Issue Position: Human Trafficking

Issue Position

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery. Not only is it an affront to human dignity, but it is an insidious criminal enterprise. Approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year, according to the U.S. State Department. This figure does not include the thousands who are trafficked annually within countries, including the United States. While the hidden nature of trafficking makes reliable numbers difficult to come by, we do know traffickers prey on the most vulnerable. Traffickers can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling women and children, according to the Washington,D.C.-based Polaris Project, one of the leading anti-trafficking organizations in the country.

The 2008 reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was appropriately titled the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act, named after the stalwart abolitionist who tirelessly fought to eradicate the British slave trade. Wilberforce famously said, "Having heard all this, you may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you do not know." The same could be said of human trafficking today. Trafficking in persons takes a multitude of forms ranging from child sex tourism in distant Thailand, to bonded labor in rural India, to domestic servitude right in northern Virginia. Some people mistakenly assume that human trafficking occurs only in distant lands. But the reality is that it is happening in American cities, to American children. Knowing this, we must not choose to look the other way.

Trafficking in Virginia:

People often think trafficking takes place overseas in places like Thailand. In reality, it takes place right here in Virginia.

Shutting Down Backpage.com

On multiple occasions I have implored the Obama Administration to step up its efforts to stop human trafficking including through the possible criminal prosecution of Backpage.com which is reported to be the largest online forum for sex-trafficking under-age
girls in the United States.

Targeting Underage Prostitution

Recent FBI operations targeting pimps nationwide who are exploiting children through prostitution is a sobering reminder that human trafficking and child exploitation is happening right in our own backyard.

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