[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 112 (Thursday, June 29, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3844-S3845]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Abolish Human Trafficking Act

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to come to the floor to talk about 
healthcare, a subject I know the Presiding Officer feels passionate 
about as a medical doctor. But before I delve into the healthcare 
debate, I want to discuss briefly two important bipartisan pieces of 
legislation that I have been working on with my colleagues across the 
aisle and that are moving forward today.
  I know the strange thing about this place--by ``this place'' I mean 
Washington, DC--is that the bipartisan work we are able to do rarely 
gets much attention. What gets attention in the news is when we fight 
over controversial topics, but bipartisan legislation that actually 
helps people and that gets done here is rarely heralded or even 
noticed. So I think it is worth highlighting a couple of examples 
today.
  Today, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, we passed the Abolish Human 
Trafficking Act, which I introduced with Senator Klobuchar. As the 
father of two daughters, I am always reminded of the profile of a 
victim of human trafficking in this country, a girl between the ages of 
12 and 14 years old, who perhaps has run away from home. Who knows what 
the circumstances are at home? But they are looking for a better life, 
only to find themselves in too many instances exploited and the victims 
of human trafficking.
  This bill reauthorizes several critical trafficking victims 
protection act programs that help fight the scourge of trafficking so 
that survivors can get the help they need and our law enforcement 
officers can go after the perpetrators of this terrible crime.
  A vital provision of this bill is an extension of the Domestic 
Trafficking Victims Fund, which provides critical resources that 
victims need to recover from this crime. Part of the fund is financed 
through fines collected on convicted traffickers, and last year it 
provided almost $5 million in services for victims. Let me dwell on 
that for just a minute.
  When I was privileged to be attorney general of the State of Texas, 
part of the job was to administer the Crime Victims' Compensation Fund. 
This was a fund into which fines and penalties of people convicted of 
criminal acts went into the Crime Victims' Compensation Fund, so we 
could then use grants for the victims of crime to help them recover. 
That is exactly the kind of model we created with the Domestic 
Trafficking Victims Fund. My hope is that over time it will produce 
more money that will be available to help the victims of human 
trafficking to a greater extent. That is the idea, and these are not 
tax dollars, so that is an additional benefit. It is actually the fines 
and penalties of the perpetrators that go into this fund that then help 
the victims to heal.
  This bill also makes the Human Trafficking Advisory Council permanent 
so that the group of survivors who advise people like us on what 
additional tools are needed to combat trafficking can continue to do 
so.
  On the preventive end, this legislation lends a hand to our Nation's 
law enforcement so they can track down perpetrators of the crime and 
bring them to justice. It implements screening protocols for the 
Department of

[[Page S3845]]

Homeland Security so that law enforcement officials at every level know 
how to spot trafficking victims and how to respond. This is actually a 
really important element of fighting human trafficking.
  A few years ago, when we had the Super Bowl in Dallas, TX, I was 
shocked to learn that the Super Bowl is one of the largest human 
trafficking events during the year. That is pretty sobering and, 
frankly, disgusting. Training people, including law enforcement, to be 
able to identify victims of human trafficking, some of whom may not 
consider themselves a victim until it is too late, only to find 
themselves a victim of modern day human slavery--but being able to 
identify victims of trafficking so that we can get law enforcement 
involved and get them rescued is a big, important part of fighting this 
crime.
  In the long run, this legislation requires the Department of Justice 
to implement a national strategy to reduce the demand of human 
trafficking by essentially putting the johns--the people who buy sex 
from trafficking victims--out of service. This is a cause that clearly 
crosses partisan lines, and it is literally a nonpartisan issue.
  I am glad we are making progress on this. I am thankful for the 
bipartisan support of my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar, 
as well as the Judiciary Committee members like the chairman, Senator 
Grassley, and the ranking member, Senator Feinstein, and many other 
Members on both sides who are cosponsors.