[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12789-12792]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    HUMAN TRAFFICKING PREVENTION ACT

  Mr. MEADOWS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 4449) to amend the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 
2000 to expand the training for Federal Government personnel related to 
trafficking in persons, and for other purposes.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                               H.R. 4449

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Human Trafficking Prevention 
     Act''.

     SEC. 2. EXPANDED TRAINING RELATING TO TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS.

       Section 105(c)(4) of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 
     of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7105(c)(4)) is amended--
       (1) by inserting ``, including members of the Service (as 
     such term is defined in section 103 of the Foreign Service 
     Act of 1980 (22 U.S.C. 3903))'' after ``Department of 
     State''; and
       (2) by adding at the end the following: ``Training under 
     this paragraph shall include, at a minimum, the following:
       ``(A) A distance learning course on trafficking-in-persons 
     issues and the Department of State's obligations under this 
     Act, targeted for embassy reporting officers, regional 
     bureaus' trafficking-in-persons coordinators, and their 
     superiors.
       ``(B) Specific trafficking-in-persons briefings for all 
     ambassadors and deputy chiefs of mission before such 
     individuals depart for their posts.
       ``(C) At least annual reminders to all such personnel, 
     including appropriate personnel from other Federal 
     departments and agencies, at each diplomatic or consular post 
     of the Department of State located outside the United States 
     of key problems, threats, methods, and warning signs of 
     trafficking in persons specific to the country or 
     jurisdiction in which each such post is located, and 
     appropriate procedures to report information that any such 
     personnel may acquire about possible cases of trafficking in 
     persons.''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Meadows) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sean 
Patrick Maloney) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina.


                             General Leave

  Mr. MEADOWS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to 
include extraneous materials on this bill.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from North Carolina?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. MEADOWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the bill, H.R. 4449, to amend 
the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 to expand the training 
for Federal Government personnel related to trafficking in persons, and 
for other purposes.
  I thank the gentleman from New York for his leadership in addressing 
this issue.
  As we look at this, this particular bill would require appropriate 
personnel of the Department of State, that they would be trained in 
identifying victims of severe forms of trafficking and provide for the 
protection of those victims.
  H.R. 4449 would specify three minimum training requirements in that 
underlying statute: one, a distance learning course for Embassy and 
bureau personnel dealing with trafficking issues; two, trafficking 
briefings for all ambassadors and DCMs before they head to their 
postings; and, three, annual reminders to appropriate personnel 
regarding key trafficking problems and issues related to their 
countries.

[[Page 12790]]

  The State Department believes that these specified forms of training 
largely track their current activities; thus, while adding these 
examples to the statute will ensure that these types of training will 
continue, it will not result in a substantial and additional cost.
  Again, I thank the leadership, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sean 
Patrick Maloney) as the primary sponsor of this, and I reserve the 
balance of my time.
  Mr. SEAN PATRICK MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 
such time as I may consume.
  I rise in strong support of my bill, H.R. 4449, the Human Trafficking 
Prevention Act.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to also thank my colleague, Mr. Meadows, 
for his leadership on this bill. I would like to thank the Democratic 
whip--my friend, the gentleman from Maryland, Steny Hoyer--and his 
staff for the work they dedicated to this piece of legislation and to 
my own staff.
  Worldwide, less than 1 percent of an estimated 27 million victims of 
human trafficking have been reported, and in the past year, only about 
44,000 survivors have been identified.
  Millions--literally millions of children, women, and men are 
trafficked each year and forced into modern-day slavery as part of the 
world's most evil and fastest growing industry. It may seem like it 
only happens on the other side of the world, but it is happening here 
in quiet neighborhoods across our country.
  Some of those survivors are from neighborhoods I represent in the 
Hudson Valley of New York. In New Windsor and Newburgh, for nearly 4 
years, one man would troll the streets, coercing at least 10 women to 
work for him as sex workers in local motels.
  Last year, law enforcement authorities uncovered an international sex 
trafficking ring operating brothels in Yonkers, Poughkeepsie, and 
Newburgh, where women were brutalized and forced to have sex 10, 20, 30 
times a day.
  It is a hard truth, but it is a truth nonetheless. This disgusting, 
this horrifying practice of modern-day slavery happens here, right here 
in our own neighborhoods, in our own backyards, in our own country.
  Even with the assistance of law enforcement and dedicated 
organizations like My Sister's Place in Westchester and Safe Homes of 
Orange County, groups which help survivors rebuild their lives, New 
York continues to be one of the top hubs of human trafficking where sex 
trafficking, child labor, child sex trafficking, and indentured 
servitude happen all too frequently.
  In another community in Hudson Valley about an hour away from New 
York City, a man tricked teenage girls to travel to the United States 
on tourist visas from countries like Brazil, Hungary, and France. He 
instructed these women to lie to both Immigration and State Department 
officials in order to gain access to our country.
  It is precisely this kind of situation that my legislation seeks to 
stop. We must ensure that our men and women on the front lines of our 
borders have the resources and training they need in order to identify 
and stop human trafficking at its source before these women and 
children and men become victims.
  As part of our goal to end human trafficking, we can make sure that 
our foreign service officers and other government personnel have the 
tools and training they need to spot, to identify these victims and 
stop this trafficking across international borders.
  In the past, the State Department estimated that between 14,500 and 
17,000 foreign nationals were trafficked into the United States every 
single year. Although the Federal Government has a zero tolerance 
policy on human trafficking, our foreign service officers, who often 
have face-to-face contact with these victims when they are obtaining 
U.S. visas, currently undergo minimal training to define, identify, and 
recognize the indicators of human trafficking or smuggling.
  My legislation would expand new minimum training procedures for 
foreign service officers and other government personnel in order to 
identify and stop human trafficking at its source and take action 
before people are trafficked across international borders before it 
becomes too late, when they are already in the United States and 
already victimized.
  Since we know criminals will do just about anything to adapt and to 
avoid being caught, this legislation also requires annual updates on 
key problems, threats, methods, and warning signs of trafficking.
  I want to thank my colleagues across the aisle because, by working 
across the aisle, we have a new opportunity to come together to combat 
this absolutely monstrous practice of trafficking in children, women, 
and men.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support my legislation, H.R. 
4449, the Human Trafficking Prevention Act, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.
  Mr. MEADOWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I want to close by saying that anything we can do, certainly, to 
continue to highlight this particular issue, whether it is with the 
State Department or laws within our Nation, gives us a rare opportunity 
to affect lives not only here in the United States, but across the 
world.
  I would like to thank the committee work for those on the Foreign 
Affairs Committee, their diligence and hard work here at a late hour--
certainly our own personal staffs, congressional staffs, for their work 
too. So many times, they don't get mentioned.
  With that, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4449, and I yield 
back the balance of my time.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, as a senior member of the Judiciary and 
Homeland Security Committees, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4449, 
the ``Human Trafficking Prevention Act.''
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel 
for their stewardship in bringing this legislation to the floor and for 
their commitment to expanding the training and capability of Federal 
government personnel in detecting and combating human trafficking and 
assisting its victims.
  Throughout my tenure in Congress and a founder and Co-Chair of the 
Congressional Children's Caucus, I have advocated on behalf of victims 
of human trafficking, especially children, who are the most vulnerable 
and innocent victims.
  I am also committed to ensure that law enforcement agencies have the 
tools, resources, and training necessary to identify, apprehend, and 
prosecute criminals who ruthlessly traffic in people.
  H.R. 4449 strengthens the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 
by amending it to require training related to trafficking in persons 
for all State Department personnel. Specifically, the bill requires the 
following:
  1. A distance learning course on trafficking in persons issues and 
the Department of State's obligations under the Act to be completed by 
embassy reporting officers, regional bureaus' trafficking in persons 
coordinators, and their supervisors;
  2. Specific trafficking-in-persons briefings for all ambassadors and 
deputy chiefs of mission before they depart for their posts; and
  3. Annual reminders to all such personnel and other federal personnel 
at each diplomatic or consular post of the Department of State located 
outside the United States of key human trafficking problems, threats, 
methods, and warning signs.
  This legislation does for the State Department what the Jackson Lee 
to H.R. 4660, ``Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Act for 
2015,'' does for the Justice Department.
  That amendment, adopted earlier this year by the House, provides 
another tool in law enforcement's arsenal to tip the balance in favor 
of victims by ensuring funding for the Attorney General to provide 
training for State and local law enforcement agencies on immigration 
law that may be useful for the investigation and prosecution of crimes 
related to trafficking in persons.
  Mr. Speaker, trafficking in humans, and especially child trafficking, 
has no place in a civilized society and those who engage in this 
illicit trade should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
  To effectively combat human trafficking, we need to provide resources 
and training to government personnel to assist victims and apprehend 
criminals.
  By providing the necessary training and support, we will catch more 
human trafficking criminals and save lives, and prevent many

[[Page 12791]]

other persons, including children, from becoming human trafficking 
victims.
  I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 4449, the Human 
Trafficking Prevention Act of 2014.
  Mr. BEN RAY LUJAN of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following 
article:

                [From the New York Times, July 11, 2014]

  The Children of the Drug Wars: A Refugee Crisis, Not an Immigration 
                                 Crisis

                           (By Sonia Nazario)

       Cristian Omar Reyes, an 11-year-old sixth grader in the 
     neighborhood of Nueva Suyapa, on the outskirts of 
     Tegucigalpa, tells me he has to get out of Honduras soon--
     ``no matter what.''
       In March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs while 
     working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. His 
     mother used the life insurance payout to hire a smuggler to 
     take her to Florida. She promised to send for him quickly, 
     but she has not.
       Three people he knows were murdered this year. Four others 
     were gunned down on a nearby corner in the span of two weeks 
     at the beginning of this year. A girl his age resisted being 
     robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off 
     by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties 
     in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from 
     Cristian's house.
       ``I'm going this year,'' he tells me.
       I last went to Nueva Suyapa in 2003, to write about another 
     boy, Luis Enrique Motino Pineda, who had grown up there and 
     left to find his mother in the United States. Children from 
     Central America have been making that journey, often without 
     their parents, for two decades. But lately something has 
     changed, and the predictable flow has turned into an exodus. 
     Three years ago, about 6,800 children were detained by United 
     States immigration authorities and placed in federal custody; 
     this year, as many as 90,000 children are expected to be 
     picked up. Around a quarter come from Honduras--more than 
     from anywhere else.
       Children still leave Honduras to reunite with a parent, or 
     for better educational and economic opportunities. But, as I 
     learned when I returned to Nueva Suyapa last month, a vast 
     majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but 
     violence. As a result, what the United States is seeing on 
     its borders now is not an immigration crisis. It is a refugee 
     crisis.
       Gangs arrived in force in Honduras in the 1990s, as 18th 
     Street and Mara Salvatrucha members were deported in large 
     numbers from Los Angeles to Central America, joining 
     homegrown groups like Los Puchos. But the dominance in the 
     past few years of foreign drug cartels in Honduras, 
     especially ones from Mexico, has increased the reach and 
     viciousness of the violence. As the United States and 
     Colombia spent billions of dollars to disrupt the movement of 
     drugs up the Caribbean corridor, traffickers rerouted inland 
     through Honduras, and 79 percent of cocaine-smuggling flights 
     bound for the United States now pass through there.
       Narco groups and gangs are vying for control over this 
     turf, neighborhood by neighborhood, to gain more foot 
     soldiers for drug sales and distribution, expand their 
     customer base, and make money through extortion in a country 
     left with an especially weak, corrupt government following a 
     2009 coup.
       Enrique's 33-year-old sister, Belky, who still lives in 
     Nueva Suyapa, says children began leaving en masse for the 
     United States three years ago. That was around the time that 
     the narcos started putting serious pressure on kids to work 
     for them. At Cristian's school, older students working with 
     the cartels push drugs on the younger ones--some as young as 
     6. If they agree, children are recruited to serve as 
     lookouts, make deliveries in backpacks, rob people and extort 
     businesses. They are given food, shoes and money in return. 
     Later, they might work as traffickers or hit men.
       Teachers at Cristian's school described a 12-year-old who 
     demanded that the school release three students one day to 
     help him distribute crack cocaine; he brandished a pistol and 
     threatened to kill a teacher when she tried to question him.
       At Nueva Suyapa's only public high school, narcos ``recruit 
     inside the school,'' says Yadira Sauceda, a counselor there. 
     Until he was killed a few weeks ago, a 23-year-old 
     ``student'' controlled the school. Each day, he was checked 
     by security at the door, then had someone sneak his gun to 
     him over the school wall. Five students, mostly 12- and 13-
     year-olds, tearfully told Ms. Sauceda that the man had 
     ordered them to use and distribute drugs or he would kill 
     their parents. By March, one month into the new school year, 
     67 of 450 students had left the school.
       Teachers must pay a ``war tax'' to teach in certain 
     neighborhoods, and students must pay to attend.
       Carlos Baquedano Sanchez, a slender 14-year-old with hair 
     sticking straight up, explained how hard it was to stay away 
     from the cartels. He lives in a shack made of corrugated tin 
     in a neighborhood in Nueva Suyapa called El Infiernito--
     Little Hell--and usually doesn't have anything to eat one out 
     of every three days. He started working in a dump when he was 
     7, picking out iron or copper to recycle, for $1 or $2 a day. 
     But bigger boys often beat him to steal his haul, and he quit 
     a year ago when an older man nearly killed him for a coveted 
     car-engine piston. Now he sells scrap wood.
       But all of this was nothing, he says, compared to the 
     relentless pressure to join narco gangs and the constant 
     danger they have brought to his life. When he was 9, he 
     barely escaped from two narcos who were trying to rape him, 
     while terrified neighbors looked on. When he was 10, he was 
     pressured to try marijuana and crack. ``You'll feel better. 
     Like you are in the clouds,'' a teenager working with a gang 
     told him. But he resisted.
       He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three 
     killed right in front of him. He saw a man shot three years 
     ago and still remembers the plums the man was holding rolling 
     down the street, coated in blood. Recently he witnessed two 
     teenage hit men shooting a pair of brothers for refusing to 
     hand over the keys and title to their motorcycle. Carlos hit 
     the dirt and prayed. The killers calmly walked down the 
     street. Carlos shrugs. ``Now seeing someone dead is 
     nothing.''
       He longs to be an engineer or mechanic, but he quit school 
     after sixth grade, too poor and too afraid to attend. ``A lot 
     of kids know what can happen in school. So they leave.''
       He wants to go to the United States, even though he knows 
     how dangerous the journey can be; a man in his neighborhood 
     lost both legs after falling off the top of a Mexican freight 
     train, and a family friend drowned in the Rio Grande. ``I 
     want to avoid drugs and death. The government can't pull up 
     its pants and help people,'' he says angrily. ``My country 
     has lost its way.''
       Girls face particular dangers--one reason around 40 percent 
     of children who arrived in the United States this year were 
     girls, compared with 27 percent in the past. Recently three 
     girls were raped and killed in Nueva Suyapa, one only 8 years 
     old. Two 15-year-olds were abducted and raped. The kidnappers 
     told them that if they didn't get in the car they would kill 
     their entire families. Some parents no longer let their girls 
     go to school for fear of their being kidnapped, says Luis 
     Lopez, an educator with Asociacion Compartir, a nonprofit in 
     Nueva Suyapa.
       Milagro Noemi Martinez, a petite 19-year-old with clear 
     green eyes, has been told repeatedly by narcos that she would 
     be theirs--or end up dead. Last summer, she made her first 
     attempt to reach the United States ``Here there is only 
     evil,'' she says. ``It's better to leave than have them kill 
     me here.'' She headed north with her 21-year-old sister, a 
     friend who had also been threatened, and $170 among them. But 
     she was stopped and deported from Mexico. Now back in Nueva 
     Suyapa, she stays locked inside her mother's house. ``I hope 
     God protects me. I am afraid to step outside.'' Last year, 
     she says, six minors, as young as 15, were killed in her 
     neighborhood. Some were hacked apart. She plans to try the 
     journey again soon. Asking for help from the police or the 
     government is not an option in what some consider a failed 
     state. The drugs that pass through Honduras each year are 
     worth more than the country's entire gross domestic product. 
     Narcos have bought off police officers, politicians and 
     judges. In recent years, four out of five homicides were 
     never investigated. No one is immune to the carnage. Several 
     Honduran mayors have been killed. The sons of both the former 
     head of the police department and the head of the national 
     university were murdered, the latter, an investigation 
     showed, by the police.
       ``You never call the cops. The cops themselves will 
     retaliate and kill you,'' says Henry Carias Aguilar, a pastor 
     in Nueva Suyapa. A majority of small businesses in Nueva 
     Suyapa have shuttered because of extortion demands, while 
     churches have doubled in number in the past decade, as people 
     pray for salvation from what they see as the plague predicted 
     in the Bible. Taxis and homes have signs on them asking God 
     for mercy.
       The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently 
     interviewed 404 children who had arrived in the United States 
     from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico; 58 percent 
     said their primary reason for leaving was violence. (A 
     similar survey in 2006, of Central American children coming 
     into Mexico, found that only 13 percent were fleeing 
     violence.) They aren't just going to the United States: Less 
     conflicted countries in Central America had a 712 percent 
     increase in asylum claims between 2008 and 2013.
       ``If a house is burning, people will jump out the window,'' 
     says Michelle Brane, director of the migrant rights and 
     justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission.
       To permanently stem this flow of children, we must address 
     the complex root causes of violence in Honduras, as well as 
     the demand for illegal drugs in the United States that is 
     fueling that violence.
       In the meantime, however, we must recognize this as a 
     refugee crisis, as the United Nations just recommended. These 
     children are facing threats similar to the forceful 
     conscription of child soldiers by warlords in Sudan or during 
     the civil war in Bosnia. Being forced to sell drugs by narcos 
     is no different from being forced into military service.

[[Page 12792]]

       Many Americans, myself included, believe in deporting 
     unlawful immigrants, but see a different imperative with 
     refugees.
       The United States should immediately create emergency 
     refugee centers inside our borders, tent cities--operated by 
     the United Nations and other relief groups like the 
     International Rescue Committee--where immigrant children 
     could be held for 60 to 90 days instead of being released. 
     The government would post immigration judges at these centers 
     and adjudicate children's cases there.
       To ensure this isn't a sham process, asylum officers and 
     judges must be trained in child-sensitive interviewing 
     techniques to help elicit information from fearful, 
     traumatized youngsters. All children must also be represented 
     by a volunteer or government-funded lawyer. Kids in Need of 
     Defense, a nonprofit that recruits pro bono lawyers to 
     represent immigrant children and whose board I serve on, 
     estimates that 40 percent to 60 percent of these children 
     potentially qualify to stay under current immigration laws--
     and do, if they have a lawyer by their side. The vast 
     majority do not. The only way to ensure we are not hurtling 
     children back to circumstances that could cost them their 
     lives is by providing them with real due process.
       Judges, who currently deny seven in 10 applications for 
     asylum by people who are in deportation proceedings, must 
     better understand the conditions these children are facing. 
     They should be more open to considering relief for those 
     fleeing gang recruitment or threats by criminal organizations 
     when they come from countries like Honduras that are clearly 
     unwilling or unable to protect them.
       If many children don't meet strict asylum criteria but face 
     significant dangers if they return, the United States should 
     consider allowing them to stay using humanitarian parole 
     procedures we have employed in the past, for Cambodians and 
     Haitians. It may be possible to transfer children and 
     resettle them in other safe countries willing to share the 
     burden. We should also make it easier for children to apply 
     as refugees when they are still in Central America, as we 
     have done for people in Iraq, Cuba, countries in the former 
     Soviet Union, Vietnam and Haiti. Those who showed a well-
     founded fear of persecution wouldn't have to make the 
     perilous journey north alone.
       Of course, many migrant children come for economic reasons, 
     and not because they fear for their lives. In those cases, 
     they should quickly be deported if they have at least one 
     parent in their country of origin. By deporting them directly 
     from the refugee centers, the United States would discourage 
     future non-refugees by showing that immigrants cannot be 
     caught and released, and then avoid deportation by ignoring 
     court orders to attend immigration hearings.
       Instead of advocating such a humane, practical approach, 
     the Obama administration wants to intercept and return 
     children en route. On Tuesday the president asked for $3.7 
     billion in emergency funding. Some money would be spent on 
     new detention facilities and more immigration judges, but the 
     main goal seems to be to strengthen border control and speed 
     up deportations. He also asked Congress to grant powers that 
     could eliminate legal protections for children from Central 
     America in order to expedite removals, a change that 
     Republicans in Congress have also advocated.
       This would allow life-or-death decisions to be made within 
     hours by Homeland Security officials, even though studies 
     have shown that border patrol agents fail to adequately 
     screen Mexican children to see if they are being sexually 
     exploited by traffickers or fear persecution, as the agents 
     are supposed to do. Why would they start asking Central 
     American children key questions needed to prove refugee 
     status?
       The United States expects other countries to take in 
     hundreds of thousands of refugees on humanitarian grounds. 
     Countries neighboring Syria have absorbed nearly 3 million 
     people. Jordan has accepted in two days what the United 
     States has received in an entire month during the height of 
     this immigration flow--more than 9,000 children in May. The 
     United States should also increase to pre-9/11 levels the 
     number of refugees we accept to 90,000 from the current 
     70,000 per year and, unlike in recent years, actually admit 
     that many.
       By sending these children away, ``you are handing them a 
     death sentence,'' says Jose Arnulfo Ochoa Ochoa, an expert in 
     Honduras with World Vision International, a Christian 
     humanitarian aid group. This abrogates international 
     conventions we have signed and undermines our credibility as 
     a humane country. It would be a disgrace if this wealthy 
     nation turned its back on the 52,000 children who have 
     arrived since October, many of them legitimate refugees.
       This is not how a great nation treats children.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Meadows) that the House suspend the 
rules and pass the bill, H.R. 4449.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________