[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



              THE BROKEN PATH: HOW TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL  
                   ORGANIZATIONS PROFIT FROM HUMAN  
                 TRAFFICKING AT THE SOUTHWEST BORDER

=======================================================================

                             JOINT HEARING

                               before the

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                    BORDER SECURITY AND ENFORCEMENT

                                and the

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                        EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND  
                              TECHNOLOGY 

                                 of the

                     COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION
                              __________

                           NOVEMBER 14, 2023
                              __________

                           Serial No. 118-37
                              __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
                                     




              [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                                     


        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 

56-370 PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2024














                     COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

                 Mark E. Green, MD, Tennessee, Chairman
Michael T. McCaul, Texas             Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi, 
Clay Higgins, Louisiana                Ranking Member
Michael Guest, Mississippi           Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Dan Bishop, North Carolina           Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey
Carlos A. Gimenez, Florida           Eric Swalwell, California
August Pfluger, Texas                J. Luis Correa, California
Andrew R. Garbarino, New York        Troy A. Carter, Louisiana
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Shri Thanedar, Michigan
Tony Gonzales, Texas                 Seth Magaziner, Rhode Island
Nick LaLota, New York                Glenn Ivey, Maryland
Mike Ezell, Mississippi              Daniel S. Goldman, New York
Anthony D'Esposito, New York         Robert Garcia, California
Laurel M. Lee, Florida               Delia C. Ramirez, Illinois
Morgan Luttrell, Texas               Robert Menendez, New Jersey
Dale W. Strong, Alabama              Yvette D. Clarke, New York
Josh Brecheen, Oklahoma              Dina Titus, Nevada
Elijah Crane, Arizona
                      Stephen Siao, Staff Director
                  Hope Goins, Minority Staff Director
                       Sean Corcoran, Chief Clerk
                       
                                 ------                                

            SUBCOMMITTEE ON BORDER SECURITY AND ENFORCEMENT

                   Clay Higgins, Louisiana, Chairman
Michael Guest, Mississippi           J. Luis Correa, California, 
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia        Ranking Member
Tony Gonzales, Texas                 Shri Thanedar, Michigan
Morgan Luttrell, Texas               Robert Garcia, California
Josh Brecheen, Oklahoma              Delia C. Ramirez, Illinois
Mark E. Green, MD, Tennessee (ex     Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi 
  officio)                           (ex officio)
                Natasha Eby, Subcommittee Staff Director
       Brieana Marticorena, Minority Subcommittee Staff Director 
       
                                 ------                                

          SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY

                 Anthony D'Esposito, New York, Chairman
Nick LaLota, New York                Troy A. Carter, Louisiana, Ranking 
Dale W. Strong, Alabama                Member
Josh Brecheen, Oklahoma              Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey
Mark E. Green, MD, Tennessee (ex     Daniel S. Goldman, New York
  officio)                           Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi 
                                       (ex officio)
               Diana Bergwin, Subcommittee Staff Director
          Lauren McClain, Minority Subcommittee Staff Director
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          

          
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

                               Statements

The Honorable Clay Higgins, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Louisiana, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Border 
  Security and Enforcement:
  Oral Statement.................................................     1
  Prepared Statement.............................................     8
The Honorable J. Luis Correa, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of California, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on 
  Border Security and Enforcement:
  Oral Statement.................................................     1
  Prepared Statement.............................................     3
The Honorable Anthony D'Esposito, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of New York, and Chairman, Subcommittee on 
  Emergency Management and Technology:
  Oral Statement.................................................     4
  Prepared Statement.............................................     6
The Honorable Troy A. Carter, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of Louisiana, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on 
  Emergency Management and Technology:
  Prepared Statement.............................................    10
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on 
  Homeland Security:
  Prepared Statement.............................................     9

                               Witnesses

Honorable John Cotton Richmond, Former U.S. Ambassador to Monitor 
  and Combat Human Trafficking; Chief Impact Officer, Atlas Free:
  Oral Statement.................................................    12
  Prepared Statement.............................................    13
Mr. Pablo Villeda, Regional President of Latin America, 
  International Justice Mission:
  Oral Statement.................................................    14
  Prepared Statement.............................................    16
Mr. Terrence FitzPatrick, Director, Alliance to End Slavery and 
  Trafficking:
  Oral Statement.................................................    21
  Prepared Statement.............................................    23
Mr. Jarrod Sadulski, Ph.D., Associate Professor, American 
  Military University:
  Oral Statement.................................................    24
  Prepared Statement.............................................    26

                             For the Record

The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Texas:
  Article, Forbes, October 16, 2023..............................    38

 
                   THE BROKEN PATH: HOW TRANSNATIONAL 
                   CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS PROFIT FROM 
                   HUMAN TRAFFICKING AT THE SOUTHWEST 
                                BORDER

                              ----------                              

                       Tuesday, November 14, 2023

             U.S. House of Representatives,
                    Committee on Homeland Security,
                           Subcommittee on Border Security 
                                   and Enforcement, and the
                                 Subcommittee on Emergency 
                                 Management and Technology,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 2:06 p.m., in 
room 310, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Clay Higgins 
[Chairman of the Subcommittee on Border Security and 
Enforcement] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Higgins, D'Esposito, Guest, 
Strong, Brecheen, Correa, Jackson Lee, Payne, Thanedar, 
Goldman, Garcia, and Ramirez.
    Mr. Higgins. The Subcommittee on Border Security and 
Enforcement and the Subcommittee on Emergency Management and 
Technology will come to order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
committee in recess at any point.
    The purpose of this hearing is to examine the ways 
transnational criminal organizations engage in human 
trafficking solely for profit, disregarding the dignity of 
human life. To protect the most vulnerable, we must work 
together to develop a better understanding of how current 
border policies have enabled transnational criminal 
organizations to conduct large-scale human trafficking at the 
southwest borders, and how can we develop effective solutions 
to this tragedy that unfolds at our Southern Border?
    I now recognize the Ranking Member for the Subcommittee on 
Border Security and Enforcement, the gentleman from California, 
Mr. Correa, my friend and colleague, for his opening statement.
    Mr. Correa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Higgins and Chairman D'Esposito, thank you for 
this most important hearing on human trafficking and human 
smuggling. I'll start out by summarizing the difference between 
human smuggling and human trafficking.
    Human smuggling is a crime against the United States and 
occurs when a person pays for service, like transportation or 
fraudulent documents, in order to enter a country illegally, 
versus human trafficking, which is a crime of exploitation that 
occurs when someone uses force, fraud, or coercion to compel 
another person to work or engage in the sex or trade of forced 
labor. Human trafficking can happen in any industry, any age, 
date, gender, and nationality. The Department of State 
estimates there are almost 28 million people that are victims 
of human trafficking at any given time world-wide. Sadly, many 
of those individuals are hidden right in front of us.
    Unfortunately, we do not realize the full magnitude of this 
problem due to its hidden nature with a crime. For decades this 
country has been unable to gather the statistics needed to 
understand the scale of this problem.
    Human trafficking is multibillion-dollar industry. 
Transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, are preying on 
vulnerable individuals to make a dollar. Not only do TCOs 
traffic vulnerable people, but family members, strangers, and 
friends are also engaged in this business, all to make a buck.
    The separate issue of human smuggling, we know that TCOs 
prey on vulnerable migrants coming into this country who are 
seeking protection, freedom, and hope of a better life for 
themselves and/or their families.
    We have all read about the reports, briefings, and I 
visited Latin America, and we know why migrants are fleeing 
their country. They're being forced by violence, prosecution, 
effectively starvation. Many parents are forced to choose 
whether their children will join a local criminal gang or make 
the tough decision to send them northward through the jungles 
of Central America and through the treacherous parts of Mexico, 
all to reach the border. All of us have seen the Facebook 
posts, TikTok, YouTube, videos showing human smugglers 
deceiving people into thinking that freedom and safety is just 
a few payments away when we know that's not true. That's why 
it's imperative to fight against the disinformation campaigns 
of these traffickers.
    In the fight against TCOs, human trafficking, and human 
smuggling, we must engage in comprehensive solutions. I commend 
the Biden administration, Secretary Mayorkas, and DHS for 
building one of the strongest anti-human trafficking responses 
in the world that focuses on prevention, consequences, and 
international cooperation. That is why I am concerned that my 
colleagues at a recent press release claimed that President 
Biden, Secretary Mayorkas had been working in partnership with 
cartels. I got to say that we may disagree on how to get the 
job done, but I think we all kind-of agree on the objective, 
which is stop these criminal organizations and to stop these 
individuals from being victimized.
    Now let's say instead of using rhetoric, we Members of 
Congress should be working together to create comprehensive 
solutions to combat these crimes, these huge crimes and their 
magnitude. Comprehensive solutions mean developing strong 
legislation in a bipartisan manner to combat these criminals. 
It means investing in working with our Federal, State, and 
local levels, police agencies to support anti-trafficking 
organizations. It means also strengthening our partnerships 
with our international partners who will support us in fighting 
TCOs.
    A good example is Chairman Higgins, Mr. Higgins, and myself 
working on legislation called The Cooperation on Combating 
Human Smuggling and Trafficking Act. One step in the right 
direction.
    This is not a U.S. problem. This is a global problem. TCOs, 
or transnational criminal organizations, can see the 
desperation of people fleeing war, corruption, and economic 
conditions that are dire as a way to get rich. We need to 
partner with our neighbors to the south, north, and across the 
globe to end these heinous trafficking crimes.
    Today I want to thank our witness for joining us today. I 
look forward to hearing their recommendations on how we in 
Congress can help end these trafficking crimes and protect the 
vulnerable populations who prey in these individuals here and 
abroad.
    With that, I yield, Mr. Chairman.
    [The statement of Ranking Member Correa follows:]
               Statement of Ranking Member J. Luis Correa
                           November 14, 2023
    First, it is important to note the difference between human 
smuggling and human trafficking. Human smuggling is a crime against the 
United States and occurs when a person pays for a service--like 
transportation or fraudulent documents, in order illegally enter the 
country.
    Human trafficking, on the other hand, is a crime of exploitation. 
It occurs when someone uses force, fraud, or coercion to compel another 
person to work or engage in the sex trade or forced labor. This most 
commonly happens after someone is already in the United States. Human 
trafficking can happen in any industry and to people of any age, 
gender, and nationality. These crimes occur around the world, and they 
happen far too frequently in the United States.
    The Department of State estimates that 27.6 million people are 
victims of trafficking at any given time, world-wide. Sadly, many of 
these individuals are often hidden right in plain sight. U.S. citizens 
may not even realize they are working alongside someone who is being 
trafficked. And unfortunately, we do not realize the full magnitude of 
this problem due to the hidden nature of these crimes. For decades, 
this country has been unable to gather the statistics needed to 
understand the scale of this problem.
    Human trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar industry and 
Transnational Criminal Organizations, or TCOs, are preying on 
vulnerable individuals to make a dime. Not only do TCOs traffick 
vulnerable people, but family members, strangers, friends, and even 
businesses looking to take advantage of individuals in need of work to 
increase their profits can be traffickers. On the separate issue of 
human smuggling, we know that TCOs prey on vulnerable migrants coming 
to this country who are seeking protection, freedom, and the hope of a 
better life for themselves and their families.
    You see, we've all read the reporting, attended the briefings, and 
some of us have visited Latin America. We know why migrants are fleeing 
their homes. They're being forced out by violence and persecution.
    Parents are forced to choose whether their child will be coerced 
into joining a gang or make the tough decision to send them through a 
jungle to reach the border. The many Facebook posts, TikToks, and 
YouTube videos from human smugglers deceive them into thinking that 
freedom and safety are just a few payments away. We know that's not 
true and why it's imperative to fight against the disinformation 
campaigns of these traffickers.
    To fight against TCOs, human trafficking, and human smuggling 
crimes of this magnitude, we must engage in comprehensive solutions. I 
commend the Biden administration, Secretary Mayorkas, and DHS for 
building one of the strongest anti-human trafficking responses in the 
world which focuses on prevention, consequences, and international 
cooperation.
    That's why I was deeply disturbed by my colleagues' recent press 
release that would claim that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas 
would work ``in partnership'' with cartels.
    Instead of using this rhetoric, we as Members of Congress should be 
working together to create comprehensive solutions to combat crimes of 
this magnitude. We are doing more than we ever have to combat this 
issue, but more needs to be done.
    Comprehensive solutions mean developing strong legislation in a 
bipartisan manner to combat these criminals. It means investing in 
programs at the Federal, State, and local levels to support anti-
trafficking organizations that are on the front lines helping the 
victims of these crimes. And it means strengthening our partnerships 
with our international partners who will support us in combating TCOs. 
I believe bipartisan solutions can address these heinous crimes. For 
example, Chairman Higgins and I put forth bipartisan legislation, ``The 
Cooperation on Combating Human Smuggling and Trafficking Act,'' to 
expand transnational criminal investigative units that dismantle human 
smuggling and human trafficking operations in Latin America.
    Finally, as I've said before, we can better solve our problems with 
effective foreign partnerships. We are in the midst of a global 
movement and displacement of people that we have never seen in our 
hemisphere. This is just not a U.S. problem; it is a global problem. 
Transnational Criminal Organizations and others see the desperation of 
people fleeing war, corruption, and dire economic conditions as an 
opportunity to make money. We need to partner with our neighbors to the 
south, north, and across the globe to end these heinous trafficking 
crimes.
    I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today and I look 
forward to hearing their recommendations on how we in Congress can help 
to end these trafficking crimes and protect the vulnerable populations 
who fall prey to these criminals both here at home and abroad.

    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Ranking Member Correa.
    I now recognize the Chairman for the Subcommittee on 
Emergency Management and Technology, the gentleman from New 
York, Mr. D'Esposito, for his opening statement.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to 
thank you and Ranking Member Correa for so kindly allowing this 
hearing to be a joint hearing with the Emergency Management and 
Technology Subcommittee. I would also like to thank our 
esteemed panel of witnesses for joining us today. I'm looked 
forward to having a meaningful discussion about how the 
Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Government can 
fight against transnational criminal organizations booming the 
human trafficking business both here and the United States and 
along smuggling routes in Latin America.
    As I am sure we would all agree, human trafficking is an 
evil which should be eradicated. It is the use of force, fraud, 
or coercion to exploit someone else for personal gain. It is in 
its very nature dehumanizing, selfish, and cruel. Put simply, 
traffickers prey on vulnerability, and they profit from pain.
    To some Americans, the reality and dangers of human 
trafficking may only seem like a plot for a good movie or some 
faraway and miniscule reality. However, that is simply not the 
case. While human trafficking is a hidden crime, it is 
estimated that 27.6 million men, women, and children are 
currently victims of human trafficking, whether by powerful 
criminal organizations or by individuals who simply take 
advantage of others' misfortune.
    With this in mind, it is important that we explore the 
reality between the Biden administration's failure to secure 
the Southern Border and how TCOs take advantage of migrants on 
their journey to the United States of America and after they 
arrive.
    Transnational criminal organizations make billions of 
dollars each year off human trafficking alone. While human 
smuggling does not cause human trafficking, the two are 
correlated. A recent ABC article demonstrated that the surge of 
migration is directly tied to the TCO's recruitment of migrants 
for their, ``big business of human smuggling.''
    While migrants pay cartels thousands of dollars to be 
smuggled into the United States of America, these TCOs often 
exploit, sexually abuse, and traffick the same migrants who 
paid them. Tragically, women, and children, including 
unaccompanied minors, bear the brunt of this abuse.
    The truth is that open borders empower TCOs to take 
advantage of migrants' vulnerability. Once across the border, 
many migrants continue to be at risk of being trafficked. With 
the growing number of migrants overwhelming cities in the 
United States, the current humanitarian crisis is only putting 
more individuals at risk of being trafficked. Housing 
instability, a lack of support system, and financial pressure 
all make migrants vulnerable to trafficking. While States like 
Texas and Arizona have had to manage the border crisis for 
years, every State under the failed policies of Biden and 
Mayorkas are now becoming a border State. My home State of New 
York is no exception.
    Since the spring of 2022, more than 100,000 migrants have 
passed through New York City, and it is estimated that more 
than 58,000 individuals still remain in the city's care. The 
mayor of the city of New York, Eric Adams, has previously 
stated that the city has already spent more than $1.45 billion 
to address the migrant crisis, and that New York City could 
potentially spend $12 billion to address the migrant crisis 
over the next 3 fiscal years.
    It is glaringly apparent that the city is inadequately 
prepared to house or provide services to the growing number of 
migrants. The mayor's response has been to put migrants in 
already overcrowded homeless shelters and hospitals, JFK 
Airport, and a tent city at Randall's Island, just to name a 
few locations. The lack of planning when it comes to migrant 
housing is extremely concerning given that we know about the 
human trafficking risk factors.
    In 2021, Polaris, the operator of the National Human 
Trafficking Hotline, published a report that found that 
migration or relocation and unstable housing are both major 
risk factors that can make an individual more vulnerable to 
human trafficking. New York City and the Long Island area have 
one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the country.
    According to the New York State Division of Criminal 
Justice Services, between 2008 and 2021, local authorities have 
made 58 human trafficking arrests, 24 in my home county of 
Nassau and 34 in the bordering county, and the home to 
Congressman Nick LaLota, in Suffolk County.
    Given the fact that the current administration continues to 
do nothing to address the migrant crisis, I am deeply concerned 
that this lack of resources and planning will lead to an 
increase in the number of individuals being trafficked.
    Furthermore, the Long Island area gang activity can also 
contribute to the risk of individuals being trafficked. As 
highlighted in a Washington Post article from last year, the 
gang MS-13 has ``increasingly turned to sex trafficking over 
the past decade to generate income alongside drug 
trafficking.'' MS-13, which has operated on Long Island since 
2003, have many who have been convicted of dozens of murders in 
the region and is considered one of the most violent criminal 
organizations on Long Island.
    I hope for the sake of all those being impacted by this 
crisis that we are able to come together to find meaningful 
solutions.
    Again, I thank you all for being here today, I thank the 
Chairman, and the Ranking Member.
    With that, I yield back.
    [The statement of Chairman D'Esposito follows:]
                Statement of Chairman Anthony D'Esposito
    I first want to begin by thanking Chairman Higgins and Ranking 
Member Correa for so kindly allowing today's hearing to be a joint 
hearing with the Emergency Management and Technology Subcommittee.
    I would also like to thank our esteemed panel of witnesses for 
joining us today. I'm looking forward to having a meaningful discussion 
about how the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Government can 
fight against Transnational Criminal Organizations' (TCOs) booming 
human trafficking business, both here in the United States and along 
smuggling routes in Latin America.
    As I am sure we would all agree, human trafficking is an evil which 
should be eradicated. It is the use of ``force, fraud, or coercion'' to 
exploit someone else for personal gain. It is in its very nature, 
dehumanizing, selfish, and cruel. Put simply, traffickers prey on 
vulnerability, and they profit from pain.
    To some Americans, the reality and the dangers of human trafficking 
may only seem like a plot for a good movie, or some faraway and 
miniscule reality; however, that is simply not the case. While human 
trafficking is a hidden crime, it is estimated that 27.6 million men, 
women, and children are currently victims of human trafficking, whether 
by powerful criminal organizations, or by individuals who simply take 
advantage of others' misfortune.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ https://www.state.gov/national-human-trafficking-prevention-
month-2023/#:?:text=Human- 
%20trafficking%20is%20a%20crime,right%20in%20front%20of%20us.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    With this in mind, it is important that we explore the reality 
between the Biden administration's failure to secure the Southern 
Border and how TCOs take advantage of migrants on their journey to the 
United States and even after they arrive.
    Transnational criminal organizations make billions of dollars each 
year off human smuggling alone. And, while human smuggling does not 
cause human trafficking, the two are correlated. A recent ABC article 
demonstrated that the surge of migration is directly tied to the TCOs' 
recruitment of migrants for their ``big business of human 
smuggling.''\2\ While migrants pay cartels thousands of dollars to be 
smuggled into the United States, these TCOs often exploit, sexually 
abuse, and traffic the same migrants who paid them. Tragically, women 
and children, including unaccompanied minors, bear the brunt of this 
abuse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/migrant-crisis-explained-
border-surge/story?id=103364219.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The truth is that open borders empower TCOs to take advantage of 
migrants' vulnerability, and, once across the border, many migrants 
continue to be at risk of being trafficked. With the growing number of 
migrants overhelming cities in the United States, the current 
humanitarian crisis in only putting more individuals at risk of being 
trafficked. Housing instability, a lack of a support system, and 
financial pressure, all make migrants vulnerable to trafficking. While 
States like Texas and Arizona have had to manage the border crisis for 
years, every State is quickly becoming a border State. My home State of 
New York is no exception.
    Since the Spring of 2022, more than 100,000 migrants have passed 
through New York City and it is estimated that more than 58,000 
indivuals still remain in the city's care. The Mayor of New York City, 
Eric Adams, has previously stated that the city has already spent more 
than $1.45 billion to address the migrant crisis, and New York City 
could potentially spend $12 billion to address the migrant crisis over 
next 3 fiscal years.
    However, it is glaringly apparent that the city is inadequately 
prepared to house or provide services to the growing number of 
migrants. The Mayor's response has been to put migrants in already 
overcrowded homeless shelters and hospitals, the JFK airport, and a 
tent city on Randall's Island, just to name a few locations.
    This lack of planning when it comes to migrant housing, is 
extremely concerning, given what we know about the human trafficking 
risk factors. In 2021, Polaris, the operator of the National Human 
Trafficking Hotline, published a report that found that migration or 
relocation and unstable housing are both major risk factors that can 
make an individual more vunerable to human trafficking.
    New York City and the Long Island area have one of the highest 
rates of human trafficking in the country. According to the New York 
State Division of Criminal Justice Services, between 2008 and 2021, 
local authorities have made 58 human trafficking arrests--24 in Nassau, 
34 in Suffolk.
    Given the fact that the current administration continues to do 
nothing to address the migrant crisis, I am deeply concerned that this 
lack of resources and planning will lead to an increase in the number 
of individuals being trafficked.
    Furthermore, in the Long Island area, gang activity can also 
contribute to the risk of individuals being trafficked. As highlighted 
in a Washington Post article from last year, the gang MS-13 has, 
``increasingly turned to sex trafficking over the past decade to 
generate income alongside drug trafficking.'' MS-13, which has operated 
in the Long Island area since 2003, has been convicted of dozens of 
murders in the region, and is considered the most violent criminal 
organization on Long Island.
    I hope for the sake of all those impacted by this crisis, that we 
are able to come together to find some meaningful solutions.
    And with that, I yield back.

    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Chairman D'Esposito.
    I now recognize myself for my opening statement. Today, we 
will be examining and uncovering how transnational criminal 
organizations commit heinous and incalculable horrors in their 
trafficking schemes across our Southwest Border and deep into 
the United States. Human traffickers are part of a large 
network of vicious, evil organizations that exploit vulnerable 
people for profit.
    The Biden administration has unwittingly facilitated cartel 
operations at the Southern Border, and, as a result, we face a 
human trafficking crisis. Cartels have been emboldened, and 
migrants have been victimized. The most vulnerable, including 
children, have become targets for cartels and violent gangs who 
prey on them for forced labor or sexual exploitation and 
slavery.
    It is important to recognize the key differences between 
human smuggling and human trafficking. Human smuggling is a 
crime of unlawful movement of human beings. On the other hand, 
human trafficking is a coercive crime against a victim by force 
usually through forced labor or sexual exploitation.
    As criminal cartels continue to exploit our borders, human 
trafficking will only worsen. Smuggling can and does lead to 
trafficking. Transnational criminal organizations charge 
migrants thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to be 
smuggled across the border with many being unable to pay and 
subsequently forced into sex, drug, and labor trafficking 
rings.
    I would like to recognize that Border Security 
Subcommittee's bipartisan effort to combat this evil. Earlier 
this year, Ranking Member Correa introduced H.R. 4574, the 
Cooperation on Combating Human Smuggling and Trafficking Act, 
which seeks to enhance border security by expanding 
partnerships with law enforcement entities in Mexico, Central 
America, and South America to combat human smuggling and 
trafficking operations.
    In the last Congress, this committee introduced the 
Countering Human Trafficking Act of 2022, which provided 
statutory authority for the Center for Countering Human 
Trafficking within the Department of Homeland Security. The 
border crisis has facilitated an immigration crisis in the 
United States and has allowed criminal cartels to sprout--to 
prosper by exploiting the most vulnerable individuals.
    Criminal cartels have expanded to operate global 
enterprises where each migrant is viewed as a commodity in 
which these criminal cartels are able to profit.
    I look forward to working with my colleagues as we work to 
fight human trafficking, strengthen our border security, and 
bring these criminals at the border to justice.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses, and I yield 
my own opening statement. Mr. Carter, the Ranking Member of the 
Subcommittee on Emergency Management and Technology, the 
gentleman from Louisiana, has not been able to join us yet 
today, but he will hopefully in the--while we are still in 
attendance here.
    [The statement of Chairman Higgins follows:]
                   Statement of Chairman Clay Higgins
                           November 14, 2023
    Good afternoon and welcome to the Subcommittee on Border Security 
and Enforcement and Subcommittee on Emergency Management and Technology 
joint hearing on how transnational criminal organizations profit from 
the booming cartel business of human trafficking at the Southwest 
Border.
    The purpose of today's hearing is to examine how transnational 
criminal organizations commit incalculable horrors and disregard for 
human life in their trafficking schemes and the effects that can be 
seen throughout Latin America and across our Southwest Border in the 
United States. Human traffickers are part of a larger network of 
vicious, evil organizations that exploit people for profit in the 
Western Hemisphere.
    The border crisis has resulted in record-breaking illegal 
immigration to the United States, and as a result, the country is 
facing an unprecedented human trafficking crisis that has both 
emboldened cartels and victimized migrants. The border crisis has also 
presented a historic business opportunity for the cartel since each 
migrant is viewed as a commodity from which they can profit.
    Even the most vulnerable of these people, including children, have 
become prime targets for these cartels and violent gangs who prey on 
them for forced labor or sexploitation.
    Make no mistake, humans are not merchandise and never should be 
sold into slavery. There is an untold number of men, women, and 
children who now live in modern day enslavement and suffer abuse from 
their captors when they were taken on their journey to the United 
States.
    Not to mention, the Darien Gap--a major path on the migrant route 
in Central America--is increasingly seeing sexual violence used by 
transnational criminal organizations as an instrument of terror and 
coercion among travelers. Some of these migrants are forced into 
trafficking. Some of them will never see freedom.
    However, we must recognize the key differences between human 
smuggling and human trafficking. Human smuggling is a crime of unlawful 
movement. On the other hand, human trafficking does not require 
movement and is a coercive crime against a victim by force, usually 
through forced labor or sexual exploitation. It is important to 
recognize, that human smuggling can lead to human trafficking as it 
often does.
    The open-border policies of the current administration have 
empowered these transnational criminal organizations to control 
dangerous migrant routes and hold operational control over our 
Southwest Border. Unsurprisingly, cartels have expanded their empire 
and now their reach has spread to every part of the globe. Sadly, these 
cartels are further emboldened by the United States' failure to enforce 
immigration laws and secure the Southwest Border.
    As many countless victims of human trafficking make their way to or 
operate in the United States, we must first ask ourselves why the 
demand for this industry continues to grow at home.
    These open-border policies are undoubtedly contributing to the 
massive increase in the trafficking of children across the Southwest 
Border, and their on-going exploitation by the cartels and evil 
individuals posing as ``sponsors'' here in the United States.
    Recently, an internal Health and Human Services audit found that 
basic screening safeguards had been removed from the sponsor vetting 
process ``in an effort to expedite children's release from care.'' They 
found that these vulnerable children were often sent to the same 
address, or in some cases, ``sponsors'' were receiving dozens of 
minors.
    We need to ensure that the most vulnerable are not falling victim 
to trafficking, abuse, and neglect under the watch of the Federal 
Government.
    Reports have stated that the U.S. Government has been cutting 
certain corners while vetting sponsors for unaccompanied children who 
have crossed the border into the United States and placing emphasis on 
speed rather than ensuring the sponsors are legitimate and that the 
child is going to a safe situation is troubling.
    As transnational criminal organizations continue to exploit our 
borders, human trafficking will continue to worsen. Smuggling can and 
does lead to trafficking. Transnational criminal organizations charge 
migrants thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to be smuggled 
across the border, with many being unable to pay and subsequently being 
forced into sex, drug, and labor trafficking rings.
    How could a nation so prosperous and enshrined with the notion of 
freedom allow this to happen?
    I would like to welcome our witnesses for being here today and I 
look forward to their testimony regarding their work to combat human 
trafficking of the most vulnerable from the hands of transnational 
criminal organizations.
    Human trafficking is evil but transnational criminal organizations 
have no regard for human life, instead looking toward their profits, 
where they make billions of dollars exploiting human life.
    I want to recognize the Border Security Subcommittee's bipartisan 
effort to combat this evil. Earlier this year, Ranking Member Correa 
introduced H.R. 4574 the ``Cooperation on Combatting Human Smuggling 
and Trafficking Act'' which seeks to enhance border security by 
expanding partnerships with law enforcement entities in Mexico, Central 
America, and South America to combat human smuggling and trafficking 
operations, and I am proud to have signed onto this bill and co-lead 
this effort with him.
    And last Congress, this committee introduced the Countering Human 
Trafficking Act of 2022, which provided statutory authority for the 
Center for Countering Human Trafficking within the Department of 
Homeland Security.
    Congress must work to ensure that the U.S. Government has the 
resources available to continue to lead in this global fight against 
human trafficking.
    With that, I yield back the balance of my time and look forward to 
hearing from our witnesses.

    Mr. Higgins. Other Members of the committee are reminded 
that opening statements may be submitted for the record.
    [The statement of Ranking Member Thompson follows:]
             Statement of Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson
                           November 14, 2023
    Addressing human smuggling and trafficking is a critically 
important challenge. Unfortunately, based on their politically-charged 
rhetoric and baseless accusations about the Biden administration's 
border policies, I doubt my Republican colleagues intend to use this 
hearing to help find meaningful solutions.
    More likely, my Republican colleagues have convened this hearing to 
mislead the American public about what the administration is doing to 
combat human smuggling and trafficking at the border. In fact, the 
Biden administration and Secretary Mayorkas are going after the cartels 
and have implemented enhanced counter-trafficking and counter-smuggling 
efforts. They are not only investigating and prosecuting individuals 
involved in these crimes but also investing in prevention efforts and 
assisting victims.
    My Republican colleagues will try to make the American people think 
that shutting our borders to asylum seekers would help stop human 
smuggling and trafficking. In fact, doing so would have the opposite 
effect, empowering cartels to exploit migrants further. We know that 
migrants are fleeing terrible conditions and will travel to the U.S. 
border no matter the obstacles placed in their way. But the more 
difficult the journey, and the more hurdles migrants have to overcome, 
the more the cartels can charge.
    The reality is that we need legal pathways for migrants who are 
often fleeing conflict, persecution, or dire economic conditions in 
search of a better life. They seek the safety and the American dream, 
and knowingly embark on a treacherous journey to achieve it. We need to 
cut smugglers out and have safe and humane pathways for migrants to 
come to the United States under our laws.
    It's also important to recognize how natural disasters can affect 
any community, regardless of background, but particularly the most 
vulnerable who have little choice but to set out in search of safety, 
security, and prosperity. Unfortunately, in desperation, people are 
sometimes taken advantage of.
    After Hurricane Katrina, for example, many foreign workers were 
hired to rebuild oil rigs and facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. 
They were promised good jobs and permanent U.S. residency by recruiters 
who required them to pay up to $10,000. Still, when they arrived at 
Signal Shipyards in Pascagoula, Mississippi, they discovered they would 
not receive the promised residency documents.
    Instead, ``they were charged $1,050 per month to live in guarded 
labor camps where up to 24 men lived in single 1,800-square-foot (167-
square-meter) units and were exploited to work.''They became victims of 
human trafficking, specifically labor trafficking. Such instances are a 
stark reminder that these issues have no business being tied to 
partisan maneuvering, but rather we must work together to end human 
trafficking and smuggling.
    In the 117th Congress, then-Ranking Member John Katko of the 
Homeland Security Committee and I sought to enhance and streamline 
DHS's ability to combat human trafficking by introducing the Countering 
Human Trafficking Act, which made the Department of Homeland Security 
(DHS) Center for Countering Human Trafficking (CCHT) permanent and 
increased coordination among DHS components.
    I am grateful that President Biden signed the legislation into law 
last December. This bipartisan, bicameral law had the support of every 
CHS subcommittee Chair and Ranking Member. I hope we can get back to 
working together to provide real solutions to protect the most 
vulnerable and mitigate threats to our homeland.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today on how Congress 
can do more to combat human trafficking and human smuggling, as well as 
how we can better protect people from being exploited by bad actors.

    Mr. Correa. I wanted to ask unanimous consent to include 
Ranking Member Carter's opening statement for the record.
    Mr. Higgins. Without objection.
    [The statement of Ranking Member Carter follows:]
                Statement of Ranking Member Troy Carter
                           November 14, 2023
    Let me say from the outset, that the issues of human trafficking 
and smuggling are important, so I am disappointed that in announcing 
this hearing, my Republican colleagues decided to make this hearing 
part of a multiple phase plan to impeach or smear the President and the 
Secretary of Homeland Security.
    Human trafficking and smuggling are not new problems that the 
country is facing, sadly, we have had these problems for decades and 
the only real way to make headway is to work together. I hope that 
coming away from this hearing, we do more to approach these and other 
issues in a more bipartisan fashion and give a more balanced approach. 
And while much of the focus of today's hearing for my Republican 
colleagues is on the border, we should also note that human trafficking 
can and frequently does occur without crossing any borders.
    Human trafficking is an on-going challenge in my home State of 
Louisiana. In 2021, Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law a bill 
that established the Office of Human Trafficking Prevention. In 
February, the Office of Human Trafficking Prevention released a report 
for 2022 that had alarming statistics--70 percent of the reported 
trafficking victims in Louisiana were under 18 years old, 88 percent 
were female, 53 percent were African American, 39 percent were White, 
and the majority were U.S. citizens.
    At the Federal level, multiple administrations have launched 
initiatives to address these issues. Congress has been active on these 
issues as well. Last year, Congress passed the Countering Human 
Trafficking Act of 2021, which authorized and expanded the Center for 
Countering Human Trafficking. With this bill signed into law by 
President Biden, Congress institutionalized the DHS counter-trafficking 
mission ensuring that DHS can investigate human trafficking and disrupt 
cross-border illicit networks. I look forward to hearing from our 
witnesses today about how the Countering Human Trafficking Act has been 
implemented.
    I would like to acknowledge the Biden administration's efforts to 
end human trafficking and smuggling through the 2022 launch of the 
Counter Human Smuggler Campaign, which conducted over 6,700 disruptions 
to the human smuggling infrastructure. These efforts included raids on 
smugglers' stash houses and impounding trailers used to unlawfully 
transport migrants. In May 2023, the administration launched a digital 
ad campaign to combat smuggler-driven disinformation on social media 
platforms. These ads included simple images and language about U.S. 
immigration laws and were geotargeted for migrants along the migratory 
path in Central and South America.
    Human trafficking and smuggling are complex issues, which is why 
Congress needs to address the root causes and eliminate a fractured 
immigration system that has negatively impacted millions of migrants 
and subjected them to unimaginable abuse. We need to work on a 
bipartisan front to keep the Government open, enable our law 
enforcement to keep going after traffickers and smugglers, and assist 
the victims of these terrible crimes.
    I look forward to speaking to our witnesses today about human 
trafficking and smuggling and, more importantly, what Congress can do 
to help victims and dismantle systems that make people more susceptible 
to being victims of trafficking and smuggling.

    Mr. Higgins. I thank the Ranking Member.
    I am pleased to welcome our panel of witnesses. I ask that 
our witnesses please rise and raise your right hand.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Mr. Higgins. Let the record reflect that the witnesses have 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you, and please be seated.
    I would like now to formally introduce our witnesses. 
Ambassador John Cotton Richmond is an attorney and diplomat 
focused on ethical business, human rights, democracy, and the 
rule of the law. Previously, Ambassador Richmond served as a 
U.S. Ambassador to monitor and combat trafficking in persons 
from 2018 to 2021. Serving in the Nation's highest-ranking 
position dedicated to human trafficking, he led U.S. foreign 
policy related to modern slavery and coordinated the U.S. 
Government's response to these crimes.
    Our next witness, Mr. Pablo Villeda, is International 
Justice Mission's regional president of Latin America, and the 
gentleman oversees their work to rescue children who have been 
victimized by sexual violence and to secure justice against 
human traffickers and those who would exploit the vulnerable 
for sexual trade. Mr. Villeda joined International Justice 
Mission as Guatemala's field office director where he led a 
team to achieve significant convictions against perpetrators of 
sexual violence, and he pioneered new ways of combating child 
sexual assault by equipping officials within the Guatemala 
justice system with what they needed to fight back.
    I would like to recognize the gentleman from California, 
Mr. Correa, to introduce a Minority witness, Mr. Terry 
FitzPatrick.
    Mr. Correa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman Higgins and Chairman 
D'Esposito, it is my honor to introduce Mr. Terry FitzPatrick. 
A journalist by training, Mr. FitzPatrick has been involved in 
the fight against human trafficking for over a decade. He has 
award-winning coverage on human rights and criminal justice. He 
has also helped produce films about human trafficking in 14 
countries around the world. He currently serves as the director 
of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, also known as 
ATEST, a coalition advocating for solutions and human 
trafficking.
    Thank you, Mr. FitzPatrick, for being here today. I look 
forward to hearing your statement, sir.
    Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Higgins. I thank the Ranking Member.
    Our final witness, Dr. Jarrod Sadulski has over 20 years of 
law enforcement experience, including counter-human 
trafficking, counterterrorism, homeland security, and local law 
enforcement. Dr. Sadulski has spent time in Central America and 
South America researching both human trafficking and 
international narcotics trafficking.
    I thank the witnesses for being here today. The witnesses' 
full statements will appear in the record.
    I now recognize Ambassador Richmond for 5 minutes to 
summarize his opening statement.

   STATEMENT OF HONORABLE JOHN COTTON RICHMOND, FORMER U.S. 
   AMBASSADOR TO MONITOR AND COMBAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING; CHIEF 
                   IMPACT OFFICER, ATLAS FREE

    Mr. Richmond. Chairman Higgins, Ranking Member Correa, 
Chairman D'Esposito, thank you for allowing us to appear here 
today. I currently serve as the chief impact officer for Atlas 
Free, a network of over 40 anti-trafficking organizations 
working to combat trafficking around the world. I'm also the 
president of the Libertas Council, a leadership community 
focused on combating human trafficking, advancing democracy, 
and affirming human dignity.
    The Members have wisely highlighted that traffickers profit 
from human trafficking. This is not the noble profits of a 
market-based enterprise in a fair capitalist system. These are 
the illicit economic gains from treating inherently valuable 
people as disposable commodities. Whenever the issue of the 
border arises in conversations about human trafficking, I think 
it's wise to clarify the distinction between smuggling and 
trafficking. Smuggling is a crime of transportation. It can be 
voluntary or involuntary, and it violates the integrity of a 
country's borders. Trafficking, however, is always involuntary. 
Coercion is at the very heart of the crime, and there is no 
legal requirement that a person crosses a border to be a victim 
of human trafficking.
    In fact, the United Nations estimates over 70 percent of 
all the victims in the world, that their traffickers actually 
exploit them in their own country of origin. This isn't to 
suggest that borders don't matter. They do. It's just that 
illegal border crossings do not cause human trafficking. They 
do, however, make people much more vulnerable. Traffickers prey 
on vulnerable people because traffickers believe that 
vulnerable people are easier to coerce and exploit.
    Many things make people vulnerable. People who are in 
poverty, illiteracy, disabilities, lack of strong families. All 
of these things can make individuals vulnerable to crime, 
including the crime of trafficking. As Chairman D'Esposito 
said, border crossings are correlated, but they're not causal 
to trafficking. There's only one cause of human trafficking, 
one true root cause of trafficking, and that is the 
trafficker's decision to exploit another person.
    When people talk about going upstream, they often focus on 
just reducing vulnerabilities. While noble, these efforts have 
at best an indirect impact on human trafficking because they're 
focused on the correlated vulnerabilities and not the true root 
cause of trafficking.
    The Government's failure to enforce laws benefits 
criminals. This is true not only of border laws, but it's also 
true of trafficking laws.
    The U.S. State Department highlighted the plummeting rate 
of human trafficking law enforcement last year. According to 
the State Department, the United States only initiated 162 new 
Federal human trafficking prosecutions last year. New 
prosecutions had not been that low since 2014. U.S. Federal 
courts only convicted 256 human traffickers last year, a 48 
percent decrease since 2019.
    Although strong and effective criminal justice response to 
trafficking alone will not solve the problem, it is a necessary 
component of a holistic approach. The failure to fund and 
resource the hardworking people of the Department of Justice 
and Homeland Security to enforce our trafficking laws means 
that human traffickers are operating with impunity. Pair the 
awful reality with the dramatic increase in vulnerable, 
undocumented people, and human trafficking becomes a high-
reward, low-risk, criminal enterprise.
    We are not only dealing with the Government's failure to 
enforce border laws concerning individuals. The United States 
is also failing to stop companies from importing goods made by 
forced labor victims. The teams at DHS charged with enforcing 
both the Tariff Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act 
must be allowed to stop slave-made goods from tarnishing United 
States markets.
    Congress must decide if it will take a consistent approach 
to human rights or only engage in soaring rhetoric when it's 
convenient to other priorities.
    With almost all the solar panels crossing the United States 
borders having been sustained by China forcing Uyghur 
minorities to work, we have to ask if America wants to go green 
on the back of slave labor. We have to ask if chocolate 
Halloween treats are worth traffickers forcing children from 
Mali and Burkina Faso to work in fields. Forced labor 
interferes with free markets, and it undermines capitalism.
    For individuals to flourish, people must be free to decide 
where they work and who touches their bodies. Congress should 
move quickly to reauthorize the international provisions of the 
Trafficking Victims Protection Act and to create vacature and 
expungement pathways for trafficking survivors.
    The United States should screen every undocumented persons 
for indicators of trafficking as it humanely enforces its 
border laws and prevents the surge of vulnerable individuals 
for traffickers to target.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions in this 
discussion today.
    [The prepared statement of Hon. Richmond follows:]
               Prepared Statement of John Cotton Richmond
                           November 13, 2023
    Chairman Higgins, Ranking Member Correa, Chairman D'Esposito, 
Ranking Member Carter, and distinguished Members of the subcommittees, 
thank you for the opportunity to testify at this important hearing. I 
am grateful to testify with my thoughtful colleagues on this panel.
    I serve as the chief impact officer of Atlas Free, a network of 
over 40 organizations fighting human trafficking around the world. I am 
also the president of the Libertas Council, a leadership community 
focused on combating human trafficking, advancing democracy, and 
affirming human dignity. For over 20 years, my work has focused on the 
global fight against human trafficking. I have worked for a number of 
amazing nonprofits, served as a Federal prosecutor and founding member 
of the Department of Justice's Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit, 
worked in the private sector, and led U.S. foreign policy on this issue 
as the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in 
Persons. I have met and learned from many survivors over the years. I 
have also benefit from listening to traffickers--the women and men who 
choose to commit this crime. Together these experiences shape my 
understanding and fuel my passion to ensure all people are free.
    The Members have wisely highlighted that traffickers ``profit'' 
from human trafficking. This is not the noble profits of market-based 
enterprises in a fair capitalist system. These are illicit economic 
gains from treating inherently valuable people as disposable 
commodities.
    Whenever issues of the border arise in conversations about human 
trafficking, I think it is wise to clarify the distinction between 
human smuggling and human trafficking. Smuggling is a crime of 
transportation. It can be voluntary or involuntary, and it violates 
border integrity. Human trafficking, however, is always involuntary. 
Coercion is at the very heart of the crime and there is no legal 
requirement that a person crosses a border. The United Nations 
estimates that traffickers exploit 77 percent of all victims in their 
country of origin without crossing a border.
    This is not to suggest that borders do not matter. They do. It is 
just that illegal border crossings do not cause human trafficking. They 
do, however, make people more vulnerable. Traffickers prey on 
vulnerable people because the traffickers believe vulnerable people are 
easier to exploit--and undocumented individuals are exceptionally 
vulnerable. Many things make people vulnerable to those bent on evil: 
poverty, illiteracy, disabilities, lack of strong families--yet none of 
these vulnerabilities cause human trafficking. They are correlated but 
not causal. There is only one cause of human trafficking. The root 
cause of human trafficking is traffickers. When people talk about 
``going upstream'' they focus on reducing vulnerabilities. While noble, 
these efforts have at best an indirect impact on human trafficking, 
because they focus on correlated vulnerabilities instead of 
trafficking's true root cause.
    The Government's failure to enforce laws benefits criminals. This 
is true of border laws and trafficking laws. The U.S. State Department 
highlighted the plummeting rate of human trafficking law enforcement 
last year. According to State, the United States only initiated 162 new 
Federal human trafficking prosecutions last year. New prosecutions have 
not been that low since 2014. U.S. Federal courts only convicted 256 
human traffickers last year, a 48 percent decrease since 2019. Although 
a strong and effective criminal justice response to trafficking alone 
will not solve the problem, it is a necessary component of a holistic 
approach. The failure to fund and resource the hard-working people at 
DOJ and DHS to enforce our human trafficking laws means human 
traffickers operate with impunity. Pair that awful reality with a 
dramatic increase in vulnerable undocumented people, and human 
trafficking becomes a high-reward/low-risk criminal undertaking.
    We are not only dealing with Government's failure to enforce border 
laws concerning individuals, the United States is also failing to stop 
companies from importing goods made by forced labor victims. The 
faithful teams at DHS charged with enforcing both the Tariff Act and 
the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act must be allowed to stop slave-
made goods from tarnishing United States markets.
    Congress must decide if it will take a consistent approach to human 
rights or only engage in soaring rhetoric when it is convenient for 
other priorities. With almost all the solar panels crossing U.S. 
borders having been stained by China forcing Uyghur minorities to work, 
we have to ask if America wants to ``go green'' on the backs of slave 
labor. We have to ask if chocolate Halloween treats are worth 
traffickers forcing children from Mali and Burkina Faso to work in 
cacao fields. Forced labor interferes with free markets and undermines 
capitalism. For individuals to flourish, people must be free to decide 
where they work and who touches their bodies.
    Congress should move quickly to reauthorize the international 
provisions of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and create vacatur 
and expungement pathways for trafficking survivors. The United States 
should screen every undocumented person for indicators of trafficking 
as it humanely enforces its border laws and prevents the surge of 
vulnerable individuals for traffickers to target.
    Thank you, and I welcome your questions.

    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Ambassador.
    I now recognize Mr. Villeda for 5 minutes to summarize his 
opening statement.

    STATEMENT OF PABLO VILLEDA, REGIONAL PRESIDENT OF LATIN 
             AMERICA, INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION

    Mr. Villeda. Chairman Higgins, Ranking Member Correa, 
Chairman D'Esposito, and distinguished Members of the 
subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to testify before 
you today.
    My name is Pablo Villeda Ortiz, and I serve as regional 
president for Latin America at International Justice Mission. 
In Latin America, we work in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, 
Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and we recently concluded a 10-year 
project addressing sex trafficking of children in the Dominican 
Republic.
    Before joining IJM, I was a Guatemala field office director 
in 2007. I practiced law inspired by my father, who dedicated 
his life as a lawyer to help many people in need, but I grew up 
in safety, free from fear of crime. But that--I knew that that 
was not the experience of millions of others. I witnessed this 
first when I worked as a law clerk in Guatemala's justice 
system. I saw that those living in poverty didn't have real 
access to justice. Then, in my capacity at RJM, I met many 
survivors of violence who expect little protection from their 
justice systems.
    The title of this hearing suggests a broken path. If such a 
path exists, it is indeed broken, broken from the outset. 
Broken in the community of millions of people in Latin America 
for whom violence is an ever-present danger; the rule of law is 
only a notion, and actually impunity is the norm. So, in the 
face of these challenges, we must look to the source and then 
work to address factors that drive people to abandon their 
communities.
    IJM's experience in Latin America where we work in 
partnership with justice system officials is that progress is 
possible and has not been seriously undermined by leadership 
transitions or corruption.
    Local governments, of course, must be held responsible for 
expanding the protection of the rule of law to all but 
especially those living in poverty so they are safe within 
their own communities. There are proven, effective ways to 
achieve this end.
    For example, as a result of the IJM program in the 
Dominican Republic, we have seen a 78 percent reduction in a 
prevalence of sex trafficking of children in the Dominican 
Republic. We are convinced that when a justice system protects 
its most vulnerable and treats victims with dignity, they 
report crimes. Perpetrators are held accountable. Violence is 
impaired, and the cycle of abuse is broken. It is then when 
victims become survivors and flourish, and people can live 
peacefully within their own communities without the need to 
seek a life elsewhere.
    The United States has a pivotal role to counter violence as 
a fundamental factor that creates instability, drives 
migration, and makes people vulnerable to trafficking.
    Toward that end, and as I close, I would like to offer 
three recommendations: First, we encourage the United States to 
continue to partner with and invest in local governments in 
Latin America. Continued partnership between governments can 
significantly improve the performance of criminal justice 
systems so that they are responsive to violence.
    Second, we encourage the United States to increase the 
diplomatic efforts to address violence against women and 
children in partnership with the government of Honduras.
    In January 2023, the United States and Honduran Government 
announced their intention to sign a joint memorandum of 
understanding that defined specific actions against domestic 
and gender-based violence, while also increasing support to 
survivors. IJM encourages the Department of State to the work 
with the government of Honduras to finalize and commence such a 
joint statement.
    Finally, we urge Members of Congress to reauthorize the 
Trafficking Victims Protection Act. September 30 marked 2 years 
since the previous authorization of the international TVPA 
program has expired. But, last week, the bipartisan Frederick 
Douglas Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Act, H.R. 
5856, was passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. If 
enacted, it would reauthorize key provisions of the TVPA. We 
encourage Members of this committee to cosponsor and vote in 
support of that bill.
    Thank you, again, for the opportunity to testify before 
you, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Villeda follows:]
               Prepared Statement of Pablo Villeda Ortiz
                           November 14, 2023
    Chairman Higgins, Ranking Member Correa, Chairman D'Esposito, 
Ranking Member Carter, and distinguished Members of the subcommittees, 
thank you for the opportunity to testify at this important hearing. 
From my personal and professional experience, I hope to shed light on 
the all-too-common reality of violence and human trafficking in Latin 
America, as related to the situation at the Southwest Border of the 
United States.
    My name is Pablo Villeda Ortiz. I serve as the regional president 
for Latin America at International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM is a 
global, non-governmental organization (NGO) that works to protect 
people in poverty from violence.\1\ We partner with government 
authorities in 31 program offices in 16 countries to combat human 
trafficking, police abuse of power, violence against women and children 
and on-line sexual exploitation of children. Since 1997, IJM has worked 
to achieve this mission through the strengthening of justice systems 
and community support mechanisms that restore survivors to safety and 
strength, strengthen local law enforcement, and bring criminals to 
justice.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ https://www.ijm.org/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In Latin America, IJM currently works in Guatemala, El Salvador, 
Honduras, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia to address violence against women 
and children (VAWC). Additionally, IJM recently concluded a 10-year 
project to address sex trafficking of children in the Dominican 
Republic.
    I grew up in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Before joining IJM as 
Guatemala Field Office Director in 2007, I was a lawyer. I was inspired 
to enter the legal profession by my father, who was also a lawyer, and 
who not only used his career for personal gain but also to help many 
people in need. In my upbringing, my family was comfortable as part of 
the Guatemalan upper middle class. We lived in a secure home with high 
walls, free from fear of violent crime, physical or sexual assault, or 
any kind of abuse. However, I knew that this was not the experience of 
millions of others in Guatemala who face persistent insecurity and the 
threat of violence in their daily lives. In fact, I witnessed this 
reality first-hand. First, before practicing law, I worked as a law 
clerk in the Guatemalan court system. I saw that those living in 
poverty or those without influence, power or wealth could not afford 
legal representation, and did not have access to justice. Second, in my 
work at IJM, I have personally met many survivors of violence who 
expect little to no protection from their law enforcement and legal 
systems.
                             the challenges
    In many parts of Latin America, including my country of origin, 
Guatemala, violence is a common and ever-present danger for many women 
and children, particularly those living in poverty. For instance, the 
forthcoming results of IJM studies measuring the prevalence of violence 
against women and children in multiple Latin American countries show 
that:
   In both El Salvador and Guatemala, nearly 40 percent of 
        women and 30 percent of adolescents have experienced physical 
        or sexual violence in their life.
     Within the last 12 months alone, 6.2 percent of women and 
            6.9 percent of adolescents in El Salvador and 7.6 percent 
            of women and 9.8 percent of adolescents in Guatemala have 
            experienced this kind of violence.
   In Bolivia, over 50 percent of women and nearly 40 percent 
        of adolescents and in the municipalities of Sucre, El Alto, and 
        La Paz have experienced physical or sexual violence in their 
        life. Nation-wide, 29.6 percent of women and 24.1 percent 
        percent of adolescents have experienced life-threatening 
        violence in their life--and a majority of these women and 
        adolescents are vulnerable to being victimized again.
    Studies conducted by other organizations show similarly high rates 
in other countries \2\ and IJM will soon develop prevalence studies for 
Colombia, Peru, and Honduras.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ WHO: https://www.who.int/news/item/09-03-2021-devastatingly-
pervasive-1-in-3-women-globally experience-violence; U.N. Women: 
https://caribbean.unwomen.org/en/materials/publications/2021/7/
research-brief-intimate-partner-violence-in-five-caricom-countries; The 
Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)02664-7/
fulltext.
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    In the face of such pervasive violence faced by Latin American 
communities, it is also important to note that government authorities 
responsible for addressing violence are often themselves a barrier to 
justice for the victim of a crime. Law enforcement and justice system 
officials respond slowly and with unprofessionalism that jeopardizes 
the quality of cases and protection of the victim. Instead, these 
officials inadvertently retraumatize the victim in their questioning 
and uncareful treatment, failing to counteract the fear and shame that 
the individual is experiencing. At the same time, systems for the 
reception and processing of cases are outdated, susceptible to 
corruption, and inefficient, creating significant backlogs that can 
last years before any sense of justice can be achieved. In the mean 
time, victims are left unsupported to navigate a complex and 
intimidating system and perpetrators continue to commit crimes in 
impunity, fearing little in the way of repercussions.
    IJM studies evaluating the performance of the public justice 
systems in Bolivia, Guatemala, and El Salvador demonstrate the 
existence of these barriers to justice for victims. For example, a 
review of criminal case files in Bolivia in 2023, revealed that only 
33.3 percent of cases contained complete information to be evaluated 
and only 39.6 percent allowed for the identification of the suspect and 
their location, reflecting a poor handling of the case from its initial 
intake and investigation. Most concerning, only 4 percent of reported 
cases reached any form of sentencing. In an assessment of official 
interactions with victims, only 6.55 percent of victim interviews were 
conducted in Gesell Chambers (private, nonthreatening spaces for taking 
victim testimony) and not a single interaction that took place within 
the court (hearings and preparation for the survivor to testify) was 
conducted with trauma-informed care, implying that 100 percent of these 
interactions resulted in re-traumatization for victims.
    In Guatemala, of all the reported cases of violence against women 
and children in 2019, prosecution offices dismissed 40 percent of cases 
and had taken no action in 32 percent of cases by the end of 2022. In 
El Salvador, of all reported cases between 2016 and 2019, prosecution 
offices dismissed 46 percent of cases.
    The title of this hearing suggests ``a broken path.'' If such a 
path exists, it is indeed broken and it is broken from the outset. It 
is broken in the homes and communities of millions of people in Latin 
America, for whom the rule of law is a notion and impunity is the norm.
    Let's consider the plight of those impacted by violence and the 
unbearable options before them. Where can they turn and what options do 
they usually have?
   One option is to suffer in silence and see their lives, the 
        lives of their loved ones and communities deteriorate;
   A second option is to take matters into their own hands, 
        which is why support for extrajudicial violence against alleged 
        criminals by outraged mobs in poor communities is common in 
        Latin America;\3\
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    \3\ Cruz, J., & Kloppe-Santamaria, G. (2019). Determinants of 
Support for Extralegal Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean. 
Latin American Research Review, 54(1), 50-68. doi:10.25222/larr.212.
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   A third option, also unfortunately common in many places in 
        the region, either by desperation or under extortion, sees many 
        people resort to the ``protection'' offered by criminal gangs 
        and cartels;
   And a fourth option is the difficult choice to leave their 
        community and loved ones behind, flee, and attempt to migrate 
        to a place of safety and opportunity.
                             the solutions
    In recent years, a host of issues, including violence, have 
contributed to an upsurge of outmigration from Central America. In the 
face of these challenges, we must look to the source and then work to 
address the factors that drive people to abandon their homes, their 
families, and their communities. IJM's experience in Latin America, 
where we work in partnership with public justice system officials, is 
that progress is possible and has not been disrupted by changes in 
national leadership, nor has it been severely or seriously undermined 
by corruption. Local governments must be responsible for extending the 
benefits of protection of the rule of law to all citizens, but 
especially those in poverty, so that they are safe and secure within 
their own communities--and there are proven, effective ways to achieve 
this end.
    For over 25 years, IJM has been countering the problem of violence 
through the strengthening of justice systems and mechanisms of 
community support for victims and survivors. In each context, IJM works 
alongside prosecutors on actual cases of violence and human 
trafficking, providing mentorship, technical resources, and training to 
address weaknesses and gaps in capacity. Through first-hand insight 
into these cases, IJM works to identify and address systemic issues 
that prevent the identification of victims and prosecution of 
perpetrators. In the process, IJM develops targeted, contextualized 
interventions that address the core, systemic issues that allow for 
impunity to continue unhindered, while mobilizing political will and 
social demand so that local governments increase their ownership and 
actions to strengthen the protection of those living in poverty from 
violence.
    From IJM's programmatic experience in Latin America, we have seen 
the effectiveness of these interventions to address trafficking and 
violence:
Dominican Republic
    IJM recently concluded a project in the Dominican Republic (DR) to 
combat sex trafficking of children.
    Nearly a decade ago, a 2015 IJM study \4\ showed sex trafficking of 
children in the Dominican Republic was a rampant crime, with children 
comprising 1 in 10 people who were observed in sexual exploitation--
most as young as 13 to 15 years old. Traffickers operated with impunity 
in establishments like bars, brothels, and even private businesses, but 
the crime truly thrived in public settings. The prevalence of minors in 
sex trafficking in public spaces like parks, beaches, and streets 
surrounding private establishments was as high as 24 percent of 
individuals observed in sexual exploitation. Customers would work 
through either formal or opportunistic pimps--young men or women who 
work as trafficking facilitators and offer to find children for sex.
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    \4\ IJM (2015). Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the 
Dominican Republic.
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    This had been the norm for years--studies carried out during the 
early 2000's consistently reported women and children as the most 
vulnerable to trafficking and sexual exploitation, particularly 
highlighting the number of children trafficked for the purpose of 
commercial sexual exploitation.\5\
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    \5\ UNICEF: https://docplayer.es/20918363-Estudio-cualitativo-
sobre-explotacion-sexual-comercial-de-ninos-ninas-y-adolescentes-en-
republica-dominicana-resultados-preliminares.html; Sorensen, & 
Claramunt, M.C. (2003). Commercial sexual exploitation of children and 
adolescents in Central America, Panama and Dominican Republic: 
synthesis report. ILO.
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    As the scale of violence and impunity became clear, the U.S. 
Department of State's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in 
Persons (J/TIP) funded an anti-trafficking program led by IJM. This 
strategic investment in U.S. foreign assistance leveraged IJM's years 
of experience assisting local law enforcement and justice sector 
authorities in the fight against sex trafficking. It helped transition 
the focus of the work to sustainable, long-term protection, ultimately 
strengthening the capacity of local authorities to proactively identify 
this crime and enforce laws.
    According to the State Department, this programming sought to 
create ``a measurable deterrence and a significant reduction in the 
prevalence of sex trafficking in the country'' through ``consistent 
apprehension and effective prosecution of perpetrators,'' and provide 
``an effective response to sex trafficking that ensures the sensitive 
treatment of survivors and results in a deterrent effect that reduces 
the prevalence of the crime throughout the country.''
    During this project, IJM and our partners:
   Developed investigation standards that ensure police respond 
        to victims with trauma-informed care and gather the proper 
        evidence to advance cases through the legal system.
   Spurred a civil society movement to successfully advocate 
        for a ban of child marriage, which had served as legal loophole 
        that enabled perpetrators to act in impunity.
   Worked with the Dominican National Police to co-design the 
        Nation's first electronic investigation system that will 
        safeguard the integrity and documentation of collected evidence 
        and enable the effective prosecution of sex trafficking cases.
    As a result of these initiatives, we have seen a tremendous 
improvement in the performance of the Dominican justice system \6\ and 
reduction in prevalence of violence \7\ in cases of sex trafficking of 
children.
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    \6\ IJM (March 2023). Study of the Dominican public justice system 
in response to sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of 
children, 2010-2022.
    \7\ IJM (January 2023). Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children 
in the Dominican Republic: Endline Study.
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   From 2010 to 2013, the anti-human trafficking department of 
        the Dominican National Police did not handle any cases of sex 
        trafficking; while from 2014 to 2021, 130 cases were initiated. 
        This crime was once unrecognized and unpunished--and now it is 
        actively investigated and prosecuted.
   Similarly, the Attorney General's Office of the Dominican 
        Republic only handled 8 cases from 2010 to 2013, while it 
        registered a total of 90 cases between 2014 and 2021.
   The total prevalence of children involved in sex trafficking 
        was reduced from 10 percent in 2014 to 2.2 percent in 2022. 
        This represents a 78 percent decrease in children in sex 
        trafficking over the course of 8 years. In other words, in 
        2014, 1 in 10 individuals involved in sex trafficking was a 
        minor experiencing sexual exploitation. In 2022, one in 45 
        individuals involved in sex trafficking was a minor.
Northern Triangle
    The effectiveness of this approach is not unique to the Dominican 
Republic and has generated promising results in other parts of Latin 
America. IJM has worked in Guatemala since 2005, beginning by 
partnering with justice system actors to address sexual violence 
against children. Over several years, our team in Guatemala:
   Provided field mentoring to police officers and case-based 
        consultation to prosecutors to improve outcomes and quality of 
        investigations and cases;
   Developed technological and data management tools to assess 
        the criminality of perpetrators and identify gaps in the 
        performance of the justice system;
   Assisted in the launch, training, and capacity building of 
        the first-ever specialized sex crimes police units and crimes 
        against children prosecution offices;
   Provided training on best practices in trauma-informed care 
        for victims so that evidence collection and victim testimonies 
        are non-threatening; and
   Made tangible contributions to the quality and expediency of 
        forensic reports rendered by the National Institute of Forensic 
        Sciences.
    As a result, according to a 2018 external impact evaluation \8\ 
commissioned by IJM, the Guatemalan justice system has more effectively 
responded to cases of child sexual abuse, as evidenced by:
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    \8\ IJM (December 2018). Final Evaluation of Program to Combat 
Sexual Violence Against Children and Adolescents in Guatemala, 2005-
2017.
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   357 percent more arrests--from 301 (2008-2012) to 1077 
        (2013-2017).
   318 percent more charges brought by prosecutors--from 520 to 
        1,658.
   335 percent more convictions--from 181 to 581.
   80 percent of charges brought by prosecutors at endline 
        (cases sent to trial) met legal requirements--from 28 percent 
        at baseline.
   Increased victim sensitivity by justice system officials, 
        including reducing the number of times victims give testimony, 
        increasing in the use of pre-trial testimony, and increasing 
        the use of victim-friendly spaces for child victims.
    Based on this success, IJM expanded its program in Guatemala to the 
broader issue of violence against women and children (VAWC). IJM is 
making progress by:
   Strengthening the capacity of the recently-launched Victim's 
        Institute as the primary government agency tasked with 
        providing free, specialized assistance and accompaniment to 
        victims of crime to ensure their access to justice, 
        restoration, and dignified treatment throughout the process. 
        IJM has been instrumental in assisting the Victim's Institute 
        by co-developing its model of attention, protocols, best 
        practices, case monitoring system, and victims' reparation 
        policy, informed by consultation with actual survivors of 
        violence.
   Improving the application of restraining orders so that 
        perpetrators are kept from committing further violence, and 
        women and children are protected from further harm.
   Piloting a Coordinated Community Response model, as a 
        scalable and replicable model to enhance security based on 
        building trust, cooperation and capacities in both State 
        agencies and community actors.
   Organizing and equipping groups of survivors to amplify 
        their voice, stories, and advocacy for sustainable change.
   Embedding training and best practices into justice and 
        citizen security agencies' official curricula and training 
        academies.
    Additionally, in El Salvador, where IJM has worked since 2018, IJM 
has already seen a 78 percent increase in the number of police 
investigations that meet quality standards, including evidence 
collection and analysis and application of investigative techniques.
                               conclusion
    At IJM, we are convinced that when a justice system protects its 
most vulnerable, it will deter violence and break the cycle of abuse 
and crime. When a justice system protects its most vulnerable, victims 
report their cases and perpetrators experience real consequences for 
their crimes. When a justice system protects the most vulnerable, 
victims are treated with dignity and care so that they can heal and 
flourish. When a justice system protects the most vulnerable, people 
can live peacefully within their own communities without the need to 
seek help and opportunities elsewhere. When local governments increase 
their ownership, strengthen policies, and improve their law enforcement 
performance with support from effective international partners, change 
is accelerated, and wins are more sustainable. Our experience is 
evidence of this.
    From IJM's experience, when strategic investments are made to 
strengthen the capacity of the government authorities to respond to 
violence and support survivors, substantial progress can be made in the 
performance of public systems responsible for the protection of their 
citizens. In both the 116th and 117th Congress, IJM was pleased to 
support the Central American Women and Children Protection Act--
bipartisan legislation designed to strengthen public justice systems to 
protect women and children, support victims of violence, and hold 
perpetrators accountable. In the fiscal year 2022 appropriations bill, 
Congress appropriated funding ``to support bilateral compacts with the 
governments of such countries for the specific purpose of strengthening 
their capacity to protect women and children from domestic violence, 
sexual assault, trafficking, and child abuse or neglect, including by 
holding perpetrators accountable.''
    The United States has a pivotal role in this fight to counter 
violence as a fundamental factor that creates instability, drives 
migration and makes people vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. 
Toward that end, I offer the following recommendations:
    1. Partnering with and investing in local governments in Latin 
        America.--Criminal justice systems can be unresponsive to 
        reports of crimes of physical and sexual violence against women 
        and children. Yet continued partnership between governments can 
        significantly improve the performance of criminal justice 
        systems for lasting change. While civil society and community 
        members play an important role in child protection, the goal 
        cannot and should not be for those actors to replace the 
        crucial role of government officials and those institutions 
        mandated to protect children in their communities. These 
        include law enforcement, the judiciary, social welfare 
        services, and local leaders; all of whom need more trauma and 
        technical training, and practical resourcing to be able to 
        build trust with those citizens and create sustainable systems 
        that are accessible and reliable for those in the communities 
        they serve. Accordingly, this requires funding for public 
        justice system improvements, including:
      (a) Fair, transparent and efficient administration of justice.--
            International NGO's such as IJM are playing a role in 
            improving case management in courts, court-based victim 
            support services and the use of technological tools to 
            increase efficiency in criminal hearings. There is also an 
            increasing need in this field to promote greater engagement 
            from civil society organizations to foster accountability, 
            integrity, and transparency in criminal processes.
      (b) Community-based services for women and children.--Through 
            MOUs and cooperative agreements, NGOs in Latin America can 
            and do effectively partner with government agencies to 
            enhance reporting, response, and restoration services. NGOs 
            are part of the government's referral system for women and 
            child victims and often provide support services to the 
            most vulnerable populations, including women who had been 
            forcibly displaced from their communities or reside in 
            areas that are subject to the control of gangs.
      (c) Assisting government partners.--It is essential to work 
            alongside government partners to ensure a coordinated 
            response to violence against women and children occurs, 
            police protocols increase the safety and stability of 
            victim's access to justice, and all legal processes are 
            trauma-informed and survivor centered.
       Training and mentoring justice officials including 
            police, prosecutors, and social workers.
       Reforms to bolster witness accompaniment, to improve the 
            process of ``walking alongside'' individual clients 
            throughout the court process. (Lacking this, witnesses fall 
            away, and violent criminals fail to be held accountable.)
       Mentoring and equipping local leaders, including civil 
            society and survivor-led groups to serve as advocates for 
            change.
    2. Increase U.S. diplomatic efforts to address violence against 
        women and children in partnership with the government of 
        Honduras.--IJM welcomed the joint statement by the governments 
        of the United States and Honduras \9\ at the Strategic and 
        Human Rights Dialogue in January 2023, in which both 
        governments ``reaffirmed their continued commitment to jointly 
        address the root causes of irregular migration and forced 
        displacement'' and announced ``their intention to sign a joint 
        memorandum of understanding that defines specific actions 
        against domestic and gender-based violence while also 
        increasing support to survivors.'' IJM encourages the 
        Department of State to work with the government of Honduras to 
        finalize and commence such a joint MOU, as soon as practicable. 
        IJM recommends that a joint MOU specify particular government 
        institutions that are responsible for implementation to 
        maximize fiscal accountability and outcome-based measurement. 
        We also recommend activities under a joint MOU be implemented 
        by experienced NGO's that support local authorities and provide 
        technical assistance, mentorship, and training to police, 
        prosecutors, courts, and social service agencies.
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    \9\ Joint Statement on the U.S.-Honduras Strategic and Human Rights 
Dialogues. January 10, 2023.
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    3. Prioritize the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims 
        Protection Act (TVPA).--Notably, Sept. 30, 2023, marked 2 years 
        since the previous authorization of the international TVPA 
        programs expired. It is past time for this important 
        legislation, which guides U.S. programming and policy to combat 
        human trafficking globally, to be reauthorized. Survivors, 
        NGO's, and governments world-wide look to the United States as 
        a leader on this issue, and the TVPA is central to this fight. 
        Last week, the bipartisan Frederick Douglass Trafficking 
        Victims Prevention and Protection Act (H.R. 5856) was passed by 
        the House Foreign Affairs Committee. If enacted, it would 
        reauthorize key provisions of the TVPA. We encourage Members of 
        this committee to consider co-sponsoring H.R. 5856 and to vote 
        in support of the bill when it is considered on the House 
        floor.
    4. As Congress negotiates a 2024 appropriations bill, it is 
        essential that funding is sustained or increased for programs 
        that combat trafficking and other forms of violence abroad.--We 
        can all agree that no child should be trafficked, exploited, or 
        violently abused. U.S. Government programs that support the 
        efforts of foreign governments to identify victims, prosecute 
        traffickers and violent criminals, and support survivors in 
        their journey of healing should continue to receive robust 
        funding.

    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Villeda.
    Mr. FitzPatrick, you are recognized for 5 minutes to 
summarize your opening statement.

 STATEMENT OF TERRENCE FITZPATRICK, DIRECTOR, ALLIANCE TO END 
                    SLAVERY AND TRAFFICKING

    Mr. FitzPatrick. Thank you, Chairmen Higgins, D'Esposito, 
and Ranking Member Correa, and to all the Members of the 
committee, for allowing me to speak today.
    Just one thing to say about the Alliance to End Slavery and 
Trafficking, just so you know who we are. We are an alliance of 
organizations that conduct programs in more than 30 U.S. cities 
and 100 countries. We advocate for stronger Federal laws and 
increased Federal funding to prevent and combat forced labor 
and human trafficking.
    I think the most important thing that would be the takeaway 
from my remarks today is this: Whole-of-Government solutions, 
comprehensive, holistic solutions are needed to defeat 
trafficking. I would like to take a few moments to explain what 
we view that means at the border.
    I have three issue areas and three recommendations. Issue 
No. 1 is some context. The more--some statistics I have seen is 
it's actually only 15 percent of trafficking victims around the 
world today are actually migrants. So not all forced labor and 
human tracking is related to migration. A significant number of 
individuals are trapped that way. That 15 percent adds up to 
about 4 million people world-wide. Not a small number, but 
putting it into a larger context.
    Unfortunately, there are no authoritative numbers for 
inside the United States. The National Institute of Justice is 
doing some research on that. But it is known that migration-
related trafficking reaches beyond undocumented individuals.
    For example, the National Human Trafficking Hotline run by 
Polaris has received thousands of calls for help from migrants 
inside the United States legally on guest worker visas or 
already in asylee protected status.
    Last, for context, it is American businesses who ultimately 
profit from transnational human trafficking. American farms and 
factories exploit migrant children in illegal child labor, and 
migrant adults trapped in illegal debt bondage are generating 
profits for American corporations.
    Issue No. 2, the need for prevention and protection. Law 
enforcement isn't the only solution. Foreign assistance 
programs can help reduce the number of individuals fleeing 
their home countries, increasing the capacity to properly 
process migrants and reduce trafficking vulnerability. That's 
because long delays at legal points of entry can cause 
desperate individuals to seek irregular pathways and become 
trafficking targets.
    There's an urgent need at the border for more asylum 
officers, immigration judges, child welfare specialists, and 
attorneys.
    As well, to protect migrants already here, there is a need 
for increased workplace inspections by the Labor Department and 
reform of guest worker visa rules.
    Issue No. 3, the protection of American values and 
leadership. Migrants not only seek opportunities in the United 
States; they seek safety and freedom. Our answer to those 
fleeing forced labor and human trafficking abroad must not be 
to go back. Congress has ensured that the United States, 
perhaps more than any other country, embraces a whole-of-
Government vision for counter-trafficking programs. However, at 
the border in particular, our Nation is not living up to that 
holistic ideal.
    Quickly, three recommendations: I will echo the 
recommendation to please pass the Trafficking Victims 
Protection Reauthorization Act, the TVPRA. To improve 
international trafficking prevention, this bill will require 
the integration of antitrafficking strategies into programs--
all programs--at the U.S. Agency for International Development 
with financial earmarks for countries in Central America, where 
a lot of the unaccompanied minor push factors are sending 
children to our Southern Border. To protect trafficking 
survivors in the United States, the bill reauthorizes programs 
at the Department of Health and Human Services. There's a 
companion bill in the Senate, S. 920, with additional provision 
to protect migrants. When it comes over for passage, we urge 
you to pass that as well.
    Recommendation No. 2, enact key provisions of the fiscal 
year 2024 emergency supplemental appropriations request. The 
border supplemental includes additional asylum officers and 
immigration judges, increased social services, and tougher 
enforcement of U.S. child labor law. As well, please hold the 
line on trafficking funding throughout the Federal budget. With 
all the public attention with movies and news reports about 
child labor in American factories, the response from Congress 
cannot be ``we're going to slash funding for antitrafficking 
programs.''
    Last, recommendation No. 3, do not roll back protections 
for unaccompanied child migrants. All children deserve 
screening by specially-trained border personnel, not 
streamlined screening by lesser-trained immigration 
adjudicators.
    I look forward to explaining a little bit more about those 
recommendations and any questions you might have. Thank you 
much.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. FitzPatrick follows:]
                Prepared Statement of Terry FitzPatrick
                            October 24, 2023
    Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee today. My 
name is Terry FitzPatrick. I direct the Alliance to End Slavery and 
Trafficking (ATEST). We are a nonpartisan coalition of organizations 
that conduct programs in more than 30 U.S. cities and 100 countries. 
ATEST advocates for stronger Federal laws and increased Federal funding 
to prevent and combat forced labor and human trafficking.
    I think the most important takeaway from my comments today will be 
this: whole-of-Government solutions are needed to defeat trafficking. 
I'd like to articulate what that should look like regarding migration. 
I have three issue areas to discuss, and three recommendations.
                        issue one: some context
    Not all forced labor and human trafficking is related to migration. 
The United Nations estimates that 15 percent of victims throughout the 
world today are migrants. That's 4 million people world-wide. 
Unfortunately, there are no authoritative trafficking statistics for 
the United States. The National Institute of Justice is currently 
conducting research.
    But it is known that migration-related trafficking reaches beyond 
undocumented individuals. For example, the National Human Trafficking 
Hotline has received thousands of calls for help from migrants inside 
the United States legally on guestworker visas or already in asylee 
protected status.
    Last, it's American businesses who ultimately profit from 
transnational human trafficking. American farms and factories exploit 
migrant children in illegal child labor. Migrant adults trapped in 
illegal debt bondage are generating profits for American corporations.
           issue two: the need for prevention and protection
    Law enforcement isn't the only solution. Foreign assistance 
programs can help reduce the number of individuals leaving their home 
countries. Increasing the capacity to properly process migrants can 
reduce trafficking vulnerability. That's because long delays at legal 
points of entry can cause desperate individuals to become trafficking 
targets. There's an urgent need at the U.S. border for more asylum 
officers, immigration judges, child welfare specialists, and attorneys.
    As well, to protect migrants already here, there needs to be 
increased workplace inspections by the Labor Department, and reform of 
guestworker visa rules.
     issue three: the protection of american values and leadership
    Migrants not only seek economic opportunity in the United States; 
they seek safety and freedom. Our answer to those fleeing forced labor 
and human trafficking abroad must not be to go back.
    Congress has ensured that the United States, perhaps more than any 
other country, embraces a whole-of-Government vision for counter-
trafficking programs. However, particularly along the border, our 
Nation is not living up to that holistic ideal.
                    quickly, three recommendations:
    Recommendation One.--Pass the Trafficking Victims Prevention and 
Protection Reauthorization Act, the TVPRA. To improve international 
trafficking prevention, H.R. 5856 will require the integration of anti-
trafficking strategies into programs at the U.S. Agency for 
International Development. To protect trafficking survivors in the 
United States, the bill reauthorizes programs at the Department of 
Health and Human Services. We also urge passage of a companion Senate 
bill, S. 920, with additional provisions to protect migrants and 
reauthorization of State Department anti-trafficking programs.
    Recommendation Two.--Enact key provisions of the Fiscal Year 2024 
Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Request. The Border Supplemental 
section includes additional asylum officers and immigration judges, 
increased social services, and tougher enforcement of U.S. child labor 
law. As well, hold the line on trafficking funding throughout the 
Federal budget. With all the public attention this issue is receiving 
at movie theatres and in the news media, the response from Congress 
must not be to slash support.
    Recommendation Three.--Do not roll back protections for 
unaccompanied child migrants. All children deserve screening by 
specially-trained border personnel. Congress has specifically required 
this safeguard for children from Central America. However, H.R. 2, the 
Secure the Border Act, would strip this protection in favor of 
expedited review by lesser-trained staff. H.R. 2 has already passed the 
House; but I urge you to oppose efforts to attach it to appropriations 
bills or other legislation.
    Thank you for your attention. I look forward to answering any 
questions that you have now or at any time in the future.

    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. FitzPatrick.
    Dr. Sadulski, you are recognized for 5 minutes to summarize 
your opening statement. Sir.

   STATEMENT OF JARROD SADULSKI, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, 
                  AMERICAN MILITARY UNIVERSITY

    Mr. Sadulski. Chairman Higgins, Ranking Member Correa, 
Chairman D'Esposito, thank you very much for the opportunity to 
be here today and provide this testimony on human trafficking.
    As a doctor of criminal justice, a professor at American 
Military University, as well as a humanitarian, I had been 
conducting research on human trafficking trends in Latin 
America for several years.
    This work has led me to in-country research in South 
America, Central America, and the United States, as a guest at 
INTERPOL and the National Police of Colombia. I've conducted 
in-country research on human trafficking originating in 
Colombia, and I've also conducted in-country research in 4 
years of humanitarian work in Central America. Specifically, 
the humanitarian work that I've engaged in has involved leading 
teams to provide training to the staff and inmates of a prison 
in Latin America, specifically in Belize. Through this 
humanitarian work and working within the prison system of the 
Nation's only prison, I've had the opportunity to interview and 
to speak with former convicted human traffickers, as well as, 
through my research, I've had the opportunity to speak to many 
human trafficking victims. So today the information that I'm 
presenting is a culmination of that research.
    There's a dangerous nexus between human smuggling and 
trafficking, though they're very distinct. People who are 
initially attempting to be smuggled into the United States can 
end up as trafficking victims. This occurs because of the 
obstacles and delays that can occur on the smuggling route and 
resulting in the migrant owing more money than that what they 
have in order to pay. When that happens, they're forced into 
human trafficking as a means to pay off their debt once they 
arrive to the Southwest Border. This includes sex trafficking, 
packaging drugs in safe houses or stash houses near the border, 
and other forms of forced labor.
    For groups of people that are being smuggled toward the 
Southwest Border, intelligence is collected within the group. 
For example, you'll have a coyote, which is a smuggler himself, 
mixed within the migrant group that is there to collect 
intelligence to see who actually has the money. Once it's 
determined that a migrant does not have the funds to continue 
the process of getting to the Southwest Border, they're often 
sold to actual sex traffickers--I'm sorry, human traffickers--
for exploitation.
    Stash houses have an important role in human trafficking 
along the Southwest Border. They occur on both the U.S. and the 
Mexican sides. TCOs use local gang members to manage the stash 
houses on both sides. Safe houses could be described as a 
triangle with the first house being a processing center where 
those forced into human trafficking are processed by having 
their photograph taken, the amount of debt owed is listed, as 
well as their personal items, passports, even clothing are 
taken away from them. From there, the second house that is part 
of this stash house triangle is where the actual exploitation 
occurs. A lot of that, although we focus on sex trafficking and 
forced labor, a lot of that involves packaging narcotics that 
are flowing through the Southwest Border.
    Once the debt is paid, then the victim is transferred to a 
third safe house. It is there that they are given back their 
property as well given the opportunity to finish, to make it to 
their destination.
    TCOs create an illusion that no crime's being committed, 
and instead they are just helping to find to have people--
attempting to find people--attempting have people find a better 
life. The system is set up to detect illegal narcotics more so 
the southwest border than it is human smuggling or trafficking. 
Many TCOs depend on connections that aid in the facilitation of 
human trafficking that provide blanket security for everyone 
involved or tipping them off to law enforcements operations or 
other threats to their operations.
    One element of the human trafficking that is not well is 
organ harvesting. Sadly, part of my humanitarian work in 
Central America has revealed that there's a market for juvenile 
organs.
    One particular person that I had interviewed was involved 
in human trafficking at several different levels and was able 
to provide insight into some of these inner workings 
specifically with organ trafficking.
    The reason why organ harvesting has become a market is due 
to buyer's personal needs. For example, if someone has a family 
member that is dying and is unable to obtain that organ 
legally, they will basically provide a custom order for a 
specific organ. Organ traffickers view this exploitation as a 
job. The former gang member who was involved in the trafficking 
spoke of one organ trafficker out of Mexico, Venezuela, and the 
Philippines. The organ trafficker would frequent homeless 
shelters, other shelters, encampments, and drug houses where 
families camped with their children. It would offer money to 
the parents to take the children out of that environment, and 
the children would never return. In one particular case, there 
was a 12-year-old, and someone paid $15,000 for his eye. This 
was several years ago. The organ trafficker explained that 
moving children from one point to another is easy because the 
trafficker doesn't have to show documentation, and he did not 
receive the resistance from the child because the parents gave 
permission for the child to be with the trafficker.
    Human trafficking continues to be a global problem due to 
its profitability. When a drug dealer makes a profit through 
selling drugs, they have to obtain more product to make another 
sale. In the case of human trafficking, the same victim is 
exploited over and over, and the victim is able to transport 
themselves.
    Thank you for the opportunity, and I welcome your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Sadulski follows:]
                 Prepared Statement of Jarrod Sadulski
                               background
    As a Doctor of Criminal Justice, professor at American Military 
University, and as a humanitarian I have been researching current 
trends in human trafficking for several years. This work has led me to 
in-country research in South America, Central America, and the United 
States to gain a deeper understanding of human trafficking trends. I 
have been a guest of INTERPOL and the National Police of Colombia to 
conduct in-country research on human trafficking originating in 
Colombia and I have provided human trafficking training to government 
officials in the United States and Central America to mitigate human 
trafficking. This training has included training to immigration, the 
Belize Defense Force, and other law enforcement officials in Belize to 
counter human trafficking. I have presented research at the 
International Human Trafficking and Social Justice Conference for two 
consecutive years on human trafficking trends and have peer-reviewed 
research published on the topic of human trafficking. I also engage in 
humanitarian work that involves leading teams to a prison in Central 
America where I provide training to the prison staff on various aspects 
of prison management and provide life-skills training to inmates. This 
has opened the door to hear the perspectives of those who were formally 
involved in human trafficking to gain unique and in-depth insight. The 
information presented below is a culmination of in-country research in 
Latin America involving human trafficking that leads to the Southwest 
Border and humanitarian work I have conducted in Central America.
                        human trafficking trends
    Typically, gangs focus on smuggling drugs and guns. Transnational 
Criminal Organizations (TCOs) and trafficking groups aid in moving 
people from around the world through Latin American attempting to come 
to the United States illegally across the Southwest Border. Human 
smuggling is transportation based on when someone pays to be smuggled 
to the United States. Human trafficking, which is labor-based, involves 
sex trafficking, domestic slavery, and forced labor. Being forced into 
human trafficking can be a consequence of human smuggling.
    Economic conditions in Central America and around the world is the 
biggest factor that drives people to leave their homes and risk their 
lives to be smuggled across the Southwest Border. People who live in 
dangerous impoverished conditions spend all of the money that they have 
and often end up becoming victims of human trafficking through their 
attempt to come to the United States illegally. This occurs because 
delays and obstacles along the human smuggling route result in the 
migrant owing more money than they or their family can afford to pay. 
Therefore, they are placed into human trafficking as a means to pay off 
the debt once they arrive at the Southwest Border. This may include sex 
trafficking, packaging drugs, or other forms of forced labor. There are 
unspeakable vulnerabilities for migrant children who are forced by 
armed human traffickers to pay off their debts.
                          the role of coyotes
    When groups of people are smuggled to the United States, 
intelligence is collected from within the group. For example, you'll 
have a coyote [smuggler] mixed with those being transported as part of 
a smuggling operation for intel purposes. The victims are not aware 
that the coyote is among them and if the coyote finds that they don't 
have the money to be smuggled, he will sell them to the traffickers for 
sexual exploitation. TCOs exploit people who cannot pay to be 
transported, and they are sold into the sex trade or forced labor.
                         the use of safe houses
    Safe houses have an important role in human trafficking along the 
Southwest Border. Safe houses are located both on the Mexican and 
United States sides of the border. TCOs use local gang members to 
manage safe houses in both countries. Safe houses can be described as a 
triangle with three different houses involved in a specific human 
trafficking ring. The first house is used as a processing center. When 
a migrant is brought to the border and does not have the money to pay 
for the transportation costs, the first house will act as a processing 
center where the person will be stripped of their clothing or personal 
items and provided different clothing by the gang members managing the 
safe house. They will typically be photographed and the total payment 
owed will be listed. It is during this phase that victims are likely to 
be verbally or physically abused as a form of coercion or to exert 
control over the victim. Passports and personal belongings are often 
retained by the trafficker to maintain control over the victim. The 
victim may be beaten or sexually assaulted. Victims are then moved to a 
second safe house. Within the second safe house is where the actual 
exploitation occurs, such as in the case of sex trafficking or drug 
packaging. The victim will remain at the second house until their debt 
for transportation to the United States is paid. Once that occurs, the 
victim will be moved to the third safe house. It is at the third safe 
house that the victim is provided any clothing and property that was 
taken at the first safe house. Victims are typically fed and better 
taken care of at the third safe house. Victims are permitted to remain 
at the third safe house until their transportation to their final 
destination can be arranged or they can leave. While being moved 
between safe houses, victims are blindfolded or other measures are 
taken to prevent the victim from seeing where the safe houses are 
located. Safe houses may be disguised as businesses with bedrooms in 
the back space. Typically at safe houses, security cameras will be used 
and extend surveillance to nearby intersections so that traffickers can 
see who may be approaching the safe houses. Reinforced windows are 
common along with handcuffs, chains, and modifications that include 
sound proofing. Traffickers may have an escape path developed at the 
safe house.
    TCOs create an illusion that no crime is being committed and 
instead they are just helping people find a better life since the 
border system is set up to detect illicit narcotics instead of 
trafficked people. Many TCOs depend on outlets that aid in the 
facilitation of human trafficking by providing blanket security for 
everyone involved through tipping them off of law enforcement 
operations or other threats to their operations. People are put into 
place to monitor for threats to the trafficking operation. These 
connections exist from Central America through Mexico to the United 
States. Different TCOs have their own outlets that aid in the 
trafficking process, which exists for both human trafficking and drug 
trafficking. It is not uncommon for paperwork to be doctored to aid in 
trafficking people. If given false documentation, travel agencies can 
arrange travel that appears to be legitimate. For example, a husband 
and wife may move children from Central America through Mexico to San 
Diego under the guise that the children accompanying them are their 
own. Once in the United States, the children may be sold to another 
family that wants children but does not wish to go through the legal 
adoption process. Traffickers with these connections easily move people 
to the United States. Traffickers without these connections are more 
likely to be those moving people across the desert into the United 
States.
               trafficking originating in central america
    In Central America, smugglers will go to the immigration office and 
will sit there. They can tell where people are from. They will approach 
them and say, where you trying to go? Someone may say ``L.A.''
    The smuggler will say, ``how much money do you have?'' The 
immigrants may say that they have $2,500 and are trying to get their 
visa with that money. The smuggler will tell them they can be 
transported to L.A. for only $1,000 and they have connections who will 
smuggle them through Mexico across the U.S. border to San Diego. Once 
the victim gives the smuggler money, demands are typically made for 
more money because the smuggler claims that there were unforeseen 
expenses. If the immigrants don't have a way of getting extra money, 
then they are sold to human traffickers. If they are women, they are 
often forced into sex trafficking. If they are men, they are often 
coerced into forced labor.
    Human traffickers in Central America target public squares and 
migrant shelters. They exploit the vulnerabilities of victims by either 
promising false work opportunities or use physical force that compels 
victims to go along with traffickers out of fear that either they or 
their families will be harmed if they don't cooperate.
    Often, human traffickers make threats to harm family members. Those 
threats compel adult and child victims to remain in the sex trade or 
other facets of human trafficking.
    Also, human traffickers target the areas where migrants have been 
deported. They know that victims often have lost their money on failed 
smuggling attempts to the United States and are especially defenseless.
             perils of being smuggled to the united states
    Human smuggling is extremely dangerous for the people seeking to 
enter the United States along its Southwest Border. Smugglers are 
notorious for placing people in hazardous situations that can result in 
their deaths. During smuggling operations, women and children are 
especially at risk. They may suffer different forms of physical and 
emotional abuse, including rape, beatings, kidnapping, and robbery. 
When migrants are smuggled, they are often exposed to harsh conditions 
such as unsuitable and overcrowded sleeping accommodations, coercion, 
deceit, and verbal abuse.
    Often, migrants pay the smugglers all of the money that they have 
for illicit transportation to the United States. Other times, family 
members already residing in the United States pay smuggler fees for 
their family members to be smuggled into the country.
              human trafficking involving juvenile organs
    One element of human trafficking that is not well-known is organ 
harvesting. Sadly, part of my humanitarian work in Central America has 
revealed that there is a market for juvenile organs.
    While engaged in humanitarian work at a prison in Central America, 
I met with a former gang member who today is rehabilitated, but he has 
spent a significant part of his life in prison. He explained that the 
reason why organ harvesting has a market is due to buyers' personal 
needs. For instance, he said that a buyer may ``have a family member 
who is dying, and they will pay anything for their loved one. It is 
like making a custom order. Organ traffickers view this exploitation as 
a `job'.''
    I asked him how a child becomes a victim of human trafficking. He 
explained, ``if someone does not love their child and allows them to 
wander on the street, and the trafficker has the opportunity to take 
them, then he will. If he doesn't, someone else will.''
    The former gang member spoke of one organ trafficker who operated 
out of Mexico, Venezuela, and the Philippines. This organ trafficker 
would frequent homeless places, shelters, encampments, and drug houses 
where families camped with their kids. He would offer money to the 
parents to take the kids out of that environment and would never return 
with those children.
    To the former gang member's knowledge, the last child this organ 
trafficker kidnapped was 12 years old, and someone paid him $15,000 for 
the child's eye. This was several years ago. Moving children from one 
point to another was easy because the organ trafficker never had to 
show documentation. He did not receive resistance from the kid because 
the child's parents had given permission for the child to be with him. 
They harvested the child's right eye in Mexico.
    Human trafficking continues to grow as a global crime due to its 
profitability. When a drug dealer makes a profit through selling drugs, 
he has to continually obtain more product to make another sale. In the 
case of sex trafficking, the same victim can be used repeatedly to make 
a profit.

    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Sadulski. Members will be 
recognized by order of seniority for their 5 minutes of 
questioning.
    An additional round of questioning may be called after all 
Members have been recognized. I now recognize myself for 5 
minutes of questioning.
    Gentlemen, thank you for your opening statements. We are in 
a new era of impact from illegal crossings at our Southern 
Border. We are pushing 3 years now with change in policy. 
That's normal with the new administration. But the Biden 
administration inauguration, it seemed to coincide with perhaps 
the closing of the COVID era and an introduction of enhanced 
migration for various reasons across the world. But the 
policies of the Biden administration have, I believe, 
unwittingly facilitated the business models of the cartels who 
would thrive on human misery and human trafficking and drug 
trafficking. I think things are getting so bad in America that, 
even the existing criminal networks that have been around for 
decades, you know, in illegal sex trafficking business, a lot 
of which is semivoluntary. You know, people get pulled into 
criminal networks for various reasons in life, but it is just 
not the same as slavery. It is not the same as being pulled so 
deep into a criminal network that you no longer exist as a 
human being. You are being pulled from a human being that has 
been drawn into a life of crime on the street for--because of 
many factors. It is bad.
    I had a CI call me a couple of years ago, a guy in New 
Orleans--and, as you gentleman know, most confidential 
informants, you know, they are on the edge of the criminal 
networks themselves. They're homeless. They have drug issues, 
et cetera. I had a CI call me and said, ``Cap, something is 
happening out here that's real bad,'' that he has never seen 
before in all of his years on the street. He was offered in the 
middle of the night one night, he was offered a woman for 
$2,500. He didn't understand that because it was a very high 
price to hear on the street. The man making that offer 
explained, ``Well, that's to own the woman, like she's yours.'' 
He was selling a human being--not access to a human being or 
illegal sexual trafficking of that human being for a period of 
time. We are talking about owning human beings.
    Even the criminal networks are recognizing that America is 
being pulled into a darkness we've never seen before.
    Ambassador, you mentioned that traffickers operating with 
impunity.
    Mr. Villeda, you mentioned a 70 percent reduction of child 
trafficking after a campaign of prosecution. I would like you 
two gentlemen, please, in the remainder of my time, a minute-
and-a-half, beginning with you, Ambassador Richmond, please 
respond to what would happen with the cartels and criminal 
network's business model if we began aggressively prosecuting 
in the United States child trafficking and putting a lot of 
people behind bars that are currently operating, as you 
described it, with impunity? Mr. Richmond.
    Mr. Richmond. Chairman, I think there is little doubt that, 
when there is no rule of law or when laws are not enforced, it 
benefits traffickers' business models. It takes away the risk. 
If prosecutions were increased, if investigations were 
increased--particularly trauma-informed prosecutions where we 
have both agents as well as prosecutors who understand the 
impact of trauma on victims and understand how to investigate 
this economically-motivated crime, I think there could be a 
significant impact on traffickers' operations, particularly, if 
those increased prosecutions are papered with thoughtful, 
trauma-informed protection services for the survivors to make 
sure that they get the care they need and wraparound services 
for those survivors. If you can do both, prosecutions and 
protection services, I think you'll see a much more 
successful----
    Mr. Higgins. So a significant impact you mentioned. Mr. 
Villeda, you had cited a 78 percent reduction. Would you please 
touch on that briefly, sir.
    Mr. Villeda. We notice in the Dominican Republican that 
with focused, targeted investments in capacity building of law 
enforcement and prosecution, the crime of human trafficking 
reacts and diminishes to the enforcement of the laws. So we 
actually saw a 78 percent reduction in the Dominican Republic 
in the sex trafficking of children. We have seen similar 
results in other projects around the world.
    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Villeda, and Mr. Richmond for 
your answers. My time has expired. I recognize the Ranking 
Member, my friend and colleague, Mr. Correa, for 5 minutes of 
questions.
    Mr. Correa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to say to the 
witnesses that your comments are very sobering and reminds us 
of the challenges ahead of us, the society as a country.
    I agree with the Chairman, we have a new era, as you would 
say of impact.
    Refugees. Is this a U.S. issue or a global issue? Colombia 
is now looking at not 2\1/2\, but 3 billion refugees. They're 
bursting at the seams. Costa Rica, I met with the President 2 
weeks ago, said the same thing: ``I have got a challenge with 
the refugees within our borders and how to deal with the 
maintenance sustainability.'' Mexico is saying the same thing. 
We have policy changes, possibly as the Chairman had said. We 
also have COVID that devastated a lot of countries in the 
world, especially in Latin America. Honduras, with all due 
respect to the Honduran President and the others, is really a 
failed economy right now. COVID devastated them, and they 
really don't have a plan on how to get out their economic woes. 
Things could be said for many other countries, especially in 
Latin America. We have a got wars, and they're driving people, 
the Middle East as well as in Europe.
    A year, a year-and-a-half ago, I was in Tijuana receiving a 
lot of the Ukrainian refugees that are being processed into the 
United States. So I'm going to ask you, each one of you, with 
Ambassador Richmond, is this a U.S. challenge, or is this a 
world challenge? Very quickly, sir.
    Mr. Richmond. Well, clearly, trafficking is a global 
challenge.
    Mr. Correa. Mr. Villeda.
    Mr. Villeda. It is a global challenge. Countries----
    Mr. Correa. Mr. FitzPatrick.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Global. Absolutely.
    Mr. Correa. Mr. Sadulski? I'm going off my notes because, 
frankly, like the Chairman says, new era of impact. I'm trying 
to figure out what's going to stop this. Building a wall. Do 
you think building a wall is going to help?
    Mr. Richmond. I think we need every possible intervention 
to stop that.
    Mr. Correa. Mr. Villeda.
    Mr. Villeda. We need comprehensive solutions, sir.
    Mr. Correa. Mr. FitzPatrick.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Comprehensive wall might create more 
trafficking than it might stop.
    Mr. Correa. Mr. Sadulski.
    Mr. Sadulski. I believe it needs to be an all-hands-on-deck 
approach, and I think that would include a wall.
    Mr. Correa. Thank you. The reason I'm asking these 
questions of big global scale is that this thing is going to 
get worse before it gets better. You know, the more testimony 
we hear from you, the experts--these economies are not getting 
any better; they're getting worse. Chairman put together a trip 
to Central America to go see the Darien Gap just a few weeks 
ago, that had to be rescheduled. But, you know, I think the 
most dangerous part of this trip is not the Darien Gap; it is 
traveling through Mexico. By the time most of those victims 
reach the border--and I say victims of human trafficking and 
smuggling, 80 percent of those women are either raped or 
sexually assaulted. For people to be that desperate to take 
that trip north tells you people are in a dire situation, and I 
don't see things getting any better in Central America or a lot 
of those our Latin American countries.
    So, you know, I'm going to ask each one of you again. 
What's the answer? Mr. Richmond.
    Mr. Richmond. The answer is to bring hope to the victims by 
actually enforcing our laws and providing them----
    Mr. Correa. But you've got to feed them too. Hunger is a 
great motivator.
    Mr. Villeda.
    Mr. Villeda. Hunger is a motivator, but not the only one. 
If they would have the opportunity to feel safe in their own 
communities, many people would rather stay.
    Mr. Correa. Mr. FitzPatrick.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. I just want to make a comment about 
prosecution; it's who we're prosecuting. I think there's a lot 
of attention on prosecuting coyotes or transporters who are 
moving people for trafficking, but it's factory owners and 
agricultural farm owners who are actually exploiting people on 
the land. So prosecution needs to be thought of----
    Mr. Correa. What about the banking system? What about the 
financial services system that actually transact and transfer 
money from the victims to organized crime?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Sure, the FinCEN system has been designed 
and the Liechtenstein Initiative has been designed to help look 
for illicit transnational transactions. So there--and there is 
a conference----
    Mr. Correa. Mr. Sadulski, my last 9 seconds.
    Mr. Sadulski. Yes, sir, I believe it comes down to 
international collaboration between governments as well as 
NGO's, as well as education to the migrants themselves. Because 
I think there's a misconception in some areas of Latin America 
of the dangers of coming across to the United States.
    For example, a migrant that I recently spoke to explained 
that he was unaware of how dangerous it was going to be. He 
spoke of children and adult skeletal remains that he saw 
scattered throughout the route. These are things that a lot of 
migrants are not aware of in terms of the dangers. I believe 
that is one part of the solution.
    Mr. Correa. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the witnesses for 
their testimony today, and I yield.
    Mr. Higgins. I thank the Ranking Member. I recognize 
Chairman D'Esposito, the gentleman from New York, for 5 minutes 
for questioning.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you, again, for being here this afternoon.
    Ambassador, in your witness testimony, you share how, 
although, you say, ``poverty, illiteracy, disabilities, and 
lack of strong families,'' are conditions that create 
vulnerability, these conditions are not the causes of human 
trafficking; they were vulnerabilities that traffickers 
exploit. Can you elaborate on this for us? What are the root 
causes of human trafficking?
    Mr. Richmond. I think it's a really important distinction. 
Vulnerabilities are real, and they matter. Many, many things 
can make communities and individuals vulnerable. We mentioned 
this, poverty. I think our foster care system leaves people 
quite vulnerable. I think there is illiteracy, the lack of 
strong families. All of these things make people vulnerable. 
Criminals target vulnerable people, and traffickers, as 
economically motivated criminals, are going to target the 
people that are easiest in their mind to coerce and control. 
People who are without legal status and present in the United 
States have a special vulnerability. When I was a Federal 
prosecutor at the Department of Justice and part of the Human 
Trafficking Prosecution Unit, I prosecuted traffickers that 
intentionally targeted undocumented vulnerable individuals 
because they believed they would be easier to control.
    I think the important idea is that it is good to work to 
reduce vulnerabilities in general. But that is an indirect 
approach to stopping trafficking. Because the root cause of 
trafficking are the criminals who commit the crime, the women 
and men who decide they're going to treat inherently valuable 
people as disposable commodities.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Thank you. I think what's important here 
is--and the Chairman pointed out--is this is a--especially for 
many of the communities that we represent that are seeing human 
trafficking--this is a new era of crime. Both of us coming from 
law enforcement--you know, the Chairman mentions still speaking 
to some CIs, and I have had the same experiences. This is a 
new, again, a new era of crime. Even some of the most seasoned 
criminals and perps on the street do not understand how this is 
changing our community.
    So, on that note, how do TCOs and traffickers benefit from 
the current lack of law enforcement and border security, 
especially on our Southern Border?
    Mr. Richmond. I think that any criminal, whether it's an 
individual or it is a transnational criminal organization are 
going to benefit when laws are not enforced. I don't want to 
overstate that law enforcement alone is sufficient; it's just 
right now we have such stunningly low numbers of law 
enforcement in terms of people actually being arrested and 
prosecuted and held accountable for the heinous crime of human 
trafficking, that, in a sense, the lack of enforcing laws make 
it open season on vulnerable people. We have an increasing 
number of vulnerable people, which means that traffickers have 
an easier time identifying their next target.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Right. I think one of the biggest issues is 
not enforcing the law because law enforcement officials are 
told by the administration right now not to enforce those laws. 
That is part of the problem. How can the United States prevent 
TCOs from abusing and trafficking migrants?
    Mr. Richmond. I think that targeting our investigative 
resources around the transnational criminal organizations, 
actually having more dedicated specialized units that are 
focused on that, where officers don't have an additional task 
to investigate trafficking crimes, but instead it's their 
primary task. If we had focused targeted specialized units 
focused on labor trafficking, as well as targeted units focused 
on sex trafficking, I think we would see a significant 
difference.
    Mr. D'Esposito. I know it was mentioned in some of the 
opening statements, especially Mr. Villeda, but perhaps you can 
expand, Ambassador, on--we should have coordination with Latin 
America in combating trafficking. How do you think we can do a 
better job of that?
    Mr. Richmond. I think we need to continue engaging each 
country throughout Latin America, encouraging them to enforce 
their laws. They have signed up to the International 
Convention, the Palermo Protocol, on Trafficking Persons. Make 
sure that they are being held to account for enforcing their 
laws, both to protect and provide services but also hold 
traffickers accountable.
    Mr. D'Esposito. Thank you Mr. Chairman, I yield back the 
last 20 seconds of my time.
    Mr. Higgins. The gentleman yields.
    The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Payne, is recognized for 
5 minutes for questioning.
    Mr. Payne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I think a point or question that I have in this whole 
scenario is, unfortunately, the demand for these human beings 
is very concerning for me in this country. I mean, we're 
supposed to be the beacon. Yet still traffickers are preying on 
more and more people because there has to be a demand. So 
that's very troubling to me.
    But, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you once again. Human 
trafficking impacts adults and children. Children have unique 
needs. Understanding that, I offered a bill called the Homeland 
Security for Children Act, which was enacted into law last 
Congress, and I drew a lot of my emphasis on this committee 
around children and their needs. The law required all 
components of DHS to incorporate the needs of children in its 
planning and mission execution.
    Mr. FitzPatrick, could you explain the importance of having 
DHS offices take into consideration the needs of children that 
are victims of trafficking and smuggling?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Thank you for that question.
    There was a bill that has passed the House, H.R. 2. Part of 
it, I believe it's title V, would streamline the screening of 
unaccompanied children at the Southern Border. Imagine you're 9 
years old, and you don't have a lawyer. You don't have a social 
worker. You have a streamlined adjudication process. That 
should not be the way things are for children at our Southern 
Border. I don't think that the special protections that Central 
American children have should be the ceiling. That should be 
the floor, and others should be brought up to that.
    So I think that looking at the push factors that cause 
these children to be sent by parents and to flee Central 
America or other countries and then the processing of those 
children to be sure that it's fair and thorough and holistic 
and trauma-informed and then also the protection of them once 
they're resettled in the United States and don't end up in 
meat-packing plants and car factories.
    Mr. Payne. Yes. That's my other concern as well. You know, 
we have a situation here that, you know, requires a lot of 
concern and thought about what is it happening in those 
countries that a parent is willing to send their child. I mean, 
how devastating or distraught a parent must be to have to send 
your child in those circumstances.
    So we really need to look at what's going on in those 
countries as well that makes people that desperate that they're 
willing to take that chance on their child making it alone.
    Let's see, recent estimates indicate--let's see, I'm sorry. 
I lost my place. Recent estimates indicate that over 3 million 
children are in forced labor world-wide. The Department of 
Homeland Security has recognized the work done by the Center 
for Countering Human Trafficking as a Homeland Security mission 
in its Third Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. Other 
efforts, such as public awareness campaigns, have raised the 
salience of human trafficking in public.
    Mr. FitzPatrick, in your testimony, you mentioned that we 
need to take a whole-of-Government approach to combat 
trafficking. Could you please highlight actions DHS has taken 
in this area and that other agencies can learn from?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. I've been really quite impressed with the 
early steps that the CCHT--that's Center to Counter Human 
Trafficking--has taken inside DHS. In particular, there is a 
dedicated team looking at just labor trafficking and not at sex 
trafficking.
    I also think that DHS deserves great credit for its early 
steps in the implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor 
Prevention Act. There have been thousands of shipments and 
millions of dollars of goods that are tainted by forced labor 
in China that have been prevented from getting into the U.S. 
economy.
    Mr. Payne. OK.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. The victims of this crime are not just the 
individuals. The victims of this crime are factory owners in 
your Congressional districts who have to compete with factories 
in China that are using slave labor, so thinking more 
holistically about this as an unfair trade practice and not 
just as a crime against individuals.
    Mr. Payne. OK. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Higgins. The gentleman yields.
    The gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Strong, is recognized for 5 
minutes for questioning.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you.
    Mr. Richmond, as we know, transnational criminal 
organizations are well-informed on U.S. immigration law. In 
fact, a Border Patrol Agent previously said that cartels even 
go as far to study it and to find any loopholes they can to 
exploit it.
    I appreciate your comments about how exploitive 
vulnerability and lawlessness--how migrants crossing the 
Southwest Border are vulnerable to trafficking and abuse.
    You briefly mentioned in your testimony, but I really want 
to drive this point home, would greater U.S. border security 
and law enforcement impact the cartels' human smuggling and 
trafficking business?
    Mr. Richmond. I think increased law enforcement in 
enforcing all of our laws, border laws as well as trafficking 
laws, is going to have an impact on cartels' and traffickers' 
businesses.
    I think we also want to look at the fact that where 
enterprises or companies are benefiting financially or 
otherwise from engaging in trafficking activities, they too can 
be held accountable under the existing Trafficking Victims 
Protection Act. So enforcing laws across the board will 
strengthen the Government's response and negatively impact 
traffickers. Meanwhile, the opposite is also true. Where we've 
refused to enforce our laws, that works to the benefit of 
traffickers.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you.
    Mr. Sadulski, as you know, human smuggling is often a 
dangerous life-threatening process for migrants because they 
travel through international borders, gangs and cartel 
territory, or vast jungles.
    Do you believe migrants traveling on human smuggling routes 
know the dangers of the journey to the United States and 
specifically the risk of being trafficked?
    Mr. Sadulski. No, sir, I most certainly don't believe they 
know the risk. I think that there's a big misconception about 
the routes, with the exception of the Darien Gap. With the 
exception of there, I think there's a misconception on what the 
route actually looks like and the dangers that it presents.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you.
    How does the Biden administration's failure to secure the 
Southwest Border facilitate human trafficking?
    Mr. Sadulski. Well, human trafficking, it's a business. 
Right now there has been a change from drug trafficking to 
human trafficking because of the profitability. The border has 
presented an increased number of people coming across, which, 
as a result, has increased trafficking.
    Mr. Strong. We've never seen this number of trafficking in 
history. Do you believe the Biden administration has failed to 
secure the Southern Border?
    Mr. Sadulski. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Strong. I want to ask each of you the same.
    Ambassador Richmond.
    Mr. Richmond. I think it's clear that the Southern Border 
is not secure and hasn't been for a long time.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you.
    Sir.
    Mr. Villeda. I'm not in a position to make such 
categorizations, sir. But what I do know is that the U.S. 
administration can certainly do more.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you.
    Mr. FitzPatrick.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Depends on your definition of ``secure.'' 
If zero contraband and zero undocumented migrants is secure, 
then the border has never been secure in the history of the 
United States, and it will never be. So, depending on what you 
mean by ``secure'' I think is an important point to take.
    Mr. Strong. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Higgins. The gentleman yields.
    The gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, is recognized 
for 5 minutes for questioning.
    Is she prepared? Would you like me to move on?
    Ms. Jackson Lee. I'm prepared.
    Mr. Higgins. Yes, ma'am, you are always prepared, one of 
the hardest-working Members of Congress. We'll recognize the 
gentlelady from Texas.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you so very much.
    This is an area that many of us have confronted for many, 
many years. Mr. FitzPatrick, I held a hearing on human 
trafficking in 2014 with then-Chairman McCaul. Certainly it is 
going on a decade ago, but we know that this is--we have 
confronted this issue over and over again.
    I'm about to sign a letter dealing with two rules offered 
by DHS and the Department of Labor dealing with H-2A visas, 
those of farm workers. For many of us, our concept and many of 
the friends we grew up with or traveled from different places 
came as farm workers. Remember the partnership between Dr. King 
and Cesar Chavez, and they were trying to find--work together 
for the equal rights of farm workers and, at the time, rights 
for Negroes or colored people in the South, across the Nation. 
That's what we viewed America as giving opportunity where there 
is need.
    I think that we will find that those persons who fall into 
the depths of being trafficked really are trying to come here 
to work. They are trying to come here for opportunity. 
Unfortunately, we hear from the proposed viewpoint of a 
President that says he's running again that he will have 
deportation camps. I can only imagine the nightmares as the 
world watches and wonders what has happened to America.
    Unfortunately, I lived through the separation of families a 
few years ago under the previous Trump era, and I'm very 
grateful that we have a court settlement filed Monday by the 
Biden administration, American Civil Liberties Union, 
concluding a years-long legal dispute after thousands of 
children were separated from their family at the Southern 
Border. I literally witnessed those children when they were 
making a tempered effort to reunite children and parents, 
mostly mothers. The children were in shock. They did not 
gravitate toward those mothers. It was lasting damage that 
occurred. They didn't recognize who they were.
    So I'm as anxious about cartels, the viciousness of cartels 
and trafficking for people who are really trying to come here 
to be able to contribute. Our farms say that they need more 
workers. Various other places need workers.
    So I just want to pose some questions to you very quickly. 
This is a bigger framework than just talking about who doesn't 
have resources. We need resources, and I hope my friends will 
join me as we do the Department of Homeland Security 
appropriations and we do the border security package that we 
have resources to fight the cartels and the traffickers. That's 
a big part of it. But we also have to recognize that people are 
trying to come here to work, to work.
    Mr. FitzPatrick, you mentioned in your testimony that child 
migrants need to be screened by specially-trained border 
personnel. What are the risks of an expedited screening of 
child migrants by lesser-trained staff?
    Let me add something else to it. What are the best ways we 
can aid the countries in curbing the amount of migrants leaving 
their countries? So, one, how do we deal with the children? 
Then how do we deal with migrants? I laid the groundwork. I 
think they're coming mostly not to bring fentanyl. That's 
another fight, and I will stand with my colleagues, Republicans 
and Democrats, at the gate fighting those who bring the 
devastation of fentanyl, which we know is coming through China 
and then in through the southern half of the United States. 
But, if you can answer those two questions, children and then 
migrants coming from other countries and curbing the amount of 
migrants.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Thanks for those questions, and thank you 
for your work on helping to reform the H-2 visa system, because 
it may be most, certainly many, if not most, people who are 
human trafficking who are migrants in the United States came 
here legally on H-2 visas and find themselves exploited in 
those situations as domestic workers, home health care workers, 
even life guards at swimming pools, and farm hands working in 
the migrant labor system.
    As I mentioned, it's just when children have lawyers or 
when trafficking victims have lawyers, then they have rights. 
When they don't and have to stand before an adjudicator without 
a social safety net, social workers or lawyers, they don't--the 
outcome is not so good. It's hard for them to articulate that 
they have a credible fear of trafficking if returned to their 
home country, which is a qualification for asylum status.
    So we all deserve lawyers. I mean, we have the right to an 
attorney, so to speak. So children have the right for those 
levels of services.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Then migrants--the Chairman is being 
kind--migrants and them coming to the United States?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Yes. It's just--trying to streamline so 
that children can be turned around quickly to deal with numbers 
is no way to treat a child.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Migrant families I mean.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. They should not be separated from their 
families because the Flores settlement requires that the 
children receive different treatment than their parents or that 
there's some suspicion that children aren't legitimately the 
children of those parents. I think there's--if you would 
increase the funding for the adjudicators, the social workers, 
the judges as included in the border supplemental, there's 
plenty of border guards and other kind of hardened police and 
border security provisions that are in that bill. I would urge 
you to please include the other elements that are in the border 
supplemental as well.
    Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask unanimous consent to put 
into the record the Forbes article, dated October 16, 2023, 
``Biden Administration Promises Benefits and Path to Asylum to 
Migrant Families Separated Under Trump.'' This was a 
settlement, so this is a responsibility that the administration 
has to engage in.
    Thank you so very much.
    Mr. Higgins. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]
 Biden Administration Promises Benefits and Path to Asylum to Migrant 
                     Families Separated Under Trump
Forbes, Last Updated: Updated Oct 16, 2023, 03:22pm EDT By: Ty Roush
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/io/16/biden-
administration-promises-benefits-and-path-to-asylum-to-migrant-
families-separated-under-trump/?sh=3zac84c256e9
TOPLINE
    Migrant families separated under a Trump-era policy will be allowed 
to request asylum in the U.S. and get benefits like housing and legal 
counsel, as part of a court settlement filed Monday by the Biden 
Administration and the American Civil Liberties Union--concluding a 
years-long legal dispute after thousands of children were separated 
from their families at the southern border.
KEY FACTS
    A settlement proposal filed jointly by the American Civil Liberties 
Union and the Biden Administration would provide previously separated 
families with a special request for asylum in the U.S., regardless of 
whether they were denied in the past. Any families that are granted 
asylum under the agreement will have access to government-funded 
housing benefits, legal counsel and medical and mental health services. 
The settlement also prevents U.S. border officials from deliberately 
separating future families for the next 8 years if parents illegally 
enter the country with their children.
    Under the terms of the deal, families will only be separated in 
cases in which the parent was previously convicted on charges that 
``demonstrate a threat to national security or public safety,'' or if 
the child is being abused. Separated parents and children living in the 
U.S. will also be able to petition to bring their immediate family 
members from their home countries.
    The settlement does not provide monetary compensation for the 
families, a idea that was previously discussed, despite some other 
lawsuits accusing the government of negligence, abuse and inflicting 
emotional distress.
BIG NUMBER
    3,881. That's how many children were separated from their families 
between 2017 and 2021, according to the Department of Homeland 
Security. Of these, 74 percent have been reunited with their families.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
    ``It is our intent to do whatever we can to make sure that the 
cruelty of the past is not repeated in the future,'' Homeland Security 
Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the Associated Press.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
    District Judge Dana Sabraw--who issued an injunction on the policy 
in 2018--will hold a hearing on the settlement in December. Anyone 
opposed to the settlement will be allowed to raise objections to Sabraw 
before the hearing.
KEY BACKGROUND
    Family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border began en masse after 
the Justice Department announced in 2018 it had implemented a ``zero 
tolerance'' policy for migrants who cross the border illegally. All 
migrants were referred to the DOJ for prosecution, while thousands of 
children under the age of 18 who crossed the border with their parents 
were sent to separate shelters. The policy was denounced by advocacy 
groups like the ACLU, and President Donald Trump--who acknowledged the 
separations were meant to deter unlawful migration--signed an executive 
order to halt the policy, though investigations determined that 
families continued to be separated throughout his term, according to 
the Washington Post. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in 
2021 to reunite families that were separated under the policy. Mayorkas 
estimated in February that an interagency task force had reconnected 
689 children, while the ACLU estimates between 500 and 1,500 migrant 
children are still separated from their families.

    Mr. Higgins. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
    The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Brecheen, is recognized 
for 5 minutes for questioning.
    Mr. Brecheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    It should be no surprise that policies that encourage the 
explosive number of illegal immigrants coming across our 
Southern Border are also a correlation tied into human 
smuggling increases, human sex trafficking increases. We went 
from, in 2019, 45-year lows of illegal immigration to now the 
highest number in our Nation's history, 270,000 in the last 
month reported coming across our Southern Border.
    There is a power differential. We cannot address the 
world's problems. It's not the job of the United States to 
solve the world's problems on this. It is our job as Members of 
Congress to address what we can, and what we can do is change 
those incentives that are leveraging the Southern Border to be 
a place where the cartel and other individuals are making money 
heightened because of policies that have dramatically changed 
in the last several years.
    I was shocked--and I'm going to butcher your name. My last 
name ``Brecheen'' is often mispronounced. I'm going to do my 
best here. Sadulinski?
    Mr. Sadulski. Sadulski, sir.
    Mr. Brecheen. I'm so sorry.
    Mr. Sadulski. That's OK.
    Mr. Brecheen. I was shocked--you represent the American 
Military Academy. You're a professor there. You talked about in 
your interviews, your work on human smuggling about 
interviewing a person that was involved in human smuggling who 
had kidnapped a 12-year-old child, saw the procedure to extract 
that young adult's eye, to then let it be sold into the 
interior of the United States.
    Mr. Sadulski. Well, sir, to clarify, the trafficker--or the 
former trafficker that I had spoke with, who had been 
incarcerated and gotten out of prison, he was speaking about 
another trafficker. He wasn't the one responsible for the organ 
harvesting. This was another trafficker that he was associated 
with, and he was explaining the process of how that works, and 
the surgery occurred in Mexico. I don't know what happened to 
the eye.
    Mr. Brecheen. So I want to follow up on that. I mean, we 
talk about the, you know, heinous activity of sexual 
trafficking, but organ harvesting of children.
    Mr. Sadulski. Right.
    Mr. Brecheen. Mr. Richmond, you'd said something that was 
intriguing to me.
    So this eye was sold for $15,000, according to your 
recollection.
    Mr. Sadulski. That's correct, sir.
    Mr. Brecheen. Fifteen thousand dollars for an eye. We know 
that there's been a failure. Not only do we have the highest 
number in 45 years of illegal--or 50 years of illegal 
immigration in this country down from the 45-year low in 2019, 
you used a statistic that I thought was astounding. You said, 
since 2019, it's gone the opposite direction in the enforcement 
of our laws on convictions in the Department of Justice of 
human trafficking cases. How is that possible? How do we have 
the highest number in our Nation's history of enforcement--or 
of illegal immigration. We know there's a direct correlation to 
increase in human smuggling and human trafficking, and yet we 
now have the lowest number of convictions involving human 
smuggling. How is that possible?
    Mr. Richmond. Yes. There's certainly been a significant 
drop, I think 48 percent.
    Mr. Brecheen. Forty-eight percent, including your----
    Mr. Richmond. In U.S. Federal courts. So that wouldn't 
cover State courts, but Federal courts we've seen that drop.
    Mr. Brecheen. Can I interrupt you? Because I want to be 
clear on this. A 48 percent decrease in Federal convictions 
involving human trafficking since 2019. In 2019, we had the 
lowest number of illegal immigration crossings in our 
country's--you know, they had seen in that time period. So how 
is it that those numbers have flipped?
    Mr. Richmond. I think there's a number of reasons why we've 
seen a decrease in global investigations and prosecutions, and 
it has been all over the world, but it has been true here in 
the United States as well. I think one reason is a lack of 
specialized--funded specialized units focused on both labor 
trafficking and sex trafficking that could combat these crimes. 
Specialized----
    Mr. Brecheen. Because my time is short, can I ask you a 
question? Is it also possible that the ability to identify the 
criminals has also been less than--I'll give you a quick 
example if you could respond to this.
    The Trump administration initiated something in 2019--I 
keep going back to that year--where it said we're actually 
going to extract DNA evidence to find out if this young adult 
coming with you across the border is actually related to you or 
not. As a result of that, in that small sample, they saw--the 
DNA testing showed that 30 percent of the adults arriving with 
children were not the children's parents as they had initially 
claimed.
    That simple procedure, trying to verify if this child being 
brought into the United States by this adult was theirs or not, 
has been discarded by this administration. Is it possible that 
we don't have the tools now to identify and backtrack--back map 
back to those that are doing these criminal activities?
    Mr. Richmond. I think it's worth noting--because when you 
talk about identification, if we have 27.6 million victims in 
the world and last year governments globally identified about 
115,000, the governments around the world are identifying less 
than half of 1 percent of all the victims we estimate to exist. 
We have to radically increase our investment in combating human 
trafficking if we're going to make a dent.
    Mr. Brecheen. Thank you.
    I yield, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Higgins. The gentleman yields.
    The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Thanedar, is recognized 
for 5 minutes for questioning.
    Mr. Thanedar. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    A few months ago, after a lengthy 16-hour mark-up, my 
Republican colleagues passed the Border Reinforcement Act of 
2023 without accepting a single Democratic amendment. They 
claim the bill is about border security, but it abandons CBPs, 
ICEs, and DHS nongovernmental partners who provide essential 
support for migrants.
    Maybe my colleagues to the right should listen to the 
agents because they have said that NGO's are critical to their 
mission in border communities. NGO's elevate the pressure on 
our border services freeing up resources for other vital 
activities. We also know that NGO's offer enhanced stability to 
migrants so they do not become even more vulnerable or 
susceptible to human trafficking.
    Mr. FitzPatrick, can you touch on the important role that 
NGO's play in combating trafficking crimes and how basic 
support and stabilization can help prevent someone from being 
trafficked?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Thanks for that question.
    Since I'm direct in alliance with NGO's, from large shelter 
operators to groups that work on leadership in this sector, on 
both sides of the aisle, from the McCain Institute to Vital 
Voices, we're a nonpartisan organization that looks at all the 
different parts of the problem.
    There's actually a funding crisis that's going to come 
like--I don't know if you know it, but there's something called 
VOCA, Victims of Crime Act, which has a funding cliff ahead of 
it. We're going to start seeing next year nonprofits having to 
close operations and lay off staff because it's funded by 
penalties from Federal courts, and those penalties from all 
sorts of civil society is not enough to meet the current need.
    Border guards don't want to be social workers, and 
adjudication judges don't want to be lawyers for the defense or 
have to perform that role. This is where civil society workers 
come in to help do the support and the processing of 
individuals as they determine whether or not they have a lawful 
right to enter the United States as an asylum seeker or 
trafficking victim.
    So civil society is indispensable because you couldn't 
possibly do that with all of the them being FTEs at the 
Department of Homeland Security. You need nonprofit groups that 
get funding, and matching funding is required from other 
sources and foundations and individual contributors. So it's a 
cost-effective way to help get the job done to make sure that 
people's rights are protected.
    Mr. Thanedar. Thank you.
    You know, as an immigrant, I came to this country at the 
age of 24, and often, you know, I had to take shelter with 
nonprofits when I couldn't hold on to a room in a rooming house 
or had issues otherwise, and I got a lot of help as an 
immigrant, and I owe it to them for what I was able to do 
later.
    So, instead of attacking nonprofits and religious 
organizations doing humanitarian work, what should we be doing 
in Congress to support NGO's and fight human trafficking?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Pass the Trafficking Victims Protection 
Reauthorization Act that actually reauthorizes--Ambassador 
Richmond's old department, his job--which has tens of millions, 
96--I can't quite remember the number, but it's a substantial 
amount. Most of their budget goes out the door to government 
implementers, almost all of them nonprofit organizations, like 
IJM, that do the work upstream in field around the world to do 
what they can on reducing the push factors and also improving 
the judicial systems in those countries.
    So it's a cost-effective way to address the problem.
    Mr. Thanedar. Thank you, Mr. FitzPatrick.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Higgins. The gentleman yields.
    The gentleman from New York, Goldman, is recognized for 5 
minutes for questioning.
    Mr. Goldman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling 
this hearing today.
    We're here I think appropriately focused on a significant 
problem, which is the human trafficking and corollary of the 
fentanyl trade that is predominated and controlled by 
transnational criminal organizations called TCOs.
    Mr. Richmond, would you agree that the most powerful TCOs 
on the Southern Border are the Mexican drug cartels?
    Mr. Richmond. I would certainly think that the drug cartels 
have a significant impact.
    Mr. Goldman. Understand you don't want to declare without 
having any background, but the drug cartels have significant 
control over human trafficking. Correct?
    Mr. Richmond. I think we've definitely seen cases where 
drug cartels or gangs have shifted to not just selling drugs 
but also moved into selling illegal commercial sex as well as 
forcing people to work.
    Mr. Goldman. As well as the fentanyl trade that is running 
rampant, correct?
    Mr. Richmond. Indeed.
    Mr. Goldman. Now, we've had witness after witness come 
before this committee and testify that the Mexican drug cartels 
are able to control the border and the human trafficking and 
fentanyl enterprises because of their access to and possession 
of guns, especially AR-15 weapons of war.
    I assume none of you disagree that the cartels derive so 
much of their power from their possession of guns, correct? 
Anyone disagree?
    All right. Seeing none, I will move on.
    Mr. Villeda, do you know how many gun stores there are in 
Mexico?
    Mr. Villeda. IJM has no information on that matter, Mr. 
Congressman.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. The answer is one, one single gun store. 
It takes months to get a gun.
    Do you know how many American manufactured guns are 
exported from the United States across the Southern Border to 
Mexico every year, Mr. Villeda?
    Mr. Villeda. I don't know that.
    Mr. Goldman. Well, would you be surprised if I said as many 
as 500,000 per year?
    So it follows then, right, Mr. FitzPatrick, that one 
important strategy to combat the cartels and disrupt human 
trafficking and fentanyl trade would be to prevent the cartels 
from getting access to weapons of war that give them strength 
and power. Is that right?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. I would have to consult my organizations 
that work on the border in order to give an opinion.
    Mr. Goldman. All right. Well, it's fairly common sense--and 
I'm sure the two subcommittee Chairmen who have law enforcement 
backgrounds would agree--that weapons can give a significant 
source of power to the Mexican drug cartels.
    Now, if Congress were going to pass laws to stop human 
trafficking and the fentanyl trade and secure our border 
against the Mexican drug cartels, wouldn't it follow, Mr. 
Sadulski, that we would want to stop the exportation of 
American-made guns going to Mexico?
    Mr. Sadulski. Yes, it would.
    Mr. Goldman. Well, unfortunately, H.R. 2, which Republicans 
have repeatedly pointed to as their toughest ever border 
security bill, does not mention guns one time, not once. So we 
Democrats are taking action. We are trying to identify real 
solutions that can get real results.
    That's why today, along with my colleagues, Mike Thompson 
and Joaquin Castro, I introduced the Disarming Cartels Act. 
This bill would dramatically increase and intensify the 
Homeland Security's efforts--the Department's efforts to combat 
the trafficking of firearms and ammunition produced by American 
companies and exported over the Southern Border. My bill would 
ensure that the Department of Homeland Security increases 
interagency collaboration to disrupt the flow of arms 
trafficking and that we work with our partners in Mexico to 
identify U.S.-based gun traffickers so we can stop that flow.
    Now, my Republican colleagues repeatedly sit here hearing 
after hearing after hearing pointing fingers at the Biden 
administration for all of the border security issues. Well, 
here's an opportunity to actually do something. I urge each and 
every one of my friends on the other side of the aisle to join 
me and support this legislation that every expert agrees will 
help to secure our border.
    With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Higgins. The gentleman yields.
    The gentleman from California, Mr. Garcia, is recognized 
for 5 minutes for questioning.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I also want to continue some of this conversation around 
what's really giving the cartels power at the Southern Border 
as well.
    Now, we know that cartels and our TCOs are destructive. We 
know what they're doing around human trafficking. What's 
happening along not just the border but human trafficking in 
general is horrific. We can all and we should all condemn just 
the horror that's happening to so many families and 
particularly so many young women.
    But it's also important that we also focuses on ways these 
cartels maintain their power. One of the ways that they 
maintain their power is, like, what was just said is weapons 
and arms smuggling. So I think that's also very important to 
talk about.
    Now, each year, according to CBS news reporting, between 
half a million and 1 million weapons enter Mexico illegally 
from the United States, from us. We know that many of these 
weapons are military grade weapons of war, including belt-fed 
mini guns, grenade launchers, and a variety of other types of 
weapons, and the overwhelming majority, of course, end up in 
the hands of drug cartels.
    So it's about 1 million weapons a year that actually get 
smuggled into Mexico from the United States, and we have 
allowed the cartels to essentially amass arsenals. These are 
the weapons they often use to traffic human beings, to kill 
innocent Mexicans and U.S. civilians and, of course, that they 
use to attack law enforcement on both sides of the border.
    Now, Mexico has been doing their part to solve the 
avalanche of guns. Like was just mentioned, there is one gun 
store in all of Mexico, and actually that one gun store only 
issues 50 permits a year. So we know the guns are not coming 
from Mexico. They're coming from us.
    It shouldn't surprise anyone that, according to a variety 
of reports anywhere between 70 and 90 percent of all of the 
guns that are recovered in crime scenes in Mexico are actually 
traced back to U.S. gun sales. So, if we're going to fight an 
effective fight against the cartels, we need to make sure they 
cannot get their hands on U.S. firearms.
    Now, without even including ammunition and gear, the retail 
value of U.S. weapon sales which go to the cartels is around a 
half a billion dollars a year. So, given that, it's 
unsurprising that according to the Council on Foreign 
Relations, over 50 percent of all U.S. firearm dealers and up 
to 80 percent of border safe Federal firearms license dealers 
are actually dependent on Mexican cartel demand for their 
economic existence. So, if you think about it, one-half of all 
U.S. gun dealers would essentially go out of business if not 
for gun sales that end up in the hands of the cartels.
    So this is actually a huge public policy and public health 
crisis. Both sides of the border need to be involved. For those 
who want to take on human trafficking, the illegal guns that 
are coming through the United States play a huge role in 
fronting these cartels that, of course, are trafficking all of 
these families from Central and South America and Mexico.
    Now, we know that there's been a strong support from the 
Biden administration. The bipartisan Safer Communities Act took 
an important step in combating firearm straw purchasing and 
trafficking. That was obviously the first reform we've seen in 
decades, but we need to do a lot more.
    I also recently introduced legislation that takes on ammo. 
It's called the AMMO Act to reform the way we license, sell, 
regulate, and oversee large ammunition sales in this country. 
We also need to crack down on direct access to these guns by 
the cartels.
    Just really briefly I would like to go down through all of 
our witnesses, and I want to thank you all for being here. 
Would you agree, yes or no, that U.S.-trafficked guns are 
critical to the cartels in maintaining their power?
    We'll start with Mr. Richmond.
    Mr. Richmond. I think, given the fact this is a human 
trafficking hearing, it's important to note that Congress 
wisely and innovatively in 2000 passed the Trafficking Victims 
Protection Act which focuses on nonviolent----
    Mr. Garcia. Sir, just back to my question. Yes or no, would 
you say that guns that are trafficked are critical to cartels 
maintaining their power? Yes or no.
    Mr. Richmond. I think that most traffickers in the world 
use nonviolent coercion to exploit their victims.
    Mr. Garcia. So you can't answer the question? You don't 
think that trafficked guns are critical to cartels maintaining 
their power?
    Mr. Richmond. I think this hearing is about human 
trafficking----
    Mr. Garcia. So yes or no, sir?
    You won't answer the question. OK.
    Mr. Villeda, do you think it's--it's not a hard question. 
Do you think that trafficked guns are part of cartels 
continuing their power? Yes or no.
    Mr. Villeda. Part of the problem is there, but not the only 
one.
    Mr. Garcia. OK. Thank you.
    Mr. FitzPatrick.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. I couldn't say one way or the other.
    Mr. Garcia. You couldn't say if guns and gun sales have 
anything to with cartels maintaining their power?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Trafficked guns.
    Mr. Garcia. Trafficked guns.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. That's a subset of gun sales, and I 
couldn't say.
    Mr. Garcia. Mr. Sadulski.
    Mr. Sadulski. Yes, guns are a problem.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you very much.
    I don't think that was a very hard question. It's 
unfortunate that it can't be answered.
    Finally, just one other question for everybody. To 
effectively fight against cartels, do we need a whole-of-
Government approach, which also should include addressing the 
smuggling of guns? Addressing the smuggling of guns should also 
be addressed by cartels.
    Mr. Richmond, yes or no?
    Mr. Richmond. We should enforce all our laws regarding 
guns, as well as human trafficking.
    Mr. Garcia. Mr. Villeda.
    Mr. Villeda. The U.S. administration should cooperate with 
local governments.
    Mr. Garcia. Mr. FitzPatrick.
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Sure, yes.
    Mr. Garcia. Mr. Sadulski.
    Mr. Sadulski. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Garcia. Well, thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back. Again, I want to say that 
we've got to really focus on also guns and ammo sales if we 
want to take on the human-trafficking issue.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Higgins. The gentleman yields.
    The gentlewoman from Illinois, Mrs. Ramirez, is recognized 
for 5 minutes for questioning.
    Mrs. Ramirez. Thank you, Chairman Higgins and Ranking 
Member Mr. Correa.
    Look, we've been in this committee hearing now for almost 2 
hours, and I think we all agree that human smuggling and 
trafficking is terrible, especially when we're inflicting this 
pain, this trauma on children. Honestly, it disgusts us.
    I am the oldest sister to a little sister who crossed the 
border in search of her biological mother at the age of 12 
weighing 65 pounds. So I will tell you that I have a little 
personal experience to what happens when a young person is in 
search of their parent and is coming through a coyote.
    I also feel like it's a deplorable policy when being 
trafficked or smuggled seems to be the only way that people can 
come to seek asylum in this country. Time and time again, I've 
heard from some of my colleagues here that, ``Well, what is the 
root cause of migration?'' I also haven't seen any humane 
pathways for people to come into this country legally so that 
traffickers don't continue to marginalize, oppress, abuse, 
rape, and do the things--the deplorable things that they do.
    So I want to come back to what I always usually come back 
to, which is the morality of human life here.
    Mr. Villeda, you heard one of my colleagues ask the 
question, what is the root cause of human trafficking? I heard 
one of the witnesses mention, ``Well, look, poverty, 
vulnerability. If they think they can take advantage of this 
individual, they will, and they do.''
    So, Mr. Villeda--this is also like Congressman Garcia, it's 
a yes-or-no question--do you believe that we should pass 
comprehensive protections that give survivors of human 
trafficking permanent protection to stay and work in the United 
States and seek the resources they need to thrive?
    Mr. Villeda. Appropriately-screened migrants who have been 
identified as victims should be given the opportunity to 
receive proper care----
    Mrs. Ramirez. So it's a yes. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Villeda.
    Mr. FitzPatrick, what do you think? Yes or no?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. That program already exists. There's a 
system for that, and it just needs to be expanded and properly 
funded, yes.
    Mrs. Ramirez. So expanded and properly funded, but the 
answer is yes. OK.
    Well, Mr. FitzPatrick, my colleagues on the other side talk 
about how they care about children. I hear about it all the 
time here. I hear it on the House floor, but the legislation 
that they passed in this committee, H.R. 2--I call it the Child 
Deportation Act--was passed in the House this spring that 
threatens to shut the Government down over what they propose to 
be the set amount of time where a child will spend more time in 
jail--currently I think they were talking about custody in CBP 
from 3 days to up to 30 days.
    Now, my little sister talks to me about the amount of time 
she spent waiting to be sponsored and the trauma she's still 
dealing with now at the age of 29. So I don't believe any 
children should have to spend 1 single hour in a jail-like 
setting, but the legislation is asking that that happen and 
then also talks about deporting undocumented people, and that 
includes children.
    So, Mr. FitzPatrick, would forcing unaccompanied children 
to remain in unsafe conditions without a guardian make them 
more vulnerable to trafficking?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Yes, it would. I don't believe that 
Congress can by act of Congress undo a court settlement that 
the United States has agreed to, the Flores settlement in 
particular.
    So, to the extent that the law tries to get around what the 
Government has already said it's going to do in a consent 
decree in court, I'm not sure--I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not 
sure that Congress can just simply say, ``We're not going to 
honor that Flores agreement.''
    Mrs. Ramirez. Yes. Thank you, Mr. FitzPatrick.
    So let me ask you one other yes-or-no question. Would 
sending children back to dangerous and deadly situations in 
Mexico protect them or make them more vulnerable?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. Is that a question to me?
    Mrs. Ramirez. That's a question. Yes or no, would sending 
children back to Mexico in a dangerous, deadly situation 
protect them?
    Mr. FitzPatrick. I'm against sending children back, period, 
whether it's to Mexico or whether it's to their country of 
origin. I think sending them to an intermediate country could 
be even riskier than sending someone back to their country of 
origin.
    Mrs. Ramirez. Yes, I agree.
    So, look, I just want to conclude. I want to see human 
trafficking end. I think we all do here. We also have to ask 
ourselves why are people crossing the border to begin with?--
and I think a couple of people brought that up here. I think 
the final part of that is it is a policy choice that we don't 
actually pass legislation that addresses the reason that people 
need to migrate and create legal pathways.
    So I'm not going to back down in the face of relentless 
attempts to criminalize the right to seek asylum and endanger 
children in the process. I really hope that if we're going to 
be saying we care about children that we actually address it by 
policy and create legal pathways so that human traffickers no 
longer have business.
    With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Higgins. The gentlewoman yields.
    Seeing no further Members present for questioning, I thank 
the witnesses for their valuable testimony and the Members for 
their questions.
    Members of the subcommittees may have additional questions 
for the witnesses, and indeed we do. We would ask that the 
witnesses respond to these in writing. We'll be submitting 
these questions in writing.
    Pursuant to committee rule VII(D), the hearing record will 
be held open for 10 days.
    Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:48 p.m., the subcommittees were 
adjourned.]

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