mules or whatever,
because we have a huge opioid crisis going across this country,
and heroin. So that's my first question.
The other, which is probably--so let's start with drugs
because I don't think I'm going to have a chance to get the
other. The other one I was going to ask about was language
barriers. Obviously, that's got to be a big issue as well.
So on the drug issue, Mr. Lares.
Mr. Lares. Yes. Nine out of ten of our survivors and/or
victims are addicted to some kind of drug. And in Florida we're
seeing just a skyrocket in heroin and meth, some of the two
drugs. So they all have to--we have partnered with detox
centers to get them in detox.
Senator Capito. But nine out of ten.
Mr. Lares. Nine out of ten.
Senator Capito. That's a pretty stunning number, I think.
Mr. Lares. Very close relationship to the traffickers,
whether they're already addicted or getting them addicted.
Senator Capito. And then further grabbing hold of them that
way.
Mr. Lares. Yes, ma'am. We have a case in Orlando where a
14-year-old girl was given drugs, her and her sister, and she
ended up dying after being in the ring for 8 days,
unfortunately 14 years old.
Senator Capito. Oh.
Mr. Lares. And so they are definitely using the drugs and
the epidemic that's occurring across our Nation as a part of
the entrapment.
Senator Capito. Does anybody else have a comment?
Yes.
Ms. Sorensen. I want to send you data that we ran that I do
not have with me today that was looking specifically at the
last 2 years and the involvement of opioids, and it is
significant. And so it is worth further attention, and I will
make that available for the record and follow up with you.
[The information referred to follows:]
Here is some National Human Trafficking Hotline data that we ran
for 2015 and 2016 that highlights the cases of human trafficking that
involves substance abuse. Almost 20 percent of all potential victims
reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2015 and 2016
were said to have some relationship to substance abuse. Of the
potential victims who had a connection to substance abuse 109 (5
percent) had a caretaker with a substance abuse issue, 664 (33 percent)
had a substance abuse issue prior to the potential trafficking and
twenty of these individuals were recruited into their trafficking
situation directly from drug rehabilitation centers. Additionally,
1,594 (79 percent) had drug abuse either induced or exploited as a
means of force, fraud, and coercion in their situation. Please also
note that the numbers I've just shared are non-cumulative as
individuals could have experienced more than one of the above
situations.
Finally, a connection to substance abuse is seen most frequently in
sex trafficking and sex and labor trafficking cases. 527 (28 percent)
of the potential victims about whom Polaris had information on age and
who had a connection to substance abuse were minors. At least 66
additional potential victims were minors at the time their trafficking
started.
Senator Capito. Thank you. All right. Thank you.
Yes.
Mr. Goswami. Thank you, Senator. Just to say that as you
can imagine, working on a fishing boat off the Thai coast, it's
hard work, it's arduous work, and oftentimes we have had quite
a few cases where the workers are fed, knowingly or
unknowingly, amphetamines to keep them awake so they can work
for 18- to 20-hour shifts.
Senator Capito. Yes. I'm thinking about that movie I saw,
Captain--what was that movie? The Somalis were taking some kind
of drug. Remember? Well, never mind, but they were on a boat as
well. I guess that's the similarities.
Anyway, thank you.
The Chairman. This Senator from West Virginia is going to
movies other places or something else.
[Laughter.]
Senator Capito. Tom Hanks was in it.
The Chairman. Oh, yes. OK. That one. I know that one.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Capito.
Senator Sullivan is up next.
STATEMENT OF HON. DAN SULLIVAN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you
for holding this hearing. And I appreciate the witnesses' focus
on this really important issue, but it's a very difficult
issue. I know I'm not going to ask Senator Cortez Masto another
question, but her line of questioning I think was actually
really important with regard to state-Federal cooperation. And
2 years ago, in the Victims of Trafficking Act, we were able to
include an amendment that really forced the Federal Government
to be more forthcoming on cooperating with state AGs and local
district attorneys in prosecuting Mann Act violations. And I'm
sure you're all familiar with the Mann Act. That's the Federal
law that prevents essentially trafficking of, you know, young
people across state lines. But it's hard to bring an action as
a state AG.
Even though you have all talked about the lack of
resources, so this was a part of this bill, and we'd like to
work with all of you to get the word out more that state AGs,
district attorneys, actually have a lot more authority under
the new law that we passed 2 years ago to prosecute Mann Act
cases even though it's a Federal crime. And this is something
that I think a lot of us could do a better job of highlighting
to make sure our state AGs and district attorneys know that we
have those resources now. And we'd love to work with you on
getting the word out because I think it's a great way to go
after some of these crimes and spread the resources when, as
you've testified, we're all kind of hurting on the resources.
So I would look forward to working with all of you on that.
Let me ask another question. It's really a follow-on from
Senator Capito's question when you talk about vulnerable
populations. She mentioned rural victims, and I'm very
interested in that, being from Alaska, but also homeless
victims and homeless youth.
My wife works at Covenant House in Anchorage, and you may
be familiar, and I would like to submit them for the record,
Mr. Chairman, a study, a ten-city study, by Loyola University
and Covenant House on labor and sex trafficking among homeless
youth.
The Chairman. Without objection.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Sullivan. And this is just a recent New York Times
article. Also I would like to submit for the record ``Homeless
Youth at High Risk of Human Trafficking.'' And in Anchorage, 28
percent of homeless youth were victims of human trafficking,
which was a shocking number for our community. A lot of people
weren't aware of that.
[The article referred to follows:]
New York Times--April 17, 2017 6:21 pm
Homeless Youth at High Risk of Human Trafficking
By Tariro Mzezewa
For decades, one set of activists and legislators have fought to
end human trafficking, while a different set have worked tirelessly to
try to end homelessness. Activists and legislators have rarely teamed
up to fight the two issues simultaneously.
Now a new study suggests that the key to ending trafficking of
young people is to eradicate youth homelessness first.
``The vulnerability children experience when they are alone, hungry
and without shelter on the streets makes them particularly susceptible
to trafficking,'' said Kevin Ryan, president and chief executive of
Covenant House, a shelter for homeless teenagers and young adults
across the country.
The study was released on Monday by Covenant House, as well as the
Field Center for Children's Policy, Practice & Research at the
University of Pennsylvania and Loyola University Modern Slavery
Research Project in New Orleans.
After interviewing 911 homeless young people across 13 cities in
the United States and Canada, researchers concluded that 56 percent of
homeless transgender youth had been involved in the sex trade in some
way, while 40 percent of homeless young women and 25 percent of young
men were. About 27 percent of L.G.B.T youth reported experiences
consistent with the U.S. Federal definition of sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation,
provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the
purposes of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is
induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to
perform such an act is a minor.
``The vulnerability children experience when they are alone, hungry
and without shelter on the streets makes them particularly susceptible
to trafficking,'' said Ryan.
The researchers found that of those interviewed, nearly one-fifth
of homeless youth in the United States and Canada are victims of human
trafficking, including those trafficked for sex, labor, or both. Some
20 percent were victims of human trafficking.
For Naomi, who was trafficked as a teenager, learning that so many
young homeless people are often exploited is no surprise.
In 2008, at the age of 16, Naomi, whose real name has been changed,
left Haverford, Pa., to spend a week with a friend in New York City.
Upon arriving in the city, she was trafficked. Over the next four
years, she was bought by one pimp from another, sold for sex in New
York and New Jersey, forced to have sex with strangers several times a
week and eventually arrested for prostitution.
While trapped in a Brooklyn apartment, owned by a pimp who locked
her in a closet when he left the house, Naomi tried to plan several
escapes, but always ended up choosing to stay with the man who abused
her because she was scared of ending up homeless and alone.
``The fear of having nowhere to go, of being homeless was very
real,'' she said. ``He would say my family wasn't looking for me, that
they didn't care where I was and no one would help me if I left.''
Naomi was mandated by the court to attend therapy sessions at Girls
Educational and Mentoring Services, an organization that helps girls
and young women who have been involved in prostitution. The
organization connected her with Covenant House.
In March, a month after vowing to end human trafficking, President
Donald Trump proposed, through his budget, eliminating the Interagency
Council on Homelessness. His move was widely criticized by anti-poverty
advocates, who believe that ending poverty is central to fighting
trafficking.
``One of the ways we will end criminal exploitation of children and
youth is to make sure there is a robust safety net for homeless
issues,'' said Ryan. ``To end human trafficking, we must end youth
homelessness.''
Senator Sullivan. What are the things--and I'll just open
this up to everybody--what are the things that we can do and we
can focus on working with groups like yours to help address
these populations, whether they're from rural states like West
Virginia and Alaska or whether it's the homeless youth problem
that seem particularly vulnerable to human trafficking? What
are the things that we should be trying to do here working with
you or working with states, like we've been talking about
earlier? Yes, I'll open that up to all of you.
Ms. Sorensen. Thank you for the question. Your wife works
at Covenant House, what a wonderful institution with great
research, so hats off to her work.
Senator Sullivan. Yes, they're great, very passionate.
Ms. Sorensen. Homelessness is indeed one of the greatest
drivers that we see. I'd love to run stats for you specifically
looking at minors and then looking at young adults so that we
have some sort of data differentiation there, but I would like
to give that to you. I don't have that with me now.
[The information referred to follows:]
From January 1, 2015 to June 30, 2017 there were over 1,200
potential victims of human trafficking reported to the hotline who were
runaway or homeless youth or others who experienced unstable housing
prior to the start of their trafficking situation. The age breakdown of
these individuals when Polaris first learned of their situation is as
follows: 614 minors; 262 Young adults (18-26); 156 older adults; and
226 individuals of unknown age.
Ms. Sorensen. But it is certainly something that we see all
of the time. It's either something that--whether a parent is
insecure and that makes the minor at risk, or if it's the minor
themselves.
We also see tremendous intersection with the community that
identifies as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender, and when
these risk factors are combined, we have cause for deep
concern.
One of the policy areas that we think needs immediate
attention is the reauthorization of the Runaway and Homeless
Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act. That has been lingering
for some time in front of the Senate and the House. But it does
provide the majority of resources for youth either at risk to
homelessness or who are already homeless, including resources
for counselors and other school staff who can provide guidance
and assistance to the youth who are still attending school as
well as street outreach and other kinds of services.
So I think we're looking ideally at, how do we prevent that
homelessness in the first place?
Senator Sullivan. Yes.
Ms. Sorensen. We need to look at revamping the way that we
deal with families. How do we keep them together? How do we
provide resources to them so that they're not at risk of
homelessness in the first place? But then once that's happened
and that minor is still engaging with community resources, how
do we keep them safe?
So I think there are a couple of things, but RHYTPA, I
would deeply advocate for its reauthorization.
Senator Sullivan. Great. Anyone else on that topic?
Mr. Lares. In Orlando, we're also partnered with the
Covenant House there. They've been a great partner in taking
victims of human trafficking. The majority, Senator, of our
victims are homeless, and so as she had also stated, the LGBT
community is super at risk. Also----
Senator Sullivan. Why is that? I mean, I know that was in
some of the studies. But what makes them more at risk than
other populations?
Mr. Lares. I believe part of it is there is no housing or
shelter for boys who are transgender, and so they repeatedly
end up in forced pornography, these different sex rings. It
starts a lot of times as survival sex because maybe they came
out and were rejected by family or the community. And so this
is definitely a problem, is the housing and shelter, as she had
indicated, for these young people.
Senator Sullivan. All right. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Sullivan.
Senator Young.
STATEMENT OF HON. TODD YOUNG,
U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA
Senator Young. Thank you, Chairman.
Ms. Goetsch, I first want to commend you and your
organization, Truckers Against Trafficking, for shining a light
on this issue, doing what you can to help staunch it. I
represented one of the counties in our Nation that's been worst
hit by the opioid epidemic in recent years, Scott County,
Indiana. There were massive HIV outbreaks. And Scott County
sits along a major interstate corridor, and we fear that the
transit hubs located along that corridor and other corridors
can become incubators for addiction and disease and further
social pathologies. And so I just wanted to publicly commend
you for your work.
Ms. Sorensen, you've spoken to, in your testimony and
elsewhere, the importance of a data-driven approach. In fact,
that's what Polaris offers, those who are trying to make a
difference here, identifying trends, working to stem the flow
of these appalling crimes through identification of those
trends. There's clearly an importance of collecting the
relevant data, of standardizing that data, of disseminating it
to decisionmakers and analysts and scholars who are doing their
best to try and staunch this human trafficking industry.
Given that Polaris is on the forefront of combatting this
crime and this challenge, how can Congress best assist groups
like Polaris in this data-driven approach through improved data
collection or perhaps other measures?
Ms. Sorensen. Thank you for your question.
Senator Young. Yes.
Ms. Sorensen. I think this is a real area of conversation.
So the Presidential--sorry--the President's Interagency Task
Force has a subgroup that specifically focuses on data
collection and standardization. And it has been a struggle. I
think they wouldn't mind my reflecting it that way, but across
Federal law enforcement agencies in the first instance is
difficult. Incorporating state law enforcement agencies after
that, more difficult. But also even across HHS and DOJ for the
Office of Victims of Crime has been challenging.
So we hear Federal agencies pushing the mantra of
standardization, but I think the more we can bring perhaps
academics into that debate to help with that conversation so
that it happens more quickly, so that it happens as efficiently
as possible, it would always be welcomed.
We are trying to do work slightly outside of the Federal
agencies as well, so we have recently embarked on a partnership
with the International Organization of Migration to create
something called the Counter Trafficking Data Collective, which
would gather all of the data from anonymized cases from
hotlines around the world to make available to scholars and
academics and others who can access it privately so that we can
learn more but without endangering any sort of victim through
sharing too much information. I think----
Senator Young. Have we gotten to the point where we're able
to analyze sort of leading indicators so that we can get out in
front of this problem in particular geographies or among
particular identified sets of our population?
Ms. Sorensen. I think if we collate that information, we
can.
There's another idea I might put forward to you, and it's
something that Senator Blumenthal introduced last Congress. It
was called the Visa Transparency Anti-Trafficking Act. And it
would require an annual publication of particularly the
temporary work visas that are granted every year. And we know
from operating the hotline, we analyzed 2015 data, and in one
year, we saw that 40 percent of our labor exploitation and
trafficking references were from people on temporary work
visas. So we see this massive correlation.
Now, if we had the information about where those
populations were coming from, what industries they were being
authorized to work in, what regions of the country were they
going to, we might be able to better direct Department of Labor
or other kinds of investigators to target their oversight in
particular ways. We could also drive prevention education
efforts to populations that we know are consistently migrating
for certain kinds of at-risk work.
So I think there are a few ideas. One is obviously that
data standardization, but it's also we have a lot of this data,
we're just not necessarily using it to the best of our ability
yet.
Senator Young. Well, this area of data science and data
analytics and so forth is something that we're increasingly
becoming sophisticated at. So I would love to work with you and
your organization on any improvements at the Federal level we
can make, statutory, regulatory, whatever.
I just want to sort of conclude here by shining a light on
the state of Indiana. As some of you are aware, our state has
done some incredible path-breaking work with respect to
addressing this issue, really regarded, I think, by many states
as a national model. The Indiana Protection for Abused and
Trafficked Human Task Force, or IPATH, has been an ongoing
initiative to study the problem to come up with a way to
address it across jurisdictions of government, with various
other stakeholders around the state of Indiana. And it was
informed in no small part by Polaris and the work you do. So
thank you for that.
Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Young.
Well, let me ask one last question maybe for the panel, and
then we'll wrap up and let you all go. But your testimony I
think really highlights the significant impacts that awareness
can have and make when it comes to combatting human
trafficking. So in your view, how can the average person be
more vigilant to identify human trafficking? And what can they
do or what can we all do to help? It's kind of an open question
for whoever would like to respond to that.
Ms. Goetsch. That's a great question. You know, at the
heart of our work is turning those once passive populations,
which are made up of individuals, into a disruptive force. And
so I would encourage people to do those small acts of
resistance against, you know, the bad and the evil around us,
whether that's becoming more informed and aware about human
trafficking, and then recognizing places in your everyday life
that you can activate that information, whether you're a
taxicab driver, a bus driver, a truckdriver, a hotel worker.
All of us, you know, as you said in your opening remarks,
it's a crime that often happens in the open if we have eyes to
see what these victims are going through and what some of those
indicators are.
Mr. Lares. One of the things that we're doing is
encouraging not just my agency, Florida Abolitionist, but all
the task forces in Florida, to wherever they present, we have
everyone put in right on their smartphone, it's part of the
presentation, the Polaris hotline. And so literally thousands
of people have the hotline, and we say you can call, you can be
anonymous, but please make the call. If you see something, say
something, and I believe many in Florida are responding to
that. It's very practical.
The Chairman. Anyone else?
Mr. Goswami. A couple of years ago when we had a lot of new
reports around slavery in the seafood sector in Southeast Asia,
we realized that a lot of this seafood, this tainted seafood,
is coming into both consumption for Americans but also their
pets. The first thing I did when we saw those news reports is I
called the pet company that we buy our pet food from, and they
immediately responded with some proactive steps. They told me
about the proactive steps that they take.
In that vein, although we do have these data challenges, we
do know enough about where slavery or human trafficking is
impacting the clothes that we buy and the food that we eat, and
I think the more that the public can both encourage companies
that they buy from to implement ethical sourcing measures and
hold them accountable to that, the better it is for the rest of
us who are working with them on the ground to make these
changes.
The Chairman. All right. Thank you.
Ms. Sorensen.
Ms. Sorensen. I would just echo my colleagues, who are
providing excellent suggestions. I think there are also tools
that in particular in the private sector and the Federal
Government have already produced. I want to draw attention to
the International Labor Affairs Bureau's Sweat and Toil tool,
which people can download, to identify at-risk products and
materials that they might think twice about buying. And it's a
phone app. So when people go to the grocery store and they know
that their such-and-such produce is from such-and-such country,
they might reconsider because we know that that actually might
be made with forced labor. So there are easy tools like that.
The people who run companies, people who are employees of
companies, can check Responsiblesourcingtool.org and figure out
where common supply chain problems might be happening within
their companies and take action. That can certainly be true of
investors as well. So as investors, if we have retirement
accounts, we all have some level of agency to demand change
there.
So I think the more we start to vision ourselves as actors
in this--I think this crime unfortunately is one that happens
not just because there are bad actors, but because we are
ourselves exist in such complex supply chains and we are so
interdependent on each other's global markets. So once we can
start to change that view, we have a chance of changing this
crime.
The Chairman. Well, thank you all very much. Like I said
earlier, I think that this is an issue which, at least in this
country, our goal ought to be to completely eradicate it. And I
know there are other areas of the world where it happens, and
we need to be combatting those in every way that we can, too,
but we want to use every tool at our disposal.
And this Committee's jurisdiction, of course, is the
transportation sector, which plays into this, as we heard
today. We have technology under our Committee's jurisdiction.
And so there are other committees also that share that
jurisdiction within the Senate, but I certainly want to give
the focus that's necessary, the attention that's necessary from
our Committee as well to ensure that we're taking all steps
possible. And as I mentioned, there will be a couple of bills
that hopefully on our next markup we'll include that will
address this issue more specifically.
But your testimony has been outstanding. Thank you so much,
not only for that, but for the great work that you and your
organizations are already doing. These are heinous crimes, and
it's hard to imagine sometimes what--that this is a blight on
humanity, and we need to do everything we can to stop it in its
tracks.
So thank you for what you're doing. Keep up the good fight.
We will keep the hearing record open for a couple of weeks in
case Members have questions, and if they submit questions for
the record, we would ask that you respond to those as quickly
as you can.
Thank you. And this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:46 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Dan Sullivan to
Keeli Sorenson
Question 1. I understand you grade each state based on the legal
framework each state has created to punish traffickers and support
survivors. The last report appears to be from 2014, in which Alaska
ranked in Tier 1, illustrating that the State has passed significant
laws to combat human trafficking. Will you be doing an updated report,
and if so, do you have any information as to what Alaska's grade be?
What would the Nation's grade be looking at our Federal framework of
laws regarding trafficking? Do you have suggestions for improving the
Nation's grade?
Answer. Polaris completed our final State Ratings Report series in
2014. At that time, Alaska had received a Tier 2 rating, indicating
concrete areas where the state could improve anti-trafficking laws. The
2014 state report pointed to the following recommendations:
Renew appropriations for law enforcement training.
Enact the creation of a state-wide human trafficking task
force
Require the posting of a human trafficking hotline
Enact laws enabling victims to vacate convictions for crimes
they were forced to commit as a result of their trafficking
experience
Provide support for victim assistance
Pass legislation that requires law enforcement to treat
minors engaged in commercial sex as victims instead of
criminalizing them
While Polaris does not engage in rating the whole of the United
States on its anti-trafficking commitment, we would recommend that the
U.S. Congress take steps to address critical gaps in the law. We would
recommend that the U.S. enact laws that enable victims to vacate
convictions for crimes they were forced to commit as a result of their
trafficking experience, and take steps to protect children who have
been engaged in commercial sex, and ensure robust funding for victim
services. Additionally, we believe the government should take steps to
develop a prevalence methodology to understand the number of victims of
human trafficking in the United States at any given time.
The United States also lacks sufficient laws regulating foreign
labor recruiters. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people coming to
work in the U.S. on visas are put at risk of labor trafficking by labor
recruiters who prey on the hopes of workers by charging them brokerage
exorbitant fees and deceive workers about the conditions and terms of
their work. The U.S. lacks robust legal safeguards to ensure that
recruiters cannot abuse structural failures in U.S. visa programs and
exploit already vulnerable workers. Greater legislative action is
required to hold exploitative recruiters responsible for their actions.
Congress should pass legislation which includes provisions requiring
foreign labor contractors to disclose honest information about the
terms and conditions of work in the United States to workers; prevents
foreign labor recruiters from charging workers fees related to
recruitment activities; requires employers to use recruiters who have
registered (for a fee) with the Federal Government (thereby indicating
compliance with the aforementioned conditions); and ensures that
foreign labor recruiters are subject to criminal, civil and
administrative penalties if they violate the aforementioned provisions.
Question 2. How many hotline calls, on average, do you receive from
Alaska on a monthly or annual basis?
Answer. Our call volume increases at a relatively rapid pace every
month. In calendar year 2016, the National Human Trafficking Hotline
received 91 substantive calls, which is almost double what it received
in calendar year 2015. While the call volume by month varies quite
significantly, the highest call volume months for Alaska in 2016 were
(in order) December, August & October (tied), and March.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Keeli Sorensen
Trafficking in Commercial Aviation. Ms. Sorensen, another area
where we see a substantial amount of human trafficking is in the
commercial aviation area. In last year's FAA extension bill, there was
a provision that sought additional training for flight attendants to
recognize and report suspected incidents of human trafficking.
Question. Do you think this additional training is helpful and is
there anything else we should be doing in this area?
Answer. Training for commercial flight attendants and other airline
personnel is critical. We know that victims, whether foreign national
or U.S. citizen, use commercial flights while in their trafficking
situations and that training efforts can help staff to identify and
assist victims safely. The National Human Trafficking Hotline has
received calls from airline staff who have successfully assisted
victims. Increasing access to this kind of training is important. I'd
recommend seeking additional advice on ways to improve training efforts
from Airline Ambassadors International, an organization made up of
airline industry professionals who have led advocacy on human
trafficking awareness since first identifying human trafficking on
flights in 2009.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Richard Blumenthal to
Keeli Sorensen
The State Department Trafficking in Persons report from June 2017
showed that labor trafficking prosecutions dropped to just 5 percent
and labor trafficking convictions dropped to 3 percent of overall human
trafficking cases in the United States.
Question. Mr. Goswami and Ms. Sorensen, with the Trafficking
Victims Protection Act up for reauthorization in September, what can
the U.S. Government do to incentivize more accountability in labor
trafficking cases?
Answer. Polaris has become increasingly concerned about the steady
decline of labor trafficking prosecutions by the Department of Justice
(DOJ), which has been happening since 2009. In order to improve these
efforts, we believe that the U.S. congress needs to direct additional
funds to the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Human Trafficking Prosecution
Unit with specific instruction to designate staff time and attention to
the pursuit of labor trafficking cases. It is well known that labor
trafficking cases can require more intensive resources than sex
trafficking cases, often necessitating unique coordination among law
enforcement partners. Additional funding should help HTPU better
undertake these lengthy investigations.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Catherine Cortez Masto
to Keeli Sorensen
Question 1. The most recent State Department Trafficking in Persons
report showed that labor trafficking prosecutions dropped to just 7
percent and labor trafficking convictions dropped to 2 percent of
overall human trafficking cases in the United States. With the TVPA up
for reauthorization in September, what can the U.S. Government do to
incentivize more accountability in labor trafficking cases? Are there
tools that would help identify labor trafficking cases?
Answer. Please see answer to the question above.
Question 2. A 2014 GAO report identified the failure to define
recruitment fees as a primary challenge to the implementation and
enforcement of the anti-trafficking procurement rules. I understand the
Office of Federal Procurement policy is expected to come out with a
revised rule that defines recruitment soon. Can you explain how
recruitment fees are used and how they lead to various abuses related
to trafficking? Why is it important we define recruitment in our
procurement rules?
Answer. Many foreign national guestworkers are subjected to
unregulated and abusive recruitment processes before they enter the
United States. In many cases, these workers are charged exorbitant
recruitment fees or incur substantial travel-based debts. Applicable
fees vary significantly by industry but can range anywhere from $100 to
$20,000 depending on the country of origin, method of transportation,
and site of employment in the United States, before accrued interest.
A report from the International Labor Recruitment Working Group \1\
speaks to the arbitrary and capricious nature of recruitment fees:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The American Dream Up For Sale: A Blueprint for Ending
International Labor Recruitment Abuse. The International Labor
Recruitment Working Group. February, 2013 https://fair
laborrecruitment.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/final-e-version-ilrwg-
report.pdf
Migrant workers from Mexico in the Maryland crab industry
pay recruiters roughly $750 per season for all fees and
expenses necessary to participate in the program, without an
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
explanation of what these costs cover.
Guatemalan H-2B workers pay an average of $2,000 in travel,
visa and recruitment fees to obtain employment in the forestry
industry in the United States.
Teachers recruited for employment in H-1B or J-1 visa
programs pay fees ranging from $3,000 to $13,000 to recruiters
who schedule interviews, secure visas and arrange
transportation and housing.
The J-1 students who participated in the highly publicized
strike at the Hershey processing plant in Hershey, Pa., paid
between $2,000 and $6,000 in pre-employment expenses, depending
on their country of origin and recruitment agency.
Believing that they will be able to easily repay these fees once
they have secured high wages and gainful employment abroad,
guestworkers often borrow money from friends and family members. In
many other situations, guestworkers must mortgage their homes, sell
valuables, or take out loans from predatory lenders to cover their
debts. It can take several months, even years, for these guestworkers
to repay what they owe, especially when they are shortchanged by their
employers.
Data reported through the National Human Trafficking Hotline and
the BeFree Texting Helpline indicates that guestworkers charged
excessive recruitment fees are especially vulnerable to debt bondage,
where they are forced to work for free until their debts are repaid.
Unscrupulous employers are eager to keep these workers in a state of
debt servitude and in many situations, will continue to garnish their
wages for unspecified debts. It is very difficult, especially for
workers who are paid in cash or under the table without written
documentation, to keep track of their earnings and by extension, their
progress on repayment.
Economic necessity, including dependent family members back home,
as well as fears of retaliation or blacklisting from employers, make
many indebted guestworkers reluctant to report exploitative recruitment
or employment conditions.
For many guestworker visas, recruitment processes are not regulated
at all. Even for those visas that are, recruitment processes are poorly
monitored and existing laws are poorly enforced. Exploitative
recruiters are rarely held accountable for fraudulent behaviors,
further incentivizing abuse.
Developing a comprehensive definition of recruitment fees is
extremely important so that the U.S. Government can prohibit these
predatory practices. Furthermore, the U.S. Government should take
necessary steps to ensure that the products and services it purchases
are provided by workers who have not been exploited or abused as a
result of having paid recruitment fees.
Civil society has already taken steps to provide the Department of
State with a comprehensive definition of recruitment fees (which can be
provided upon request), the next step is implementing this definition.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Dan Sullivan to
Esther Goetsch
Question 1. Due to the uniqueness of Alaska, in our supply chains
we likely do not have as much interstate trucking as other states, but
rather have a higher level of air freight and sea cargo. When thinking
about force multiplying, is the advocacy and education work you are
doing being applied or shared with other industries, such as the
airlines, hotels and motels, or sea cargo shipping companies?
Answer. Currently, TAT's model is being replicated within the
convenience store industry with the introduction of CSAT (Convenience
Stores Against Trafficking) begun by In Our Backyard. TAT has already
begun partnering with Mexico's Consejo Ciudadano in order to replicate
portions of our model to the majority of transportation modes in their
country. TAT also just launched BOTL (Busing on the Lookout), in order
to engage the thousands of school and commercial bus drivers and bus
terminal employees in our Nation around this crime. Our model is highly
replicable, and we are willing to consult with other agencies and
organizations interested in replicating it via multiple industries. We
also know that Polaris has developed training materials currently
available for the hotel and motel industries.
Question 2. Are there any specific areas where there is Federal
jurisdiction--such as ports, border crossings, consular officers
issuing visas--that you believe need further oversight or training to
identify and protect victims of trafficking?
Answer. Absolutely. All port authority agents, border patrol
officers, and anyone issuing official U.S. Government documents, should
be well aware of the signs of human trafficking and how specifically
their office intersects with potential traffickers and victims. Generic
training will not do here . . . what is needed is niche-specific
training for each agency that takes into consideration the uniqueness
of their line of employment and also provides the stakeholders with the
necessary resources to assist victims they might recover. TAT highly
recommends the convening of effective anti-trafficking NGOs and agency
experts, from the offices mentioned, who could bring their expertise to
bear in developing a focused and well-studied training curriculum, as
well as a highly pragmatic and effective response protocol.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Esther Goetsch
Ms. Goetsch, about 30 states have implemented all or part of the
Iowa motor vehicle model that works with the trucking industry and law
enforcement to combat trafficking.
Question 1. What is the impact in states that have adopted the Iowa
model? Why is it important that states adopt this program?
Answer. Based on the groundbreaking work with TAT materials done by
the Iowa Motor Vehicle Enforcement (Iowa MVE) agency, the Iowa MVE
Model organizes the state patrol and other law enforcement entities to
utilize entry points into the trucking industry to spread the TAT anti-
trafficking message. The components of the model are as follows:
Train MVE/CVE/and/or law enforcement personnel with TAT
materials.
Stock weigh stations, ports of entry and rest areas with TAT
materials.
Ensure that every CDL issued (or renewed) is accompanied with a
TAT wallet card.
Join the National Hotline law enforcement network by calling 1-
888-373-7888.
Visit truck stops with TAT materials, urging them to train
employees and distribute.
Implement TAT training as part of mandatory safety meetings for
trucking companies.
In addition, states may also:
Use asset forfeiture funds to pay for TAT materials.
Begin collecting data of interdiction stops that lead
to human trafficking investigations.
Mandate TAT training for entry-level CDL holders
statewide.
The impact of the Iowa model has been 3-fold:
(1) State agencies that are often overlooked in the fight against
human trafficking are becoming activated. As there are over 3
million CDL holders in the US, and over 400,000 trucking
companies, it is imperative that we engage as many entry points
into the industry as possible in order to reach them all.
Whether it be handing out one of our wallet cards with every
CDL issuance or renewal, playing a TAT PSA in a waiting room
monitor, allowing us to train specialized law enforcement units
with this information, equipping rest areas with posters that
contain the national hotline or assisting survivors in
obtaining a driver's license, TAT is currently working with the
Department of Transportation, Department of Motor Vehicles,
Department of Public Safety, Department of Licensing and
Department of Revenue in multiple states to accomplish those
goals.
(2) Law enforcement officers are receiving anti-trafficking training
and becoming empowered to reach the industry with this message.
What good is it if a trucker makes a call and law enforcement
arrive, only to have the officer arrest the 15-year-old as a
child prostitute? This is why the main starting point of the IA
MVE model is ensuring all law enforcement become trained on the
issue of human trafficking. Not only has TAT created a free and
easily accessible law enforcement training DVD: https://
vimeo.com/206215538, but with our two field trainers (survivor-
leaders), TAT does in-depth law enforcement trainings around
the Nation in order to equip officers to detect human
trafficking cases (specifically sex trafficking), while
administering a victim-centered approach. In fact, after
training all of the DOT officers in the sate of MS in January
of this year, two of the officers credited their TAT training
when they were able to successfully separate a victim from her
suspected trafficker during a routine inspection (see attached
case study). TAT specifically targets Commercial/Motor Vehicle
Enforcement, as these units (typically of the state patrol)
come into the most contact with members of the trucking and bus
industry. Whether it be ports of entry, weigh stations,
interdiction stops or mandatory safety compliance meetings
within trucking companies, we are asking all law enforcement
units to spread TAT's anti-trafficking message whenever they
come into contact with members of the industry (for an example,
see attached report from the Michigan State Police). As a
result, we have seen multiple state patrols partner together in
outreach campaigns to the industry: http://www.in.gov/
activecalendar/EventList.aspx?fromdate=2/1/2017
&todate=2/28/
2017&display=Month&type=public&eventidn=256841&view=
EventDetails&information_id=255348&print=print
In addition, the Ohio State Patrol credited their work with TAT
in seeing a 32 percent increase in calls, generating 125 cases.
TAT has also provided resources to multiple state patrol units
when conducting undercover investigations of truck stops. The
model has also opened doors for TAT to host many of its
coalition build meetings between industry stakeholders and
their federal, state and local law enforcement officers. The
details of these meetings and impact reports can be found here:
http://www.truckersagainsttraffick
ing.org/coalition-builds/
(3) More professional drivers are becoming TAT trained and making
calls that ultimately save lives. At any given time there are
more professional truck drivers out on the road than law
enforcement officers. By equipping and activating state
agencies and law enforcement personnel to help us reach all 3
million CDL holders, we firmly believe a transient army of eyes
and ears is being created to aid in the detection of
traffickers and assist in victim recovery. While the National
Human Trafficking Hotline only documents the location where the
driver is calling from, not his or her home state, since the
inception of these programs we have seen a continued increase
of calls into the hotline from drivers . . . who have now made
well over 1800 calls into the hotline, identifying over 500
cases, involving close to 1,000 victims . . . and this is only
one slice of the data pie as no one is tracking 911 calls or
calls made to the local sheriff around this crime. The
following story was related to TAT from the hotline.
A male trucker was sitting in his truck when he was approached by
a female no older than 14 years old, who was offering sexual
services. Earlier, the caller had observed the minor walking
from truck to truck with a male in his 20s. The minor spoke to
the caller alone and told him that she was from another state
and wanted to return home. The caller offered to help her but
her male counterpart arrived at the truck and she became
silent. The caller observed the male take the female to the
shower area and reported the incident to truck stop management.
The caller was directed by the management to call the NHTRC.
The NHTRC took down the reporting details and advised the
caller to call 911 for immediate assistance and to call the
NHTRC back to help coordinate additional services and a report
to our specialized law enforcement for investigation. Shortly
after the call, 5 police cars were dispatched to the location
and several males were arrested. The police notified the
trucker that the minor was a runaway from another state and
that the male had outstanding warrants and was arrested for
kidnapping and other charges.
Question 2. How can we encourage more states to adopt this program?
Answer. The National Governor's Association would be a great place
to start. If the governor of each state could share with his/her
cabinet the effective pathways their agencies could adopt to become
more aware themselves of this crime (because let us remember that this
message is also taken back to the families of each employee), as well
as engage industry (and this model can be replicated across modes and
industries), we believe states would be able to fast-track engagement.
We also recently presented at the National Association of Attorney
General's conference, and have worked with numerous AGs across the
nation, who we find to be ideal co-hosts for our coalition builds. We
would love to see NAAG adopt this program as a best practice and use
their extensive reach to ensure all law enforcement agencies in their
state become trained on human trafficking and empowered to reach
industry members (specifically trucking and busing). Moreover, we
believe the USDOT would be an ideal convener and conduit of information
if they created a National Advisory Committee comprised of industry and
NGO stakeholders who could inform states (governors and DOTs) of the
existing best practices in combating human trafficking via
transportation modes . . . the IA MVE model being among them . . . as
well as report back on state implementation of the committee's
recommendations.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Richard Blumenthal to
Esther Goetsch
Increasing awareness and improving training programs for key
actors--such as truck drivers--to identify instances of trafficking is
an initial step to ensuring survivors receive justice. Training is
especially needed to identify labor trafficking, as there is less
understanding about how to recognize, investigate, and prosecute this
crime.
Question. Ms. Goetsch, are there additional tools and resources
needed that would help the trucking community identify trafficking
cases--particularly labor trafficking cases which are often
underreported?
Answer. Labor trafficking cases are indeed underreported, and we
believe in order to change that local agencies (government or NGO)
should compile reports detailing which types of labor trafficking occur
in their state. For some, the construction industry is rife with it,
for others it's occurring on farms, for others it's sheepherding (CO),
for still others sweatshops are a major culprit. Before we can begin to
instruct industry, particularly truck drivers, on what to be looking
for in the course of their everyday jobs (which is why sex trafficking
is so easily identifiable as it literally comes knocking on their
doors), the intelligence must exist to determine where industry
intersects with potential victims, and what credible pathways exist to
safely assist the victims. TAT does not have the capacity to compile
such uniform reports for each state, but would like to see either a
state agency or a top-notch anti-trafficking NGO compile the
information. TAT could then be a conduit of that information during our
in-person trainings (tailored to each state) and on our website.
Moreover, all law enforcement personnel should receive training on
human trafficking . . . both labor and sex. It is extremely
disheartening to have a professional driver make a call and have law
enforcement arrest the victim, rather than the trafficker (or buyer),
if they show up at all. In addition, more accurate and up-to-date data
needs to be kept on what each city/county/state is seeing in regards to
these cases, and that data needs to be easily accessible to other law
enforcement personnel, state agencies and pertinent NGOs working to
address this crime. Such data would assist in the aforementioned report
creation, allow law enforcement to understand trafficking routes and
hotspots in order to target investigations, and enable anti-trafficking
NGOs to strategically focus their awareness/training efforts.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Catherine Cortez Masto
to Esther Goetsch
Question. The Department of Transportation has taken a number of
steps to work with other government agencies and transportation
stakeholders to address the issue of human trafficking. As an outside
stakeholder, how do you think the DOT's efforts in this area are
progressing? In your opinion, what more can or should the DOT be doing
to combat human trafficking?
Answer. As TAT was an original member of the DOT's Transportation
Leaders Against Human Trafficking group, we can speak to their initial
efforts. While the intent was good, the resources were lacking. To my
knowledge (Kendis Paris, executive director and co-founder of TAT, and
the one who represented TAT on TLAHT), all that came of the group was a
set of awareness posters and a website they hoped transportation
stakeholders would utilize to exchange best practices. However, after
the initial push, a 3-month rotating intern was appointed as
coordinator of the program and as soon as that person got up to speed
on the program, he or she left and a new intern was put in their place.
(Please note, my knowledge on their efforts is limited . . . I am
providing firsthand testimony of my own experience, their efforts may
certainly extend beyond what I observed).
If the USDOT is going to engage transportation stakeholders on this
issue, then they either need to create a new position to coordinate
efforts, or add this responsibility into an existing full-time
position. However, I believe the best way the USDOT could utilize its
position to combat human trafficking is by being a convener of
transportation stakeholders and a conduit of information. By creating a
National Advisory Committee comprised of industry and NGO stakeholders
who could inform states (governors and DOTs) of the existing best
practices in combating human trafficking via transportation modes . . .
TAT's Iowa Motor Vehicle Enforcement model among them . . . as well as
report back on state implementation of the committee's recommendations,
they could play a pivotal role in fast-tracking states' engagement on
the issue.
______
On June 7, 2017 around 3pm CST in Mississippi, MDOT officers were
doing a special detail that week for the 72-hour check . . . check all
trucks. One of the trucks hadn't come through the area, so Ofc. Havard
flagged him in. He had a passenger, so when she started to do the
inspection, she questioned him and asked if he had any passengers. He
said, yes, but gripped the wheel, turned his back to the passenger and
tried to maneuver his body towards the officer, which was odd, and so
she kept questioning him. His body language, how he was acting, his
flirtation with her were all red flags that something was off. It
seemed he was trying to distract me from paying attention to his
passenger.
Another strange thing was that he stayed in the cab of the truck
and hadn't taken off his seatbelt. Normally drivers want to get out of
their vehicle, they take their seatbelt off . . . he was resistant. He
was also resistant to answering questions about his passenger. When
Ofc. Havard tried to make contact with the passenger, she wouldn't
maintain eye contact with her and she hid a little.
Ofc. Havard asked the driver how long he had known his passenger,
and he answered that he only knew the passenger for one day. She asked
if the company knew he had a passenger. He said, ``I am the company.''
At this point, she knew she wanted to have a conversation with the
passenger, so she asked the driver to come with her to the office to
check his paperwork. The driver went with her, and Ofc. Havard asked a
male officer to take over with him, so she could go back to the truck
and speak with the female passenger.
She was dressed in flip-flops, very short shorts, and you could see
her bra line under her shirt. She had very bad hygiene. Ofc. Havard
asked her if she was in trouble. She kept pointing to her throat. The
officer didn't know what that meant, but she first asked her if she
spoke English. She nodded yes, but continued pointing to her throat.
The officers asked her if she could write and gave her a pad and pen.
Ofc. Havard asked her questions, and the woman would write the answers.
She didn't know her last name or DOB. She didn't have ID or
possessions . . . didn't have or remember anything. She said her things
were back in Florida. Ofc. Havard asked her if she was in any kind of
trouble . . . the lady asked her to clarify . . . and she wrote on the
paper, ``how can I connect with you if I need help?'' I asked her if
she needed food or water. She wouldn't respond. The officer knew
something was terribly wrong, and she told her that she couldn't let
her, the driver or the truck go until she felt she was safe. The
passenger wrote, ``Don't do it.'' She seemed very fearful about the
driver or truck being detained. Both the driver and passenger were
being questioned. Passenger and Driver stories didn't match . . . who
bought what, where they were headed, etc.
At that point, Ofc. Havard Called for another female officer and
Captain Edins came to the scene. A 4-hour interview ensued, and they
learned that someone had damaged her throat. The victim hadn't seen her
family in a very long time, didn't know her age, and then guessed that
she was 47. She was Romanian. She was watching for the driver
constantly . . . she was reluctant to talk with LEOs. She wouldn't
speak with male officers at all. When Captain Edins kneeled down next
to her in an attempt to be at eye level and not intimidating, the lady
went ballistic, and seemed both angry and scared by that. The FBI were
called, but they couldn't get much more information than MDOT officers.
Ofc. Havard and Captain Edins called the HT taskforce, and they got her
help. She didn't go with the driver, and the driver kept refusing to
leave without her. But he was told he had to leave the premises without
the woman. That night, she was taken to a safe house in Jackson. She
wouldn't eat during the interview, and she wouldn't eat when the lights
were on. She would only eat in the darkness when no one could see her,
and workers say she ate like she hadn't eaten in days.
The next day, Captain Edins called her at the safe home and spoke
with her as she had promised. Unfortunately, later on she walked away
from safe home.
Officer Havard and Captain Edins did everything correctly in this
situation. They took extra time to ask questions of the driver because
he had a passenger. They paid attention to non-verbal cues that
indicated something was off, they separated the driver and passenger,
and they used a victim-centered approach with the passenger. They took
their time with her, figured out a way to communicate and got her to a
safe place that night. This lady had obviously been traumatized for a
long time, and there was a lot happening internally due to the apparent
long-term exploitation. It is the hope that a seed was planted in this
woman's life that will give her the strength to seek the help she
needed. In the short term, the officers were able to get the woman away
from a man she was very afraid of and get her into a safe environment
with food.
______
State of Michigan Department of State Police
DATE: January 28, 2016
TO: Capt. Michael Krumm, Commander, Commercial Vehicle Enforcement
Division
FROM: Lt. Susan Fries, Commanding Officer, Special Programs Section
SUBJECT: Truckers Against Trafficking Initiative 2015 Year-end Report
Background Information
The Michigan State Police (MSP), Commercial Vehicle Enforcement
Division (CVED), has began an initiative to support the nationwide
program Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT). Founded in 2009, the
mission of TAT is to educate, equip, empower and mobilize members of
the trucking and travel plaza industry to combat domestic sex
trafficking. Currently, all but four states are supporting the TAT
program through their state's trucking association, state law
enforcement agency, or both. The TAT program has partnered with the
National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) in establishing a
nationwide phone number to report suspected sex trafficking. MSP and
the Michigan Trucking Association (MTA) were approached to promote TAT
in the past but a program was never developed other than having
pamphlets available at weigh stations for a short period of time with
no follow-up.
Purpose
To establish a targeted approach in engaging the commercial vehicle
industry to include truck stops, trucking companies, rest areas and the
MTA in educating them on the TAT program. Through increased awareness,
the MSP's goal is to build strategic partnerships in addressing the
problem of human trafficking in the commercial vehicle industry.
Problem
It is estimated that anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 minor
children are being trafficked in this country at any given time. Truck
stops are a preferred area for traffickers since there are many
potential clients in one area and the girls can go from truck to truck
quickly and easily. Motor carrier officers are the first line of
defense for identifying criminal activity associated with the use of
commercial vehicles. However, our officers had not been trained to
identify, enforce or engage situations that may involve human
trafficking. Furthermore, truck stop personnel, commercial motor
vehicle drivers, and others are not aware of the TAT program and the
resources available should suspected trafficking be encountered.
CVED Initiative
The CVED identified and trained two personnel to develop this
initiative. These individuals met with TAT staff, attended a national
conference, and developed a rollout plan for this initiative. The
official kick off date of the program was January 15, 2015. The rollout
plan consists of the following:
Provide a 45 minute awareness level training session to all
CVED members at their next district meeting scheduled in
December and January.
Provide talking points to enable officers to open a dialogue
with drivers and provide TAT wallet cards for distribution to
drivers.
Train two or more members from each district as the CVED
human trafficking coordinator who will initiate contacts with
each truck stop in their district and serve as a resource for
other presentations to industry and community groups.
Track and maintain a database on the contacts made by CVED
members.
Develop and send out media releases to increase awareness of
the program.
Identify partnerships through the Michigan Secretary of
State (SOS) to assist in disseminating the TAT materials and
work with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) to
have TAT posters hung at rest areas.
Present CVED's initiative to MTA board of directors in
February and follow-up with training in TAT at their annual
conference in August.
Program Leaders
Lt. Susan Fries, Special Programs Section, 517-241-0583
District Coordinators
------------------------------------------------------------------------
District District District District District District District
1 2 3 5 6 7 8
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Investiga Investiga Officer Sergeant Officer Sergeant Officer
tor tor Jurkowski Leonard Parling Richards Kennedy
Recollet Lopez- on
Patterson
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Officer Officer Officer Sergeant Officer Investig Officer
Russo Brendel Bartin Morrison Priebe ator Cameron
Archer
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Officer
Streicher
t
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Presentations and Contacts
FY 2015 4th Quarter Oct. 1-Dec. 31, 2015
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Truck Stops Carriers Industry Rest Areas CVED *Other Media
------------------------------ Assn. --------------------------------------------- Contacts
--------------- --------------
Q4 YTD Q4 YTD Q4 YTD Q4 YTD Q4 YTD Q4 YTD Q4 YTD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Presentations 1 110 9 16 8 10 0 24 0 9 6 11 1 3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Persons 1 165 161 205 415 554 0 24 0 170 470 630 NA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Includes hotels, fast food establishments, churches, schools, etc.
Materials and Cost
This program is not eligible for funding under and CVED outside
grants or funding sources. General fund monies were used for associated
costs for implementing this program. Total materials costs to program
thus far are $1,923.30. The distribution of wallet cards has decreased
significantly and there have been no additional purchases made in the
3rd quarter.
December 2014 Material Order
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posters Wallet Cards Brochures Window Clings DVDs Total Cost
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
300 17,000 1,400 3,000 160 $1,459.30
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 2015 Material Order
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posters Wallet Cards Brochures Window Clings DVDs Total Cost
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
100 20,000 1,400 $464.00
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 2015 Material Order
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posters Wallet Cards Brochures Window Clings DVDs Total Cost
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
400 5,000 2,000 1,000 0 $552.21
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015 Calls into the NHTRC Hotline from Michigan (last update 1/28/2016)
Total calls--717 up 35% from 2014 where 529 calls were
received.
Human trafficking cases reported--152
Calls from victims or survivors--124
Michigan calls are up 16% compared to 2014 when 131 cases
were reported
Significant Presentations to Date
West Michigan Safety Council, (12/15/2015)
MTA Summer Conference, (08/20/2015
MTA Truck Board meeting, (2/20/2015)
Newago County Farmer's Forum, (12/08/2015)
U.P. Traffic Safety Conference, (10/28/2015)
Kent County Road Commission Driver's Challenge, (10/13/2015)
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local
17, (10/7/2015 and 10/14/2015)
Michigan Dept. of State, (12/10/2015, 12/15/2015, and 12/17/
2015)
Northwest High School, Jackson (12/18/2015)
Michigan CJIC Crime and Security Conference (09/01/2015)
Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan (10/16/2015)
MTA Truck Driving Championship (6/5/2015)
Dept. of Natural Resources, (04/21/2015)
Alcona County Road Commission, (05/19/2015)
MTA Safety Expo (4/14/2015)
Chelsea High School sociology class awareness (3/5/2015 and
11/20/2015)
Lunch and Learn MSP Headquarters (3/11/2015)
Program Highlights
CVED was responsible for conducting 162 presentations on
human trafficking awareness reaching 1,744 people in addition
to countless roadside contacts with CMV drivers in 2015.
Increased media coverage beginning February 5, 2015.
Successfully trained all 170 CVED personnel.
Trained 16 district coordinators.
Partnered with MDOT placing TAT posters in all 78 rest area
locations.
Training of CVED investigators and auditors to offer TAT
presentations during compliance reviews and safety audits.
Presented human trafficking presentation to a record number
of participants for a MSP Lunch and Learn.
Positive feedback from field officers and drivers.
CVED programs have been subsequently shared with Indiana,
Nebraska, and Ohio.
Presented to 125 drivers of the Michigan Trucking
Association Truck Driving Championship.
Presented to 105 teens at the Kiwanis (51) & American Legion
(54) Youth Academies.
CVED represented on Department working group to address
human trafficking issues.
Michigan Dept. of State (SOS) to include human trafficking
awareness in next revision of the Commercial Driver's License
Manual.
Tips have been reported by CVED officers. Tips were reported
to the NHTRC hotline and to D/Sgt. Ed Price. D/Sgt Price
advised that though the tip regarding a young female traveling
cross-country with an older male driver was unfounded at the
time, he felt the she was possibly in danger of being recruited
and/or had not yet been forced into the business.
As proof that creating an awareness and changing perceptions
is effective, a truck driver in VA reported seeing a female
victim looking out the window of a motorhome where she was
being held captive and forced into prostitution. The driver was
aware of the program because Con-Way Trucking discusses this
information. His call resulted in two federal court convictions
of human trafficking.
Female CVED TAT coordinators joined several other women of
MSP to spend a day with teen girls at Vista Maria, a
residential treatment facility for teen girls suffering the
effects of severe abuse, neglect and other traumas such as
human trafficking. The goal was to develop mentoring
relationships with the girls.
Upcoming Opportunities
CVED is working toward a partnership with Michigan Dept. of
State to display a short TAT looping video in SOS Super
Centers, and distribute TAT materials to CDL holders at the
counter of all SOS branch offices.
Next Steps
Continue providing human trafficking/TAT awareness training
opportunities to the trucking industry and the community.
Encourage CVED members to continue to talk about human
trafficking awareness with truck drivers, use provided facts
and talking points, and distribute wallet card on every stop.
Begin conducting enforcement operations in cooperation with
troopers and local law enforcement agencies using motor carrier
officers and CVED commercial vehicles at truck stops.
Work toward a department-wide plan to stop human trafficking
in Michigan.
Follow up with truck stops and rest areas in Feb. 2016 as a
part of a tri-state initiative with the Indiana State Police
and the Ohio Highway Patrol.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Richard Blumenthal to
Samir Goswami
Question 1. As consumers demand ethically sourced products, more
companies are establishing policies that promote human rights in their
supply chains. Unfortunately, connecting these policies to everyday
practices often fall short of expectations and are proven to be easier
said than done.
Mr. Goswami, how can we ensure the private sector goes beyond their
corporate responsibility policies and takes full, credible action to
clear their supply chains of forced labor? What tools and resources do
businesses need in order to effectively vet all tiers of their supply
chains?
Answer. There are many tools available to businesses to vet all
tiers of their supply chain for risk of forced labor. Some are in
initial pilot stages while others have proven effectiveness. The more
promising models employ worker voice-centered approaches, engaging
workers to confidentially share and exchange information through phone
text message, smartphone apps, hotlines, and other channels. These tend
to be more effective--and cost-effective--at finding labor abuses and
risks throughout multi-tiered supply chains as compared with social
audits, which are traditionally more reliant on feedback, documents,
and reporting from the employer regarding labour conditions, rather
than from the workers themselves. For example, in the case of Issara
Institute's Inclusive Labor Monitoring and worker voice systems,
virtually every factory or farm that we found to have forced labour had
been social audited in the past year.
On a related note, Issara has also found that running a worker
voice-centered approach alone is significantly more effective when it
is directly linked with the relationship and ability to immediately
catalyze and drive solutions with risky suppliers. The action that
follows the discovery of serious labor abuses in a global supply chain
can lead to a host of unintended negative consequences if not well
planned and executed with partners who can provide ongoing technical
support to transforming business systems and carrying out remediation,
while also looking out for the best interests of vulnerable workers.
Either way, businesses need to increase their spend, which stems
from executive commitment, and go beyond the first tier of suppliers--a
task which is considerably more affordable and possible now with the
advent of a range of worker voice-centered tools and solutions.
Question 2. Some claim the global demand for inexpensive seafood
has increased the pressure on companies to minimize labor costs and
maximize profits. For countries such as Thailand, which suffer from
labor shortages, the pressure for suppliers to meet the global seafood
demand can lead to a reliance on human trafficking.
Mr. Goswami, drawing from your work experience in Southeast Asia,
what prevention efforts do you believe are necessary to ensure large
fishing companies are not contracting with traffickers who are
exploiting migrant labor?
Answer. We need safe, ethical labor recruitment channels between
source and destination countries in Southeast Asia whereby employers
pay the costs of recruitment and not fishermen. Government legislation
prohibiting the charging of recruitment fees to jobseekers and workers
is helpful, as exists in Thailand, for example. However, if similar
legislation does not exist in the source country as well, then there is
a high risk that unscrupulous brokers and cost-cutting employers will
find a way to extort fees and costs from workers in the source country,
prior to migration. Business codes of conduct such as those promoted by
the Leadership Group on Responsible Recruitment (which includes several
of Issara's Strategic Partners, such as Walmart, Tesco, Mars, and Marks
and Spencer), can be especially helpful in these situations,
particularly if local employers and recruitment agencies are
incentivized to collaborate with technical partners such as Issara
Institute to be transparent about and make commitments to ethical
recruitment in their contract and fee structures, as well as their
provisions for protection of workers, ensuring that all workers--in
this case, fishermen--are not in debt bondage, have control of their
identity documents at all times, are not being charged fees that should
be paid by employers, are placed into safe and non-exploitative
workplaces, and are treated with dignity throughout.
Question 3. The State Department Trafficking in Persons report from
June 2017 showed that labor trafficking prosecutions dropped to just 5
percent and labor trafficking convictions dropped to 3 percent of
overall human trafficking cases in the United States.
Mr. Goswami and Ms. Sorensen, with the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act up for reauthorization in September, what can the U.S.
Government do to incentivize more accountability in labor trafficking
cases?
Answer. Often, local law enforcement jurisdictions lack the
expertise to investigate and prosecute what could be complicated human
trafficking cases. The Department of Justice's ACT Teams have proven to
be an impactful resource to local jurisdictions within the United
States that have increased prosecutions. It should be recognized as
well that most victims of labor trafficking, whether in the United
States or abroad, are often not incentivized or made to feel adequately
protected and prioritized by the criminal justice system, thus leading
to low statistics such as the ones quoted from the TIP report, given
the importance of victim testimony in human trafficking criminal cases.
A May 2017 Issara research study entitled ``Towards Demand-Driven,
Empowering Assistance for Trafficked Persons: Making the Case for
Freedom of Choice over Protection at the Expense of Empowerment''
analyzed 117 human trafficking victim cases from our 2015-2016 caseload
and found that the top two needs prioritized among trafficked persons
were the need to find secure employment, and the need for support in
legal proceedings to obtain compensation for lost wages. Remarkably,
only 1 out of the 117 (less than 1 percent) had any interest in
participating in the criminal justice process. The data strongly
suggest that efforts to empower victims of labour trafficking, address
swift repayment of lost wages, provide options for placement into safe
jobs, and support reunification with family often go far in helping
victims of labor trafficking stabilize to the point where they may be
interested in reporting cases and cooperating with investigators and
prosecutors.
Question 4. Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a
significant global problem that distorts competition, compounds global
overfishing, and is frequently associated with a host of illicit
activities--particularly human trafficking.
Mr. Goswami, how can the United States Government leverage current
technology to establish traceability and ensure seafood products
entering the United States are not the result of IUU fishing?
Answer. The U.S. Department of State and Department of Labor
conduct research and publish reports about human trafficking around the
world. These reports are very useful to multiple stakeholders,
particularly businesses who wish to understand the related risks they
face. U.S. Government entities can also increase their usage of new
technologies that capture the experiences of workers directly to inform
reports. That is, U.S. Government backed researchers should also
collect primary source data from workers directly and publish those
findings that will further inform supply chain decision makers.
Importantly, U.S. Government entities can use these tools to monitor
their own suppliers and contractors to ensure that they are complying
with related procurement laws and regulations. Such leverage will then
compel those suppliers to work with on the ground actors, like Issara,
to implement improvements in supplier practices.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Catherine Cortez Masto
to Samir Goswami
Question 1. The procurement rules for U.S. Government contractors
and subcontractors requiring disclosure and certification that
companies do not engage in any trafficking-related activities are a
great first step to rooting out bad actors in our supply chains.
However, I am concerned that these rules lack enforcement. I understand
that since their implementation, there have been zero suspensions or
debarments of contractors. To what extent are these rules being
enforced and what are the barriers to enforcement?
Answer. Issara's experience in SE Asia demonstrates that business
leverage works. That is, when businesses proactively work with their
suppliers to share information and compel good action--the suppliers
generally do so. The UK Modern Slavery Act, the CA Supply Chain
Transparency Act as well as increased media attention to labor
exploitation in Thailand's seafood industry have all motivated
businesses to use this leverage with their suppliers. However, it is
not sufficient to simply compel suppliers to make improvements--often
they need the technical assistance to create good systems and
processes. While the U.S. Government can do more to enforce its own
laws, especially pertaining to its own procurement, contractors and
supply chains, it is equally important to resource the training and
education required that promote on the ground solutions, including any
victim rehabilitation. For example, Issara Institute has benefitted
from such resources and has successfully worked with the local
suppliers of multi-national businesses to implement data informed
systems that have measurably improved working conditions for tens of
thousands in just two years.
Question 2. In addition to ensuring justice for victims and
prosecuting traffickers, we must eradicate the goods and services made
by forced labor from our marketplaces. What can Congress do to
incentivize companies to evaluate the risk of human trafficking in
their supply chains? To what extent should businesses be responsible
for informing consumers about the presence of forced labor in their
supply chain and how can the average consumer access this information?
Answer. Government can play, and has played, a key role in
incentivizing and stimulating companies to evaluate the risk of human
trafficking in their supply chains. The California Supply Chain
Transparency Act and UK Modern Slavery Act have compelled many
companies to investigate and disclose their own diligence processes and
procedures. USAID's Supply Unchained Initiative and U.S. State
Department funding to organizations with boots on the ground and
science and technology capacity such as Issara Institute have enabled
the development of the tools and innovation needed to actually root out
and crowd out exploitative labor practices. However, it is important
for companies to provide outcome based metrics on successes they have
had in transforming supply chains. That is, not just disclosing what
processes they have employed, but what impacts they have achieved and
in what percentage of their entire supply chain.
Question 3. You mentioned your work with retailers and importers to
identify and address risks of trafficking and forced labor in their
Thailand export supply chains and the use of the ``Inclusive Labor
Monitoring'' approach. How do you work with suppliers and businesses to
rectify the problem when you find labor abuses in a supply chain? How
can Congress help foster and encourage such public-private partnerships
that monitor supply chains and root out abuses?
Answer. Issara's system is basically one where we incentivize and
enable multinational businesses to get a direct view of labor
conditions across their supply chain, no matter how complex; support
local suppliers to eliminate their labor risks and abuses, or risk
being cut from the supply chain; and, offer technical assistance to
progressive suppliers to fix broken labor recruitment and management
systems. The three key elements of the model are partnership with
business, data and technology, and on-the-ground solutions: taking a
collaborative and science-driven approach but also an on-the-ground,
within-supply chains-based methodology that draws upon the leverage
that multinational brands have to drive improvements in their supply
chains.
Issara is currently partnering with 15 leading brands, retailers,
and importers, including Nestle, Walmart, Mars, Red Lobster, Tesco,
Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's and Waitrose, to identify and address
risks of trafficking and forced labor in their Thailand export-oriented
supply chains. We do this through our Inclusive Labor Monitoring
program, whereby business partners share their confidential supply
chain data, and our team on the ground works directly with their
suppliers (all tiers) to identify labor risks and support solutions
that are ``owned'' by the supplier. The approach is inclusive because
all workers have the opportunity to individually share information in
confidence at their own time and location of choosing, and receive
assistance and support via Issara's multiple worker voice channels.
Issara builds trust with workers by engaging with them at the
factory, in the community, and sometimes pre-departure in their home
countries before migrating, and provides meaningful and timely
information to help them navigate their journey. Trust is key because
it underpins successful worker voice systems, and provides the concrete
details for business and suppliers to understand what is happening in
their factory and to take action. The end result is an integrated model
where both workers and business see benefits, and there is impact to
address trafficking in persons at scale. Having started out as a pilot
in 2014, the Issara Inclusive Labor Monitoring approach has already
made fundamental changes to exploitative working conditions for over
60,000 workers last year, with over 5,000 of those directly helped out
of situations of trafficking or forced labor.
Support from USAID and the U.S. State Department have been critical
for these efforts, for example, in providing the resources to Issara
Institute to help develop its worker voice technologies. In addition to
such funding, these government agencies also have the convening
authority to incentivize businesses to work with on the ground civil
society experts who can assist with supply chain remediation in a
credible and independent manner.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Tomas J. Lares
Building Partnerships. Florida had the third-highest number of
reported cases to the national trafficking hotline in 2016. To
strengthen the response to human trafficking, it takes a team approach
across many disciplines.
Question 1. How do partnerships like the Greater Orlando Human
Trafficking Task Force, Inc. help address the rise in trafficking?
Answer. A collaborative approach is critical to fully address the
issue from prevention to identification to restorative care. No single
agency can adequately do everything necessary to eliminate human
trafficking. For example, the Greater Orlando Human Trafficking Task
Force is comprised of many organizations both governmental and non-
governmental each tackling a piece of the continuum of care partnering
together to make sure nothing or no one slips through the cracks.
We have non-governmental agencies that help increase awareness of
the issue. Awareness leads to the prevention of the crime by young
people becoming less vulnerable to the lures of traffickers. As
educated community members call the National Human Trafficking Hotline,
Law Enforcement and care providers receive credible tips that aid
investigations that recover victims and arrest traffickers. Once this
occurs, the victims are connected with experienced case managers,
therapists, and residential programs to receive the care they need.
Many agencies are involved in making sure each victim heals and moves
from merely surviving to thriving. Meanwhile, Law Enforcement works
with Prosecutors to ensure the traffickers receive justice. As we work
together seamlessly, each victim receives the care he or she needs to
stay safe and we effectively prevent the crime from ever taking place.
Florida Abolitionist, Inc. is a cofounder of the Greater Orlando
Human Trafficking Task Force, Inc. who facilitates the quarterly
Central Florida Human Trafficking Task Force Leadership Conference
Calls, Annual Central Florida Joint Anti-Human Trafficking Forum at
Valencia College Public Safety Institute and hosts the Annual Human
Trafficking Awareness Day in January.
Question 2. What additional actions can be taken to prevent
trafficking from happening in the first place?
Answer. While there are many actions that need to be taken to
prevent trafficking from happening in the first place, three come to
mind as the most important. First of all, addressing the root cause of
economics. Sex trafficking is a problem because there is a demand for
purchasing sex. This is a demand that traffickers are happy to supply
with victims. However, many times when law enforcement intervenes, the
victims are arrested and the purchasers walk free. By significantly
increasing the penalties for the commercial sex customer, buying sex
will come at a greater risk and we will see the demand decrease. Labor
Trafficking is fuel by the demand for cheaper products thus this fuels
the supply chain to use compromising sources including domestic and
foreign based slave labor.
The second way to decrease demand is to address the public health
crisis of pornography. While many in our culture believe it is
harmless, men and women are becoming addicted. Neuroscientists have
proven that it is as addictive as illegal drugs releasing the same
chemicals in the brain. Many commercial sex customers want to live out
fantasies they see in pornography, so they pay for it with victims of
human trafficking. As the pornography industry gets more and more
violent and child pornography increases, the demand for violent
fetishes/fantasies and sex with children increases. This demand fuels
the fire of human trafficking. By stricter regulations on Internet
providers and pornography producers, we can greatly curb the demand for
human trafficking.
Third, we need to mandate human trafficking education to children
between the ages of 11-17 in the public school system. In the same way
``Just Say No'' has decreased drug use in America significantly, this
education would help young, vulnerable children learn how traffickers
manipulate their victims and would prevent many from falling prey to
these false promises. Such education would also empower youth to watch
out for their friends and help keep them from growing up to exploit
others. The Greater Orlando Human Trafficking Task Force, Inc. has
created a poster campaign in Central Florida to ``Speak Out'' at the
middle and high school grade levels. Florida Abolitionist, Inc. has
established a 30-minute assembly addressing online safety, recruiting
tactics of the traffickers and the value of having self-worth and a
healthy self-esteem. This assembly is called, ``Set Free''. *See poster
attachments.
Question 3. How can the Federal Government help states and regions
to meet their needs?
Answer. The Federal Government can help address all of the three
actions I recommended above with Federal legislation or by strongly
encouraging them at the state level for sex, labor and domestic
servitude including domestic and foreign-born victims, minors and adult
victims and the LGBTQ+ communities who are vulnerable. In addition, for
many, if not most, agencies involved in the fight against human
trafficking, funds are very limited. Non-governmental agencies operate
on shoestring budgets to raise awareness and care for victims. The
majority of care providers/stakeholders in Florida are from faith based
communities. In addition, funds limit law enforcement agencies. In most
cases there are very few investigators of trafficking cases at the
local, state, and Federal level. Increased funding across the board
would greatly improve efforts to curb this horrible crime. It would
provide the tools necessary to prevent and identify human trafficking
while providing all the necessary assistance to victims to experience
full healing. Orlando and Miami Florida have some of the highest calls
in the Nation reporting trafficking, potential trafficking and/or
related issues according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
*See Attachment.
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