Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. PORTMAN. I thank my colleague from Texas. I thank him for his
leadership on this legislation, along with Senator Klobuchar and
others, in bringing this to the floor. Senator Grassley, the chair of
the committee, is with us. I appreciate the fact that these two bills
which we have worked on over the last few years are included in the
legislation the Senator mentioned.

Sadly, some of the most vulnerable youth are those who are missing or
are in foster care, kids who end up being, unfortunately, exposed to
human trafficking, sometimes sexual trafficking. So the idea of the
missing children legislation is really very simple. It says: Let's help
find these children as quickly as possible by having better information
on them.

I will give one example of that. In Ohio we have had 71 kids who have
gone missing since January 1. These are 71 children who are out there
somewhere--minors. For those 71 children, we only have 22 photographs.
This is since January 1. One thing this legislation does is it says:
Let's get the data, including photographs, so all of us can have an
opportunity to find these young people before they become subject to
human trafficking.

In Ohio we, unfortunately, have this issue in all of our regions,
including in some of our smaller communities as well as our bigger
urban centers where we have sex trafficking. They say the average age
of children who are getting involved in this is between 11 and 13 years
old.

We have talked a lot on the floor over the last several days. I have
been out here talking about these issues. These are the most vulnerable
among us. These are crimes against children.

This is in the bill, and if we can pass this legislation, getting
this additional information and better awareness and training of child
welfare agency officials and better training for law enforcement is all
part of this.

The other legislation the Senator mentioned is about increasing the
penalties on those who are involved in trafficking. That is important
because we haven't had a major bill on this for 15 years, and we have
learned a lot in this process. What we have learned is there are better
ways to give prosecutors and other law enforcement the tools they need
to be able to take these cases, prosecute them, and stop this heinous
crime.

There are some really good provisions in this legislation that I have
worked on, on a bipartisan basis. As was said, one is with Senator
Feinstein with regard to increasing the penalties, and the other piece
of legislation is with Senator Schumer on bringing children home. There
are also a couple of amendments we would love to offer. In fact, we
offered them, but we haven't been able to get votes on them because
this week we haven't moved forward on the legislation.

I would urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to allow us
to move forward with the process. Let's go ahead and start having
votes. There might be disagreements on some parts of the bill. I
thought because it had gotten out of committee by a unanimous vote that
there wouldn't be disagreements, but if there are, let's have that
discussion and debate. Let's not let the most vulnerable among us wait
for us to work this out. Let's move forward on this legislation in a
way that allows everybody to have their views heard.

Some of the legislation I talked about comes out of meeting with
folks back home on this issue and talking to victims who have been
through this horrible process and gone through the very difficult
process of recovering from it. Some of the amendments we are going to
offer would help with regard to that issue, help to respond to these
young people--often children--who are involved in this.

It also comes out of the work that has been done right here in the
Senate through a caucus we formed about 2\1/2\ years ago. Senator
Blumenthal and I cofounded this caucus, we cochair it, and we meet
every month and bring people in from around the country who are experts
on this issue. Some are experts on child welfare, law enforcement,
people who are involved in trying to stop this. Others are experts
because, unfortunately, they found themselves in very difficult
situations. Among others, some have come forward and talked about how
as a young girl they were taken in by a trafficker. Increasingly--this
is true in Ohio, unfortunately--drug abuse is part of this, so they
become dependent on the trafficker. It is, to me, a form of bondage
because these are young people who become addicted. In Ohio it is
typically heroin now. So it is keeping these young people trapped in this
dependency. The drug treatment and the drug recovery are tough, but so
is the recovery from having been trafficked.

This is an opportunity for us to take the information we have
received through this caucus we have formed. I think the Members who
are involved in that caucus, including the Members here today, would
agree it has been a good experience for our staff and for us to raise
the awareness and consciousness on this issue. Now we have taken some
of this information and put it in this legislation. Let's get it
passed. We will have plenty of time for politics around here, trust me.
We will have lots of that next week and the week after and over the
next couple years. That is part of the process; we understand that. But
there are certain issues where we should be able to move forward on not
a bipartisan basis but I would say on a nonpartisan basis, and this is
one of them.

I thank my colleague from Texas for allowing me to speak briefly and
my colleagues from South Dakota and Illinois who are here to talk about
this issue.

My hope is that even today we can begin the process of having votes,
moving forward with amendments, and getting this good work done to help
the most vulnerable among us.

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