[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
LOCAL AND PRIVATE SECTOR INITIATIVES TO COMBAT INTERNATIONAL HUMAN
TRAFFICKING
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 7, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-19
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Don Knabe, supervisor, Fourth District, Los Angeles County
Board of Supervisors........................................... 7
Mr. Bradley Myles, executive director and chief executive
officer, Polaris Project....................................... 16
Shawn MacDonald, Ph.D., director of programs and research, Verite 25
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Don Knabe: Prepared statement................................ 9
Mr. Bradley Myles: Prepared statement............................ 18
Shawn MacDonald, Ph.D.: Prepared statement....................... 27
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 64
Hearing minutes.................................................. 65
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 67
LOCAL AND PRIVATE SECTOR INITIATIVES
TO COMBAT INTERNATIONAL HUMAN
TRAFFICKING
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TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2013
House of Representatives,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in
room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Edward Royce
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Chairman Royce. This focus of this committee hearing is on
local and private sector initiatives to combat international
human trafficking in persons. If we think about it, one of the
big questions of civilization is how we treat those who are
most defenseless in our midst, and the responsibility that we
all have in a society in order to try to come to the aid of
those who are most exploited. And in terms of trafficking in
persons, this is one of the most grievous offenses against
human dignity. It impacts almost every country on this planet.
It disproportionately victimizes girls, children.
Experts estimate that, in terms of all forms of
trafficking, there are 20 million people worldwide subjected to
forced labor, a broad designation that covers everything from
debt bondage to the forced conscription of child soldiers, to
the commercial exploitation of millions of women and children
trapped in lives of sexual servitude. But even these jarring
statistics can obscure the despair at the heart of these
crimes. The harm of trafficking may be more clearly seen in the
eyes of an abused 12-year-old girl who is being robbed of her
freedom, robbed of her youth and of her hope.
My chief of staff, Amy Porter, has worked with young girls
in India and in Cambodia, girls rescued from brothels and other
deplorable situations whose ages ranged from 16 years of age
down to 3.
As we will hear today, these are not just faraway problems
affecting the developing world. More than 17,000 people are
trafficked into the United States every year, and there is an
estimate of 100,000 American citizen children who are victims
within the United States of trafficking.
And just this week, the media has reported a Federal
investigation into the alleged trafficking of two Filipino
victims by a Saudi diplomat here in the DC area.
This committee has played a role in putting human
trafficking onto the radar screen for governments everywhere.
In the past 13 years, international peer pressure and the
potential threat of U.S. sanctions have pushed many nations to
try to avoid the stain of a ``tier III'' designation in the
State Department's annual report, and more than 130 countries
have enacted anti-trafficking laws. But, of course, passing a
law is not the same thing as enforcing that law. And not only
does much work remain to be done to prosecute traffickers and
protect victims everywhere, but a lot of work remains to be
done on this committee.
Much of the focus on trafficking has been brought by our
Subcommittee Chairman Smith over the years. He is the author of
the original Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the TVPA. And
he held an excellent hearing 2 weeks ago on the State
Department's country tier rankings. I fully expect the
committee to return to those issues again in June, when the
administration releases its annual TIP Report.
But the struggle that I and Subcommittee Chairman Chris
Smith have had over the last few years is with the State
Department and their lack of willingness, their lack of honesty
in naming names and in putting on the tier III list these
countries that are involved.
And in many cases, as in the case of Cambodia, this
corruption goes right up to the top. And it is far past time,
far past time for this government to be bringing all the
pressure we need to bring to bear on regimes around the world
that turn a blind eye or, as is the case of Cambodia, law
enforcement agencies that are actually culpable in these
abuses.
The focus today is on some of the promising local and
private sector initiatives that are connecting and empowering
communities around the world in the fight against human
trafficking.
As is the case in so many endeavors, local communities,
individual citizens, private businesses are often the engine of
real change. And in that regard, I am pleased to welcome as one
of our witnesses Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, whose
is here with his wife, Julie. Their commitment has aided
victims and raised awareness among our shared constituents and
throughout the State of California.
The committee looks forward to learning more today about
how these innovative partnerships are developing new tools to
defeat traffickers, to rescue their victims, to fight the
spread of modern-day slavery around the globe.
And I now recognize my good friend the ranking member for
his remarks before turning briefly to the chairman and ranking
member of our Human Rights Subcommittee for 2-minute opening
statements. Mr. Engel?
Mr. Engel. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this hearing. I know that California has been particularly
progressive on measures to stop human trafficking.
Supervisor Knabe, Mr. Myles, and Dr. MacDonald, welcome to
the Foreign Affairs Committee. I look forward to hearing your
testimony on creating successful local and private sector
initiatives in the fight against human trafficking and modern-
day slavery.
The International Labor Organization estimates that there
are 21 million victims of trafficking worldwide, including 5\1/
2\ million children. The Department of Justice and the FBI
reported over 1,200 human trafficking investigations in 2011 in
the United States. In reality, it is likely that there are many
more victims of trafficking since it is a widely unreported
crime.
Unfortunately, trafficking is a thriving industry found in
all regions of the world. It generates more than $30 billion in
profits every year from the sale of human beings and the
estimated proceeds from the activities or goods produced by its
victims.
Human trafficking is a crime that requires the coordinated
action of governments to stop and prosecute, but the private
sector also has a key role to play by engaging with NGOs and
governments to combat trafficking. Members of the private
sector admit a difficult truth, that human trafficking in their
supply chains, factories, farms, plantations, and restaurants
is a serious problem. Only by working hand in hand with private
sector partners can we put an end to modern-day slavery.
Since 2001, I have been deeply involved in a closely
related issue: Ending child labor in the global cocoa industry.
After learning of horrendous abuses involving children being
sold into slavery in the cocoa fields of Cote d'Ivoire and
Ghana, Senator Harkin and I formulated the Harkin-Engel
protocol to put an end to these despicable practices. This
approach was the first of its kind. Over the past 12 years, we
have worked with the Governments of Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and
the global chocolate industry to formalize engagements with the
private sector.
The private sector is supportive of these efforts with $10
million matched by $10 million in U.S. Government funds. The
protocol supports active civic engagement of local communities
to fight exploitation. We must do even more to promote greater
certification and verification efforts across a wide range of
industries to ensure that the products we consume at home are
not tainted by trafficked labor.
Working in human trafficking is a bipartisan cause. I am
pleased that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was
reauthorized in February of this year along with the Violence
Against Women Act, which included some important trafficking
provisions. I also want to recognize President Obama's
Executive Order strengthening protections against trafficking
in Federal contracts, which he issued last year.
The original Trafficking Victims Protection Act, championed
by our colleague Chris Smith, established a plan to eliminate
the scourge of human trafficking. It included the three P's:
Prevention, Protection, and Prosecution. And, under the
leadership of Secretary Hillary Clinton, a fourth P was
established, partnerships with governments and organizations,
the subjects of today's hearings.
I have been impressed by Supervisor Knabe's efforts to
raise awareness of trafficking in the Los Angeles area,
Polaris' partnership with Google to create a global anti-
trafficking hotline and Verite's work on ensuring that
companies adhere to international labor standards down their
supply chain.
I am interested in hearing more from today's witnesses on
how to bring more businesses to the table to fight human
trafficking and learn how the U.S. can lead by example for the
rest of the world.
One last point. I would like to commend the work of the
State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons, or J/TIP. Their annual reports in human trafficking
worldwide is key in making sure both Congress and the public
understand the extent of the problem and the progress being
made toward its elimination. I look forward to this year's
report.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you again for your leadership
and for holding this important hearing. And I look forward to
the testimony.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Engel.
We now go to Mr. Smith of New Jersey.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I, too, want
to thank you for your leadership and for holding this
extraordinarily important hearing on best practices by the
local and private sectors. And I want to make the point that it
is a fact that innovation and best practices that are developed
in the United States are being exported to fight human
trafficking abroad.
The three P's of Prevention, Protection, and Prosecution
have become the standards by which we evaluate every country's
anti-trafficking efforts and the hammer with which we have
chipped away at slavery around the world for more than a
decade.
Predictably, the traffickers have evolved and adapted along
the way, but so have we, with the invaluable help of local
governments, nongovernmental organizations, and private
enterprise thinking carefully and creatively about what they
can offer to this important fight.
NGOs like Airline Ambassadors and Innocents at Risk
pioneered training for flight attendants and other airline
personnel to ensure that flight crews would know how to
recognize potential victims of human trafficking and who to
call for help.
The Department of Homeland Security has subsequently
developed this idea into a full-fledged training known as Blue
Lightning for use by commercial airlines. Even more, what began
as an NGO training for airline personnel has now developed into
training for train conductors, bus station attendants, and
other transportation professionals, as well as the hotel
industry, who may have the opportunity to identify and help
rescue trafficking victims.
In my capacity as special representative to the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's
Parliamentary Assembly, I have had the privilege of sharing the
fine work of Airline Ambassadors and the broader transportation
implications with 57 participating states of the OSCE.
In like manner, it is my deepest hope, and I raise it at
every bilateral meeting that I have, that African countries,
Asian countries, and all nations will embrace situational
awareness strategies that empower the training to report
suspicious activity to stop this egregious exploitation.
The Airline Ambassadors initiative has already resulted in
the rescue of more than 100 trafficking victims and will soon
rescue thousands more. Collaboratively, we are narrowing the
space in which traffickers can operate. Every best practice and
innovation we can share with the world helps to tip the scale a
little more in the direction of freedom for the enslaved and
then prison for the slave masters.
You pointed out the importance of honesty, Mr. Chairman. I
am concerned. And that is why I had the hearing just a couple
of weeks ago that now that those countries that are on tier II
watch lists that have horrific trafficking records vis-a-vis
the minimum standards.
Now, unfortunately, with the new reauthorization, there is
a tipping of the balance toward the regional bureaus and a
power shift away from the TIP office; there is always a fight
inside the State Department. I am deeply concerned about those
like China; Vietnam, and I know you have been a tenacious
champion in fighting for human rights in Vietnam, and other
countries will not go down to tier III, where they belong
because the regional bureaus will have a disproportionate say
as to what happens.
We plan on holding hearings when the TIP Report comes out.
We have given them forewarning with the hearing we have just
had of these deep concerns. Just be honest, as you pointed out
so well, Mr. Chairman. Call it the way it really is and not
have that TIP Report in some way reflect a fiction.
I yield back.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Smith. We do put them on
notice.
Karen Bass from Los Angeles, California, do you have an
opening statement you would like to make?
Ms. Bass. I do. I do. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for
holding this meeting, and ranking member.
I was fortunate enough to assist with the passage of Supply
Chain Act during my time in the California Assembly. So I am
pleased to see the committee take up the issue at this time.
I would also like to thank our witnesses for your testimony
and recognize you for the inspiring work that you do every day
to combat the exploitation of individuals domestically and
internally. Supervisor Knabe and Child Welfare Director Philip
Browning, I also want to personally commend you for launching
the L.A. County Anti-Child Sex Trafficking Campaign and for
your continued advocacy on behalf of foster youth. There is
also the issue of sexual exploitation of women, men, and often
children.
This issue is particularly important to me because of the
impact on my hometown of Los Angeles and the prevalence of
foster youth being trafficked for this purpose. In 2012, the
L.A. County reported that an astonishing 59 percent of youth
identified as victims of sex trafficking were part of the
foster care system. Forced to bounce in and out of homes
without basic physical or emotional needs fulfilled, these
youth are often exploited by pimps and are conditioned to
believe that their value is based on how much income they can
generate. It is absolutely unacceptable to allow the continued
victimization and abuse of a population that we have vowed to
care for and protect.
That is why I, along with my colleague Tom Marino, have
reintroduced the Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act.
This bill will provide child welfare employees with appropriate
tools to identify, document, educate, and counsel child
trafficking victims and at-risk youth and require these
agencies to report the numbers of trafficking victims in foster
care and their plans to combat trafficking to the Federal
Government.
But congressional action is not enough. We must undertake a
whole of society approach to ensure the safety and dignity of
trafficking victims. There are many private organizations that
are currently addressing this issue in many creative ways.
Humanity United, a foundation devoted to advancing human
freedom across the globe, has supported anti-trafficking
initiatives by the Federal Government and the California
Attorney General's Office. The University of Southern
California's Annenberg School of Communication in Journalism
has been working closely with the FBI and other Federal
agencies to study technology's role in both facilitating and
fighting human trafficking. Many hotel chains are now training
their employees to identify signs of sex trafficking. We really
appreciate that.
I look forward to hearing what other strategies are in
place to address this problem in gaining a better understanding
of where the gaps exist in our efforts to end human trafficking
locally as well as internationally.
Thank you. I yield back my time.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Congresswoman Bass.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, who is the first
of our witnesses with us today, has been a tireless crusader in
Los Angeles County ever since he became aware of the heinous
child sex trafficking problems in our own backyard. And those
challenges represent the victimization of girls as young as 12.
He has pushed for multidisciplinary outreach and rehabilitation
services for sexually trafficked females in the juvenile
justice system. As you heard, he spearheaded several different
initiatives.
But a year ago in conjunction with law enforcement and
transit officials and private sector media companies, he led an
anti-sex trafficking campaign to raise public awareness and
engagement by placing bilingual signs and billboards in high-
traffic public places in the community, such as on the buses,
on transit. And that program has been further extended this
fall.
He has also been a strong public advocate for the
Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act, an act which is
now law in the State of California, that strengthens penalties
against traffickers and extends victims' protections.
We also have with us Mr. Bradley Myles, chief executive
officer of the Polaris Project, a leading organization in the
fight against human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Mr.
Myles helped launch the National Human Trafficking Hotline to
identify and assist survivors of trafficking. Previously he
worked to build the Human Trafficking Task Force here in
Washington, DC.
We also have with us Dr. Shawn MacDonald. Dr. MacDonald is
the director of programs and research at Verite, a group that
works with private companies to make their supply chains free
of human trafficking victims. Prior to his current position, he
worked as the director of accreditation at the Fair Labor
Association.
And, without objection, the witnesses' full prepared
statements will be made part of the record. Members may have 5
days to submit statements, questions, and extraneous material
for the record. And we would ask that everybody summarize their
opening statements within 5 minutes. We will begin with
Supervisor Knabe.
Mr. Knabe. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF MR. DON KNABE, SUPERVISOR, FOURTH DISTRICT, LOS
ANGELES COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
Mr. Knabe. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank
you for your leadership in helping to raise awareness of this
horrific issue of child sex trafficking around the globe.
I appreciate the opportunity to be with you today. And, Mr.
Chairman, as you said, given our time frame, I am going to
summarize the written statement which I have submitted to the
committee.
As some of you may know, Los Angeles County is the largest
county in the Nation, with over 10 million residents. And in my
district alone, I represent over 2 million people. I have been
honored to serve the county for nearly 20 years. But never in
my time in office have I heard an issue as shocking and
disturbing as what is happening to young girls right here in
the streets of America.
About 18 months ago, staff from our Probation Department
came to me to discuss what they were seeing as an escalating
problem in our juvenile justice system: Young girls being
arrested for prostitution. While society often has
characterized it as a choice, the average age of entry we
discovered into prostitution is 12 to 13.
Shortly after our initial meeting, at a fundraising event
for survivor programs, one of our probation officers was texted
that a 10-year-old, a 10-year-old, had just been taken into
custody for prostitution at 6 o'clock p.m. on a Tuesday night.
No 10-year-old little girl is choosing that life.
Today I would like to just briefly discuss some of our
efforts to combat child sex trafficking and the intersection of
international and local efforts to safeguard our most
vulnerable young people.
Los Angeles County, unfortunately, is recognized as one of
the hubs for sex trafficking in the Nation. With our two major
ports, airport, proximity to the border, we are particularly
vulnerable, though we are not alone. Big cities, small towns
across this Nation are waking up to the horror that young girls
are being trafficked across city limits, state lines, and
country borders.
Despite the varying locations, however, the story of these
girls is much the same. Children who fall victim to predatory
adults are often in the streets because of abuse or neglect at
home. The trafficker, the scum bag pimp, as they are often
called, in the United States promises love, family, a job, and
security.
In Los Angeles, our infamous gangs, many of which have
international connections, are now engaging in child sex
trafficking because it is much safer for them to sell a girl
than guns or drugs. And, frankly, it is more profitable. Once
put to work in the streets, these young girls can be given a
quota of $500 or more a night, which could lead to 8 or 10 or
more sexual acts, which she must meet or, unfortunately, risk
brutal violence.
Indeed, these threats are very legitimate. One survivor
told us of an incident in which several girls were taken to the
desert and forced to watch as one was burned to death for
attempting to run away.
As we see patterns in child sex trafficking across
geography, we also must develop models for protection and
prevention by working together across all levels of government
and with NGOs both here as well as internationally.
For us in Los Angeles County, it started with building
awareness. As a member of the board, we also sit on the MTA
board. Last year, we posted a campaign in English and Spanish
about sexually trafficked youth on all 3,000 Metrobuses,
railcars, trains, and at stations, and also on our Metrolink
system, which crosses county borders, into places where we
believe young people are most vulnerable.
I was pleased that the private sector voluntarily joined us
in our efforts. Clear Channel and Lamar Advertising donated
over 100 billboards and 50 digital displays to show
advertisements across Los Angeles County.
We have created a video called ``Manipulated'' to tell the
story of child sex trafficking, which has had over 40,000 hits
and been viewed in 171 countries.
Raising awareness, however, is just not about the public.
Through a grant through this gracious committee here, we have
trained over 1,600 people, like judges, attorneys, county staff
who regularly come in contact with victims but may not realize
it.
Through another Federal grant, we have established a
Collaborative Court to focus specifically on the victims of
child sex trafficking. Through this court, which is dedicated
to the victims only, we are able to provide the girls with
wrap-around victim-centered response teams to help them with
their physical as well as their mental health issues as well as
housing, education, and training services.
Last summer, Los Angeles County hosted the first national
Empowerment Conference for the victims, at-risk girls, to help
them overcome their challenges; heal their wounds; and, most
importantly, look toward the future. In fact, five of these
young women, survivors, will be here in DC this week to
advocate on behalf of all victims of human trafficking. And, of
course, helping the victims is critical, but we also must find
ways to prevent this atrocity altogether.
We are beginning to build partnerships with local school
districts. We have a program called My Life, My Choice to
select middle schools where we know exploitation is the
highest.
It has been 18 months since we started our journey in Los
Angeles County. I am proud of what our county staff has
accomplished and pleased that we have had support from our
Federal partners here as well as the private sector.
The voices of these abused children often remain silent. In
the past, young girls arrested for prostitution were judged by
society exactly as their pimps predicted.
The pimp life, outrageously, has been celebrated. Through
education, survivor, and prevention programs and legislation,
we are going to reverse this injustice. Young girls, those that
we are responsible to protect, as you all know, no matter where
they are from or where they have been trafficked, they are true
victims, but that we are here to support to help them realize
that their lives are valuable and that they are worthy of the
dreams they once imagined. We must do everything we can to get
these girls off that track and on a path to a better life ahead
and together say no more, not in our streets, not to our young
girls.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Knabe follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Knabe.
Mr. Myles? Mr. Myles, just hit that button there.
Mr. Myles. There we go.
Chairman Royce. There you go.
Mr. Myles. I will start again.
STATEMENT OF MR. BRADLEY MYLES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, POLARIS PROJECT
Mr. Myles. Thank you for convening this hearing today and
inviting me to speak. My name is Bradley Myles. I am the CEO of
Polaris Project. We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to
combating human trafficking and modern slavery.
In my testimony today, I would like to focus on one area of
a comprehensive approach to fighting trafficking, which is
anti-trafficking hotlines and the powerful role that hotlines
can play as part of an effective anti-trafficking response. And
let's first start with a point about victim identification.
You all mentioned the statistic of 21 million. Well, that
same year the Trafficking in Persons report estimated that only
around 41,000 trafficking victims were identified globally. So
based on those 2 estimates, 21 million and 41,000, our
collective victim identification rates are not yet even at 1
percent of the total people in modern slavery.
And one of the most common problems is that victims don't
know where to go for help. They don't know that there are
numbers that they can call for help.
So Polaris Project has piloted local anti-trafficking
hotlines in multiple U.S. cities. And for the past 5 years, we
have operated the country's 24/7 central human trafficking
hotline, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. The
number is 1-888-373-7888. This hotline is funded, in part, by
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
We have also recently launched a national texting service,
which is BeFree, 233733, in partnership with THORN, Twilio,
Salesforce.com, in an effort to reach more victims.
Here are some of the highlights of the work that we have
seen on the U.S. national hotline. First, we have fielded over
75,000 calls. They are coming in at a rate of about 80 a day.
Thus far, we have learned about 9,000 survivors of trafficking,
and we have received calls directly from 3,500 survivors of
trafficking. So the survivors are calling the hotline directly.
We reported over 3,200 cases of trafficking to law enforcement
authorities.
So this brings me to a point about hotlines and the
importance of data. Not only can hotlines play a role in victim
identification and connecting survivors to services, hotlines
can also play a role as robust sources of data to understand
the crime of trafficking. By adding a data analysis component,
hotlines can identify the newest trends in patterns and then
communicate those to relevant actors in the field to learn
about how to fight this crime.
So, moving forward, I would like to share with you two
initiatives that we are working on, both related to anti-
trafficking hotlines globally. The first is in 2012, Polaris
Project launched our new global programming with funding, in
part, from the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons. And through this recent TIP
office grant, what we are going to do is we are going to map
and identify every human trafficking hotline globally around
the world. We are going to connect with those hotlines to learn
more about them, and we are going to offer training and
technical assistance to support the creation and expansion of
other human trafficking hotlines in target countries.
In the early months of this program, we have already
identified 70 anti-trafficking hotlines around the world that
we are beginning to be in touch with. And some of the initial
lessons that we have learned are that hotlines around the world
are essentially hidden gems. They are under-resourced. They are
under-publicized. They are uncoordinated. And they are not
fully maximizing their potential to identify more victims to
connect them with services and to understand how to fight this
crime. So this brings me to the second initiative.
In April 2013, we joined with Liberty Asia and La Strada
International to form a new network of anti-trafficking
hotlines across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This initiative,
entitled the Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network, recently
received a global impact award from Google and engineering
support from Google Ideas, Palantir Technologies, and
Salesforce.com. And through this network, we are developing a
more coordinated global response for victims of this
transnational crime. And one of our goals is hotline coverage
for every part of the world.
So let me end with these final thoughts. We need to
modernize the concept of a hotline. For us, next generation
hotlines need to communicate, not just through the phone but
through texting, through email, through online, through social
media. Hotline can also build better cloud-based call data
tracking systems, and they could build better data analysis
systems. These are some of the new standards that we could aim
for.
So imagine what our global anti-trafficking effort could
feel like if there were a well-publicized, well-resourced
hotline operating in every country or every region of the
world. And through the GHTHN network that we are building these
hotlines, we are sharing data. They were leveraging new
technologies. They are partnering with the private sector and
coordinating more with each other.
And, combined with the spread of mobile devices around the
world, this new global safety net will make it easier for the
millions of people in slavery to reach out to the hotline and
access help. To make all of this come to life, hotlines rely on
public awareness. And it all starts with public awareness; with
training; as Congressman Smith said, situational awareness
strategies; transport systems; hotels, as Congresswoman Bass
mentioned. And if we could take the situational awareness
strategies, channel them into a well network infrastructure of
hotlines, channel those calls into referral relationships to
law enforcement and social service providers, and add to that
data analysis to understand the crime, that is a powerful
recipe for fighting trafficking in any country. So these are
some of the initiatives that Polaris is working on that we
believe will make a major impact in the global fight against
trafficking.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak before you today. I
will look forward to taking your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Myles follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Dr. MacDonald, go ahead.
STATEMENT OF SHAWN MACDONALD, PH.D., DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS AND
RESEARCH, VERITE
Mr. MacDonald. Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel and
other distinguished members of the committee, thank you very
much for inviting me to testify today. My name is Shawn
MacDonald. I am director of programs and research at Verite,
which is an American NGO that works globally to help companies
improve supply chain labor conditions. The assessment,
training, and consulting work that we do benefit workers and
companies alike.
For more than 15 years, we have been documenting the
mechanisms of labor trafficking. And, more importantly, we have
been crafting solutions that are scalable and adoptable by any
company.
We believe that companies must base their anti-trafficking
efforts squarely on responsible recruitment practices,
particularly accountability for how their supplier factories
and farms hire workers. Almost all products we buy, clothes,
computers, furniture, food, involve a supply chain that employs
migrant workers. And, to be clear, when we are talking about
labor trafficking, we are mostly talking about debt bondage of
migrant workers.
Workers go to great lengths to secure a job and in the
process often become indebted to labor brokers, so indebted
that it can take years for them to be free of debt and
intimidation. The actions of these middle men, the traps and
tricks they use, the fees they charge, the ways they coerce and
intimidate workers, these are the mechanisms of labor
trafficking. And unless a company gains control of the
outsourcing of recruitment to such people, they are part of the
problem and not part of the solution.
No worker should have to pay with their liberty simply to
secure a job building a hotel in Dubai or harvesting palm oil
in Asia or picking berries in New England.
So I am glad to have the opportunity to let you know about
the ways we have been working with real companies to create
blueprints to assure fairness in how workers enter their supply
chains. These are business-focused market-savvy approaches to
complement public policies.
First I want to tell you about Verite's Fair Hiring
Toolkit, which provides companies with implementation
guidelines, program templates, management procedures, and the
like. It is the pathway for any company that wants to ensure
trafficking victims are not making their products.
I want to tell you about one company Verite worked with to
do just that whose actions are already part of the public
record. So I am not breaking business confidentiality. You all
know Apple and its record for innovation, but you may not know
that Apple is also a pioneer in reengineering its supply chain
labor recruitment systems so workers are not trafficked. Some
of their supplier factories were outsourcing recruitment to
brokers. They charge workers sometimes thousands of dollars for
that job.
We worked with Apple to create an approach that requires
their supplier factories to reimburse fees to workers who paid
for their job. Now the supplier factory has a very real
incentive to either hire directly or to outsource recruitment
only to a reputable labor recruiter. This approach is working.
Brokers and factories have reimbursed over $13 million to those
cheated workers. Factories are changing practices to avoid that
cost. No company is perfect, but we think others should pay
close attention to Apple's approach.
That example leads me to another Verite initiative. Last
year we launched a Framework for Ethical Recruitment that is
targeted to the global labor broker industry itself. Our
framework shows exactly how a recruitment firm can meet legal
and ethical standards and provides a practical way to validate
which firms meet the standard and which do not.
Our framework can also help Federal contractors meet
President Obama's executive order announced last September,
which requires Federal contractors to have anti-trafficking
safeguards in place.
As recruitment firms become independently verified to our
standards, they are more likely to be hired by Federal
contractors and companies, like Apple suppliers, who have a
tangible business prerogative to choose carefully whom they are
hiring to find their labor. It will also help companies comply
with California's Transparency in Supply Chains Act that
Representative Bass alluded to, which requires companies to
disclose their anti-trafficking policies. And it helps
companies protect themselves in the face of tougher state laws
that we are seeing being implemented across the country that
are holding employers much more accountable for labor
trafficking.
And, finally, we find many American companies are connected
to trafficking deeper in their supply chains from the commodity
level on up: The cotton that becomes our clothes, the metals
that are mined for our electronics.
As you know from Representative Engel, many years working
with the cocoa sector to tackle child and forced labor, this is
not easy. The chain is possible when companies, NGOs, and
government work together to incentivize better business
practice.
In conclusion, we are working to harness American business
creativity, American business enterprise to rework supply chain
relationships so that nobody is ensnared in debt bondage. The
attention from this committee sends a powerful message to the
private sector to move from rhetoric to concrete action on this
front.
Mr. Chairman, we stand ready to work with you and the
entire committee to help the private sector innovate to end
human trafficking. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Mr. MacDonald follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Mr. MacDonald, thank you.
One of the issues that was discussed here is this full
spectrum approach. For example, in L.A. County, the focus on
what you do in order to create the public awareness so that you
actually identify the victim and then getting law enforcement,
getting the physician community involved in identifying and
reporting, getting the training for law enforcement in terms of
how to deal with those victims and then providing the resources
to the victims that are in custody. And the last element, I
guess, is the punishment that is directed toward those who are
engaged in organizing this trafficking.
In terms of that lesson, I would just ask each of you, how
might we share those lessons with others, other communities,
but also others overseas that have a similar interest but maybe
not the lesson plan or the capability? How can that information
be shared and empowered so that others in other countries begin
to take action as well?
Mr. Knabe. Well, to begin with, I think, you know, as the
largest county in America, I believe it is our duty to be very
involved in this particular program, particularly, as I
mentioned in my testimony, about the ports and the airport and
the borders.
Earlier this year, we started with the National Association
of Counties by hosting a Smart Justice Symposium. We can do a
little bit at a time. And we had not only the county folks and
our probation and Children and Family Services, but we had
juvenile court officials. We had Federal Homeland Security
representatives, as well as the FBI. It was a very successful
program and a little bit--because people started to realize,
even from some of the smaller counties around America, that
they had these similar situations in their own backyard, but
they were not able to identify it until we put it out there.
So, I mean, there are building blocks that we can do as a
county. Obviously having Federal partnerships would really
embellish or enhance our opportunities to get the word out.
Mr. Myles. I think what I would as well is that I think
that in the anti-trafficking field, there are these very
concrete nuggets of hope where things are successful and
efforts are making impact. And we have documented that.
And so what the field needs to do a better job of is
pointing people toward these successful models and promising
approaches, documenting those, and then leveraging the existing
networks that have already been built through things like the
National Association of Counties or different international
coalitions that exist, business coalitions that exist. The
channels for communication exist.
What we need to do is we need to direct these documented
successful strategies into those well-networked channels to
begin spreading that information around the world through
thought leadership. And I think we are beginning to do that
with something like the Global Human Trafficking Hotline
Network. We are going to share these hotline strategies with
different hotlines around the world, but that same model can be
applied to business coalitions, to coalitions within
government. And using the existing channels, we don't need to
rebuild coalitions. We just need to slot the information into
the existing infrastructure and let it spread.
Chairman Royce. Shawn?
Mr. MacDonald. I would add that what we are finding with
the private sector is that there is a great hunger for concrete
examples of how companies are changing their policies and
practices within their supply chain. And we are working to get
that information out to other companies through trainings and
webinars and things like that that enable them to learn from
each other. And what is really exciting is that because so many
companies, particularly the large American companies, large
retailers, like the Wal-Marts, the Targets of the world, are
taking these issues very seriously and are beginning to
promulgate new standards and practices that are filtering out
not just through their suppliers here in the United States but
also globally.
And businesses are finding ways to compete with one
another. That is why in my remarks, I was alluding to market
mechanisms that we hope will enable companies to compete on how
well they are handling these programs.
Chairman Royce. So information from one company here might
be useful to businesses in other countries because of the way
that they might key off of decisions made here, but then you
also have the ability to get these international media
companies involved and raise awareness, which is one of the
things done in L.A. County.
How else could you use international media to reach your
goals there, Shawn? Well, I will ask Mr. Myles, too.
Mr. MacDonald. We are finding the international media is
very interested in this. You see major outlets, like CNN and
The Guardian Media Group out of the U.K. focusing very clearly
on what companies can do.
Supervisor?
Mr. Knabe. I mean, I think while the international media is
extremely important to help us facilitate the knowledge base,
what is happening right here in our own backyard, I think, like
many of us think, that it always happens in Third World
countries when it is right here in the United States of
America, whether it is a small rural area or major metropolitan
area. And that knowledge and getting the word out, just looking
at our domestic media is extremely important.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Don.
Mr. Myles. I think we need to saturate communities with
awareness of what human trafficking is, how to spot it, and
what to do when you think you have found it. And the
international media, through the CNN Freedom Project, its new
project launched by The Guardian, some of the reporting done by
the BBC, can play a role in that saturation, but from my
perspective, I want us to be careful not to put out media
stories that don't have an action item associated with it.
And if the person's action item is, ``I read that. Good to
know. Not quite sure how to take action from here,'' that media
story hasn't done its full role.
Chairman Royce. Exactly.
Mr. Myles. I think the full role is to put the action item
at the end. So if you look at what Supervisor Knabe did in
L.A., there is an action item at the end of those billboards.
If you look at some of the media that has been reported in the
U.S., they are reporting the national hotline of the BeFree
texting at the end. International media can then channel to
these hotlines around the world so there can be that action
taken.
Chairman Royce. And the Californians Against Sexual
Exploitation Act would be an action item in California that was
pushed that would certainly have a deterrent effect in terms of
the new penalties on those involved in trafficking.
We go now to Mr. Engel from New York.
Mr. Engel. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. MacDonald, let me ask you. You and Verite have focused
on standard setting and corporate social responsibility from
your testimony in combating human trafficking. How does Verite
identify corporate partners to work to combat human
trafficking?
Mr. MacDonald. I think it is through a combination of
mechanisms. Very often companies will come to us because they
are aware of the efforts we have made to publicize our approach
to these. And so very often they will ask us for assistance.
But we will also spend a lot of time reaching out to
business associations, speaking at conferences, working closely
with multi-stakeholder initiatives that demonstrate which
companies are interested in moving forward on this because the
vast majority of companies are not doing anything on this
issue, unfortunately, but you do see some pioneering companies
that want to take a first step. We will reach out to them. They
will reach out to us. We will help them craft approaches and
encourage them to share those lessons with others.
And it is that wide range of experiences that we use to
create these open sources pools that we put out there for the
public around the world to learn from to build better business
practices.
Mr. Engel. How does Verite design effective oversight
programs for industries that may be reluctant to have outside
groups examine their labor practices?
Mr. MacDonald. Well, much of our work is done under
business confidentiality rules. So we will do assessment for
companies. We will design an approach for them. We will train
their suppliers, that kind of thing. We will work with the
workers who are affected by these policies. And over time, they
will become more confident about sharing their lessons with
others. And then, as I said, we try to share the broad lessons
learned with other groups.
But I think it is important to note that there is really a
revolution in technology around this where it is not just a few
companies that sometimes get ensnared in the media spotlight,
but tweets and videos that workers around the world, even in
very poor countries, are making about their conditions are
getting information out there. So companies are increasingly
being held accountable for their policies, as I mentioned,
deeper in the supply chain.
So it isn't the command and control situation anymore. It
is very much a free-for-all of information and then more and
more expectation that companies do something.
Mr. Engel. Thank you.
Through my work on the Engel Protocol, I have learned that
the private-public partnerships are very important. I am
wondering if anyone on the panel would tell me your experiences
with forging these public-private partnerships in combating
human trafficking. What obstacles did you encounter? How did
you overcome them? And, based on your experiences, what key
contributions can the private sector and the nonprofit sector
offer to anti-trafficking campaigns that government entities
cannot? Anyone? Mr. Supervisor?
Mr. Knabe. Mr. Engel, as I mentioned in my testimony, we
had a very good partnership with the private sector, with Clear
Channel and Lamar Advertising coming forward on their own. It
would be very difficult for us to find the ability to buy 100
billboards throughout the county and 50 digital boards. The
cost to that, it is just very, very significant. It has
absolutely changed the playing field in Los Angeles County by
raising awareness, that in conjunction with our Metro and
Metrolink programs. Again, people are seeing that. And those
are the kinds of programs. And they have had a very adamant
effect on all our programs there in Los Angeles County. And it
is a great partnership.
So we have not had any obstacles. We continue to reach out
to see if we can get more, but, in particular, that was an
incredible find for us and an incredible partnership.
Mr. Engel. Thank you.
Mr. Myles?
Mr. Myles. I would add to that I think Clear Channel has
done amazing work through the partnership in L.A. County but
also in other states around the country. They are publicizing
different hotline numbers and billboards. So they are backing
up that work and spreading it nationally.
We have really seen over the past few years the way that
partnerships with the private sector have rapidly increased the
success of the anti-trafficking field. I think it has notably
increased over the past 2 years how much the private sector has
been involved in the field. Google has been helping us
publicize the national hotline through revised search terms.
Salesforce.com has been giving cloud-based computing solutions
to nonprofits and to hotlines around the world. Palantir
Technologies has donated their software data analysis system to
Polaris to help us better understand the human trafficking data
that we are seeing in the national hotline.
We are also seeing companies like Sabre, the travel
company, beginning to put this information out to travel agents
around the world because they are in a position to identify it.
Facebook is looking at how can they do a better job looking at
prevention on the issue and also putting the hotline number out
there, just dozens and dozens of private sector partnerships
beginning to happen in the field. And it is really showing how
the field can innovate and make sure that we are out innovating
the traffickers in bringing the strengths together between
nonprofits, government, and private sector.
Mr. Engel. Thank you.
Dr. MacDonald?
Mr. MacDonald. I would just add that what we are seeing is
that NGOs and companies are becoming much more comfortable
working with one another. The NGOs provide real legitimacy to
the efforts of companies and help them push beyond their
comfort zone and help them to become more comfortable with
greater transparency around these efforts and also help them
cooperate with their competitors within the business sector.
And I think this experimentation that is happening between
the private sector and NGOs is undergirded by new policy
approaches that we have spoken of here today, not just the
overall architecture from the TVPA but also the California
Transparency Supply Chain Act, the executive order that we
mentioned for Federal contractors. So that provides really
strong impetus to public policy for businesses to step up to
the plate with NGOs helping them. And we are seeing them in
other countries, too, because this great surge of interest and
outrage over human trafficking means as well as the TIP Report,
for all of its flaws, really put focus on government agencies
overseas to change the way that they are partnering with the
private sector, the way that they are regulating labor brokers
and things like that.
So there is a fervent plethora of activity happening that
we think is really exciting.
Mr. Knabe. Just the fact it is just not a comfortable
subject. And I think the awareness from the private sector that
they are gaining something from that in their ability to work
through the system without being punished or something like
that and their willingness to come forward because this is just
not a comfortable subject for everyone to deal with. And,
again, thank you and all of you for your leadership in this
issue.
Mr. Engel. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Royce. Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me ask Mr. MacDonald, if I could, first and foremost.
Last July I held a hearing on worker rights in China. And we
heard from a man named Li Qiang, who is the executive director
of China Labor Watch, who was an activist inside of China. And
for more than a decade has headed up this organization.
He spoke about some reports they had just done on Apple and
on other companies. He had two major problems that seemed to be
Achilles' heels when it comes to the exploitation of that labor
force and, of course, makes it harder to determine supply
chains and whether or not products were being made by gulag
labor or by exploited labor.
He pointed out that dispatched workers are a huge issue,
including with Apple; third party agreements that kind of evade
a type of scrutiny that would lead to an accountability on the
part of Apple. And then he spent a great deal of time talking
about the auditors and said in 2010, one company that was doing
auditing had dismissed two-thirds, about 300 of their auditors
because they had been bribed. And there seems to be a great
incentive to bribe auditors to give a good mark to a company.
And then they come to their shareholders and say, ``Look, we
are doing great'' when it is nothing but a fraud. And I wonder
if you might speak to that because that seems to be an area of
some neglect.
Secondly, if I could ask Mr. Myles, with regards to the
hotline, what is the interface and the response time with law
enforcement? For example, I am a bus driver. I see something
going on on my bus that looks very, very suspicious. I call the
hotline. What happens? Do the police come to the offloading?
You know, is there that kind of--you know, with the
airlines, we know the flight attendants tell the pilot. Pilots
call to the airport, the destination. And as they offload, if
there is a suspicious activity going on, ICE or some law
enforcement would be there to greet and to separate and to
determine whether or not a trafficking situation has been in
progress. Response time for law enforcement when hotel
employees and others call, what has been your experience with
regards to that?
And then to Mr. Knabe, thank you for your leadership and
for your being here today, coming out to testify. You mentioned
in your testimony that child prostitution is a misdemeanor in
L.A. and that pimps are often waiting outside the courthouse
door to drag the child back into slavery. And I am wondering
what law enforcement is doing to mitigate that.
You know, it seems to me that we need to declare war on
these pimps and, I mean, put them away and put them away for
life. But if they are waiting outside the courtroom, it would
seem to me that it is not a heavy lift to determine what is
going on there and to seek to go after those pimps.
What are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Knabe. Well, first of all, as I mentioned in the
testimony, the collaborative courtroom has been an incredible
success story. Instead of just treating these young girls
coming in, getting slapped in the wrist, you know, ``You are a
prostitute. Go back out in the street,'' the pimp waiting in
the parking lot, the collaborative courtroom brings everyone
together. It brings law enforcement. It brings mental health
issues, health services as well as housing issues.
One of the biggest issues is being able to isolate these
young girls into a safe housing situation because if they don't
go back out there--and most of them are tattooed and marked in
different ways. The pimp is on the look to make their life
miserable or kill them.
So we have to bring some even to get into the juvenile
justice system. We are doing some foster care training kinds of
situations to be able to protect these young ladies from the
violence that they are confronted with.
But this is a small scale. We have a dedicated courtroom,
this collaborative courtroom. The only cases they hear are
these young cases. And so we are able to protect them. But
there is so much more. I mean, we could do more if we had
obviously additional funding to expand the program.
But those wrap-around services for these young ladies, I
can't tell you how important they are because they have no
self-esteem. They have none. And these scum bag pimps are just
saying, ``We love you. You are the most beautiful girl I have
ever seen. I promise you a job, retire,'' you know, whatever it
may be. And there they go. And it is not their choice.
And so when we are able to bring them in, treat them like a
victim, not a guilty party.
Mr. Myles. I would say to the issue of response time, it is
a great question. It is something that we focus on every single
day. And I think there are some nuances to it.
First, it depends on the type of call. So what is that
person calling about? Is it a crisis? Is it a tip? Maybe they
are calling about general information. Maybe they are calling
about something that they would like to talk about a few months
down the road. So it depends on how urgent is that call.
The second thing is we try to be caller-centered in running
the hotline because we want to build trust with the callers. We
don't want people to feel like when they call the hotline, they
are going to get put in the situation that they didn't want to
get put into. So what does that caller want? And does that
caller want to be in touch with law enforcement? What are they
seeking?
Third, the question is, what is the level of detail people
are calling in? If someone is on a bus and calls in, says, ``I
am looking at something suspicious,'' but whatever else, we
might not have anything specific to act upon, but if they call
in and say, ``Here is a name. Here is a number. Here is a
license plate,'' we have actionable information.
Fourth, it depends on the local infrastructure that exists
there. We are in touch with all of the human trafficking task
forces, the ACT teams, FBI offices, ICE offices, local police
departments. If the infrastructure is there, we can leverage
it, but if the infrastructure isn't there and they are calling
in in a remote area or they are calling in in a place where the
response time might not be there for any other crime, then that
is something that we have to deal with.
What I would say is when we do need a kick in the gear with
a specific crisis call, we have seen cases with response time
in minutes, getting into the hands of law enforcement and
people responding, but sometimes people need to realize that
that is what 911 is for also. If they are really dealing with
something that needs an urgent crisis, we are recommending
people go directly to 911.
There are other hotlines out there. Law enforcement
operations sometimes operate hotlines in L.A. There is the
Department of Homeland Security tip line. So people can call
other law enforcement sources if they want to go directly to
law enforcement, but if they are calling a nonprofit hotline,
for all the benefits of calling a nonprofit, trust blue
collars, those types of things, we can still build that
response time as quickly as we need to in the places where that
capacity is there.
Chairman Royce. We are going to----
Mr. MacDonald. Mr. Smith, I am really glad to--oh, I am
sorry.
Chairman Royce. We are going to go to Karen Bass of Los
Angeles. Congresswoman?
Mr. MacDonald. Okay. I will answer your question later.
Chairman Royce. Go ahead. Go ahead. You had something.
Mr. MacDonald. I was just going to very quickly. I was glad
that Congressman Smith mentioned this issue of poor labor-
monitoring situations because far too many companies rely only
on very superficial audits to get a sense of what is happening
in their supply chain. That is simply not enough. And we are
certainly seeing that with the fires in Pakistan, the building
collapse in Bangladesh, just a terrible tragedy.
What we are asking for, what we are asking you and
everybody else is to really ask tough questions of these
companies. An audit is just a simple first step in finding out
what is happening. It has nothing to do with actually putting
in practices and place and building in incentives, like the
ones that I mentioned that really make the supplier factories
and farms step up, pay attention, and be held accountable for
what they are doing.
So what we are really concerned about is that with more
transparency around this with the California law, for example,
with the executive order, the companies will get away, so to
speak, with simply saying, ``Of course, we monitor our supply
chain'' but leave it at that.
Chairman Royce. Congresswoman Bass?
Ms. Bass. Again, I want to really commend the panel for the
work that you have been doing and for your testimony today. And
I wanted to follow up with what my colleague Chris Smith was
asking about what happens afterwards.
Supervisor Knabe, you talked about the collaborative
courtroom. And I wanted to understand what gaps there might be
in L.A. And I know that this is a challenging population also.
Sometimes they are not necessarily willing. They want to be
rescued, but then, you know, they go back and forth.
And so my question concerning gaps is after we have been
through the courtroom process, what kind of support do we have
in L.A. County to assist the girls once they are, you know,
through the court process? Do we have community-based
organizations?
Mr. Knabe. We have community-based organizations we are
working with. Our own Department of Children and Family
Services is working with them.
The unfortunate thing, probably the most difficult
situation that we confront and probably the biggest gap is
housing----
Ms. Bass. Right. I see.
Mr. Knabe [continuing]. And our ability to place these
young people in safe conditions. As an example, sometimes we
are forced to actually bring them into our juvenile halls.
Okay? But that is also a dangerous situation because they
almost have to be isolated from the population because you
always have to remember there are other young victims that
still want to be part of the prostitution ring that will say,
``Hey,'' so and so ``is in the system. She is in here.'' And
there will be threats on their life.
So the placement, the biggest gap, the biggest gap, is in
housing, whether it is being trained, our foster care folks, or
being able to site a home for six or eight girls. You know, we
do have those projects available. And we are working on them
with, you know, various community kinds of groups and programs,
but that is the number one gap, is housing.
Ms. Bass. And, also, Mr. Smith mentioned that child
prostitution was a misdemeanor in L.A. County. Is that
accurate?
Mr. Knabe. It is being treated as that. One of the things
with your groundbreaking legislation--and now we have two new
pieces of legislation which have been introduced to--well,
first of all, the CASE Act, which passed overwhelmingly last
year is the toughest human trafficking law in the United
States, but we have added--one of the things we are trying to
do is add pimping, pandering, human trafficking to the list of
crimes associated with gang activity----
Ms. Bass. Right.
Mr. Knabe [continuing]. Because that is a huge deal. And
obviously that would help us better assist some of our foster
kids as well as--unfortunately, the system is not equipped to
handle it right now. And so we are going to have to rely on
more stringent penalties for these pimps and what they do to
these young girls, you know, to create a situation where it is
not as fruitful or they are put away for life.
Ms. Bass. Well, I think one of the things that needs to
change is our whole orientation toward this. I convened a
meeting in Los Angeles of ministers to talk about the
situation, particularly in south L.A. And I think we even need
to get away from using the term ``prostitution'' because I
don't know how you can be a prostitute at ten. You know what I
mean? That is child rape. And I think we need to change our
whole orientation as to how we even look at the situation. And
I think with that will flow more resources, hopefully.
Mr. Knabe. Well, I would agree totally. I mean, that is one
of the great things about the collaborative courtroom because
they are not being treated as prostitutes. They are being
treated as rape victims. And, as I said to Mr. Engel, I said,
look it, this is not a comfortable subject for anyone. And we
are going to have to rely on faith-based communities, one of
our sources for group homes. I mean, that is another option
that we have that we are looking at.
So just the level because people don't want to say, ``It is
in my backyard'' or ``It is in my city'' or ``It is here or
there.'' You know, they want to talk about it. And it is the
same problem you run into with your food chain kinds of
situations with your companies.
And so I would totally agree with changing it from
``prostitution'' to ``rape victims'' or----
Ms. Bass. And it is the community awareness. So I was
encouraging the ministers to slow down their cars and look in
the faces because if you look at the females that are on the
street, you can see that many of them are our children.
Mr. Knabe. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And, I mean, one of
the things with this whole billboard and the flyers that we put
out there, you can't just do that. It has to be training in
awareness involved with that because it is not just a billboard
saying. And it was law enforcement has to recognize. Look it,
these young ladies have to get much better treatment than a
backpack would on a train left by itself--you know, after 9/11,
we did everything--and to be able to recognize.
We had our CEO of MTA out of recognition, a successful
recognition, because he was riding the trains. And so there is
a public awareness that is so important and training that is so
important and have people say, ``Look it, I am not comfortable
talking about it, but we have got to fix it. I want to be part
of the solution.''
Ms. Bass. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Chairman Royce. We go now to Judge Poe from Texas.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being
here. I appreciate your candor, especially the supervisor's
candor. I like the way you say things.
Just a quick background. I was a judge in Texas for forever
before I came up here. And this trafficking issue is a scourge.
Unfortunately, my hometown of Houston, Texas is the center and
hub of international trafficking into the United States. Women
are sneaked into Mexico from the south, from the Atlantic, from
the Pacific, and then they are smuggled into the United States.
Houston, by its location, is where they are brought. And they
are scattered everywhere, including all the way to Los Angeles.
It is my understanding, as you have pointed out, that the
issue of where to put these young women is a major problem.
There are approximately 5,000 animal shelters in the United
States. I love those places. I got my Dalmatians from Dalmatian
rescue. Good for them for doing what they are doing.
But, according to Mr. Myles, your organization, the Polaris
Project, last year, you said or your Polaris Project said that
in the whole United States, there are only 1,644 beds for
trafficking children or trafficking victims.
Mr. Myles. All victims.
Mr. Poe. All of them throughout the whole country?
Mr. Myles. Yes, sir.
Mr. Poe. That is not near enough based upon the massive
problem that confronts us.
Supervisor, I want to ask you about who is running these
operations. You said it is organized gang activity. Are the
drug cartels involved in bringing in these young kids primarily
into the United States or is it an independent group of
criminals doing this?
Mr. Knabe. I think you have both. I mean, you do have the
independent group of criminals doing it, but, unfortunately, in
our backyard with one of the largest gang populations in
America, the gangs are getting into this business. This
business is so much safer than dealing with drugs or guns and
so much more profitable. I mean, they could take these young
women and make them turn tricks five, six, seven, eight times a
night. They can only sell a drug once, and they can only sell a
gun once. So they are organized. And many of our gangs have not
only domestic connections but international connections as
well. So there may be.
And we are trying obviously to isolate that to see if there
is any drug cartel involvement in the trafficking, which
probably there will be, but it has not been validated yet. But
it is organized I think through the gangs, but there are a lot
of independent camps out there.
Mr. Poe. There are three people involved at least in the
human trafficking. Of course, there is the victim. I think as a
culture and society, we need to focus on helping that victim,
rescuing the victim from forced prostitution, human slavery.
That is a word and a phrase nobody wants to talk about, human
slavery, which is what this is.
And then you have got the criminal element that brings
these kids into the United States. But then you have in the
middle the consumer. You have got the person that is paying for
this awful deed. As a society, I think we have got to focus on
who those consumers are.
And if convicted, if I had my way, if these folks were
convicted of human trafficking, exploiting young women in human
trafficking, that is when we would use the internet. We would
let the world know what these folks look like. They don't want
anybody to know who they are. Of course, you put the trafficker
in prison for as long as you can, but the victim is where I
think the system has to start as allowing all victims. And this
idea that many of these victims are immigrants brought in the
United States and the pimp says, ``You turn me in. I am going
to make sure you are deported. You will never testify against
me,'' we have got to work on that problem, making sure they can
come forward and testify, safely testify.
But what can we do right now? As my time is expiring, what
can we do right now as a body in Congress to move victims'
issues to the front on these young women? Any of you want to
weigh in on that?
Mr. Knabe. Well, I mean, from my perspective, obviously,
you know, adding the pimping, the pandering, the human
trafficking, the list of crimes associated either with gang
activity or some of the other kinds of things that make it even
more difficult to get a domestic media that is cooperative in
putting out to consumers faces or names out there as well in
the public are things that could happen immediately without a
lot of, you know, Federal debate or stage debate or county
debate, are the kinds of things that we need to get the
information out there.
Mr. Myles. Two points briefly. If I could just jump in,
Judge Poe? I think one is what we are seeing around the country
is that states are recognizing that these kids are victims and
shouldn't be treated as ``child prostitutes.'' So you have
certain states that are looking at laws that really do change
the paradigm in the way that Congresswoman Bass was talking
about. So these kids are seen in the victim situation as
victims of abuse, not as criminals.
Only about 11 states have done that so far. Thirty-nine
other states haven't. So if Congress were to say, ``It is the
sense of Congress that we do believe that these children should
be treated as victims,'' that would send a signal to the
states. Even like a sense of the Congress resolution would
work.
And, then, secondly, to the point about the buyers, these
buyers of children, police departments can police the buyers
with a decoy ad. You could put a decoy ad on an online site
about a fictitious child, set up an operation in a hotel room,
and you are going to have 30 guys coming up trying to buy that
fictitious child. And you do a massive sting.
We have seen it happen in Montgomery County. We have seen
it happen in Phoenix. There is nothing stopping more police
departments from doing that, including a shockwave of basically
deterrence for buyers attempting to buy children. Publicize
those things in a major way. If we had 10 or 20, 30 cities do
that simultaneously with a decoy ad and some hotel-based
reverse stings, without even a child involved, you could see a
massive shockwave against the buyers. And I think it would have
a major, major effect. I would say those are two things I would
love to see concretely happen.
Chairman Royce. Will the gentleman from Texas yield to the
gentleman from New Jersey?
Mr. Smith. Just briefly.
Mr. Poe. Yes. I will yield. I will yield to----
Mr. Smith. Thank you for yielding.
Just to underscore that the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act made it very clear in its definition that anyone who has
not yet attained the age of 18 and anyone who commits an act,
one commercial sex act, is liable for the full sanctions, the
full criminality that is ascribed in the law. And that is up to
life imprisonment. And then after that, after 18, it is force,
fraud, and coercion.
So we already have a Federal law that makes it absolutely
clear. We do need state laws to mirror that so there are more
tools for prosecutors, but we already have it in Federal law.
Chairman Royce. We go now to Dr. Bera, California.
Dr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Engel.
And I would also like to thank Chairman Smith and Ranking
Member Bass because in our Global Health and Human Rights
Subcommittee, we have been talking about this issue at the
international level.
I look at this as a doctor. I mean, this is shameful. It is
ridiculous that this happens today in America and throughout
the world. And it is an outrage. It is an affront to our moral
fibers as a country. And we have to take this seriously.
Supervisor Knabe, it is a difficult and uncomfortable
conversation, but it is exactly the conversation we should be
having as parents. If we want to stand up morally as an example
for the rest of the world, we have to lead by example. We have
to lead by having this conversation and showing how shameful
this is. And it is unacceptable for us not to have this
conversation in communities, states, and throughout this
country. It has to happen.
Now, my home community is Sacramento County, where we have
a horrible crisis on our hands as well. We are one of the top
five communities for human trafficking. And I am proud that our
sheriff has partnered with the FBI to do what they can, but,
all three of you have already pointed out, it is not nearly
enough.
And, you know, I guess my question to all three of you is,
you know, these are well-intentioned organizations, you know,
our law enforcement agencies, the FBI, the nonprofits in our
communities, that want to do this. How do we elevate the
national conversation? How do we raise the temperature in this
so it is being talked about across the spectrum and it is
deemed unacceptable?
Mr. Knabe. Well, from our perspective, obviously the
Federal partnership is extremely important. I mean, I think
when we hosted that Smart Justice Symposium of National
Association of Counties, people coming from all over the
country, by having the Homeland Security folks there, the FBI,
I think it raised the level of attention that we weren't just
doing Los Angeles County, it wasn't just in the streets of Los
Angeles County, but it is throughout America. Polaris and
others are bringing that attention as well, too.
But the conversation, I mean, we can start locally, and we
can do the building blocks. And we can keep expanding it. But,
even in your own law enforcement communities, you know, they
were amazed what is going on in their own backyard because it
is a whole training. It is a whole educational process to make
them aware and make everyone aware just how significant this
issue is and how repulsive the issue is and that we need to do
more about it to isolate, to have a particular unit within a
law enforcement. There are metropolitan. You know, the
transportation police, everyone should be a partner in this.
But the Federal elevation to let everyone know that it is
not just locally isolated to one community or another but it is
a national issue, your leadership and your partnership have
been a very important part of that.
Dr. Bera. And I would put my own profession. Health care
has to be part of this, health care providers.
Mr. Knabe. Bring in doctors.
Dr. Bera. Exactly. For years, we have been training our
doctors on domestic violence recognition and so forth. Doctors
are seeing a lot of these victims as well. And they have an
obligation.
Mr. Myles. Yes. I think what I would add to that briefly
is, in addition to the political wealth, in addition to the
leadership, in addition to faith-based communities taking on
this issue at the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based
Neighborhood Partnerships, I think that when certain types of
research come out that show certain effects of this issue, it
is going to get the attention of many people. And it is going
to spike that political will.
For example, if someone were to ask any of us in this room
right now and say, ``How many victims of trafficking are there
in the United States right now?'' none of us have a good
answer. We would have a few estimates, but we haven't had a
full research study to look at men and women, immigrants, and
U.S. citizens, sex, and labor, boys, and girls, all the types
of trafficking. So we can't put a number on it.
When we put that number on it, that will be able to
generate media. That will generate police attention. That will
generate political leadership.
And then, secondly, from the health perspective of health
research, when you start looking at things like CDC research on
adverse child experiences, the ACEs, and if you say these kids
are so vulnerable because they have gone through these
different types of traumas as children, pimps are targeting the
vulnerable kids, and when we make the public health argument,
that will also create the political will.
Dr. Bera. So that is an actionable item. Let's raise the
level of this crisis. Let's put a number on there. That is an
actionable item that raises awareness and talks about how this
is happening in every community in every state across this
country.
Mr. MacDonald. Can I just add it is very difficult to talk
about this subject, but what is more difficult is for people to
talk about labor trafficking. You will note just in the
conversation now that also in the media and generally, there is
a lot more focus on sex trafficking, but if you look at the
global estimates and the estimates in the U.S., even though the
numbers aren't as clear as they might be, labor trafficking is
a bigger problem and is something that we are all much more
connected to. It is not just ``Those pimps over there, those
poor victims,'' and so on. It is something that we are all
connected to.
And it is harder for people to talk about that because we
are all implicated in the way most companies are implicated in
their supply chain. And that is where I think we need to be
able to get past some of these really loaded terms and say,
``Are you involved in slavery?'' but, instead, saying, ``How
are people hired into your company? How are the companies that
are making your products hiring people? Do they have safeguards
in place?'' so it becomes something very concrete and practical
about business operations, not so much ``Are you a trafficker
or are you not? Are you one of these awful companies that has
slavery or not?'' because it is everywhere. It is based on the
way that so much of our global labor situation is organized
today.
So I really want to make that point that to keep in mind
that labor trafficking is also something that we need to learn
to talk about in a more routine way.
Dr. Bera. Absolutely.
Chairman Royce. We are going to Jeff Duncan, South
Carolina.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks for this
very interesting committee hearing, very informative for me,
especially in light of what was revealed today in Cleveland
with three young women being abducted and held hostage for a
decade in a standard neighborhood that you might find in that
area or in my hometown.
So, anyway, you mentioned, Mr. Myles, that the U.S. has a
national hotline and the number of calls that you have gotten
from 104 different countries. I guess that piqued my interest a
little bit. Typically why do people from other countries call a
U.S.-based hotline?
And then are there other creative ways we may be able to--
well, is that a 1-800 U.S. number and how that exactly works,
but then are there other creative ways that we are utilizing
along those same lines? Are there numbers or Twitter or
Facebook, other things, social media that we might be able to
use to contact law enforcement to say, ``Hey, I am captive. I
am a sex slave. I want out. I need help''?
And then I want to ask you to elaborate a little bit. Okay.
If a call does come in and the young girl says that, how does
the U.S. get involved in rescuing that girl from that position
of captivity?
Mr. Myles. Well, those are two great questions. And I think
that, even pointing out the Cleveland case, if you look what
happened in that case, it was a neighbor, Charles Ramsey, who
played a role in identifying those girls, right? And so I think
that that signals to me the role that community members can
play in identifying what is going on in their community,
identifying suspicious behavior that we encounter.
The majority of calls that we get into the national hotline
in the U.S. are from community members who identified
something. They identified a house on their street with
something suspicious. They identified somebody approached them
about a trafficking situation, and they are calling in.
So what we would like to see is saturating that awareness
so that community members can know what to look for and know
who to call. And that is going to lead to more cases being
identified.
Mr. Duncan. If it is an international call----
Mr. Myles. Yes.
Mr. Duncan [continuing]. Because you said you received 104
different countries. So how would the U.S. get involved in that
situation?
Mr. Myles. Yes, sir. So we have received these calls from
other countries. And we had the same question ourselves. So we
ask, ``How are these other countries calling us? We are the
U.S. national hotline.''
But what we realized is that sometimes there isn't a
national hotline in other countries. And so a person who is
very determined to get a response to their case, they will
start calling different places. And so they have called the
U.S. hotline. So one reason is there might not be a hotline in
their country. Second reason is they might not be getting a
response from the hotline in their country. There might be a
hotline but no one answers it or they have gotten an answering
machine.
And so somebody who believes they have identified a
trafficking case, they have fire in their belly to respond. And
they want to get a response. And they will start calling. We
are 24/7, and they can call us.
Sometimes people call us through Skype. Sometimes people
call us through certain online services. And we also have not a
toll-free number but an actual 202 number that people can call
internationally and contact us.
So people have reached out to us. And what that has taught
us is that is what has led us to want to work on this Global
Human Trafficking Hotline Network. That is what has led us to
want to help to build hotline in other countries because we
need to build that local capacity in other places so people can
call their own local country human trafficking hotline, instead
of having to route it through us.
So we are working on identifying what the response is on
those other countries. We are working to identify what those
hotlines are in other countries and build that response so the
calls aren't coming to us all the time.
Mr. Duncan. Okay. Well, just shift gears a little bit. I am
on the Homeland Security Committee here in Congress. And you
gentlemen are familiar with DHS' Blue campaign. The question I
have is, do you see it as effective? And what recommendations
would you have for DHS so they could improve? That is law
enforcement training. That is investigations, public outreach,
and other things.
And so a) do you think it is effective? I ask all three of
you that. And b) what more could DHS be doing? Because they do
play a vital role, especially with cross-border issues.
Mr. Knabe. Well, from Los Angeles County's perspective, it
has been very successful. And I think DHS' opportunity is to
give the whole program credibility that it does exist and it is
just more than the back streets of your own community.
Their involvement with the Blue program as well as others
had a very big impact at our justice symposium because it made
folks around the country--Department of Homeland Security is
different than the local sheriff's department or local PD in
the sense that it raises the global network, it raises the
international significance, and it gets the level of
conversation going that says, ``Well, it doesn't exist in my
community.'' It does.
I think DHS on long term on moving forward, obviously their
awareness and their ability to train local law enforcement in
identification and kinds of activities and the network and in
conjunction with the hotline and those kinds of things and pure
points of contact could be incredibly successful and helpful to
all of us at the local level.
Mr. MacDonald. I would just add that in general, with the
Customs enforcement role of DHS, that there is more opportunity
for creativity around the way that they identify and try to
work with importers of products so they are made with child
labor and forced labor. There are statutes around that but not
always a lot of clear enforcement.
And I know that somehow--I don't know all of the
particulars. I am sorry. But somehow there is a role for the
Customs enforcement people. And I know that they have been
looking at ways of doing trainings and so on in their overseas
offices to better understand labor conditions for products that
are being imported here, but I think that there is always a lot
more that can be done around that.
Mr. Duncan. Right. Well, I am out of time, but are you all
familiar with the coordination, collaboration, capacity report
plan that the President is working on? The public comment
period is still open on this, my understanding. And I hope you
guys get involved.
And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Chairman Royce. We will go now to Tulsi Gabbard.
Congresswoman Gabbard?
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. MacDonald, you mentioned the difficulty that exists
within our culture in talking about labor trafficking, in
particular. And I know there was some mention of this being
addressed with some larger corporate entities, like Wal-Mart,
et cetera, but I am wondering if you can address how we can
deal with maybe the smaller either companies in different
industries, whether it is agriculture or the garment industry,
who have a little easier time flying under the radar.
Just one example, in my home State of Hawaii, we saw in
2010, the largest human trafficking case in our country's
history where there was a labor recruiting company that bought
400 immigrants from Thailand to work in farms in the State of
Hawaii. It did not have a good outcome in that the Federal
prosecutor, unfortunately, misstated the law in front of a
grand jury, which ended up throwing the whole case out, but it
led to a heightened state of awareness, within our own
community and I think nationally, about these kinds of entities
that are really using economic intimidation in providing
basically slave labor.
So I wonder if you can address how we can, either through
the carrot or the stick approach, deal with some of these
smaller entities?
Mr. MacDonald. Well, I think definitely at the level of
public policy, there are many ways that foreign labor
recruiters within our guest workers visa system can be held
more accountable through more transparency, more clear
oversight of what they are doing. And that is a conversation
that is very active now in the immigration reform debate.
But also at the state level, more states are doing things
to try to hold employers as well as labor recruiters
accountable. In the State of California, there is a bill that
is moving its way fairly quickly through the state legislature
to have stronger accountability measures for labor recruiters.
I think the other thing that we are hoping to see, as I
mentioned in my remarks, I think, before you arrived, is that
the President's executive order saying all Federal contractors
have to have a very specific plan in place for due diligence
measures for labor recruiters who are providing the workers to
Federal contractors, that is a real game changer because the
Federal Government obviously buys a lot of things, has a great
number of contractors. You pair that with some of the other
efforts underway, and I think you will see that there is real
reform happening possible within the labor recruiter sector,
but a lot of attention, a lot of action needs to be taken.
We are at the beginning steps. The guidelines are in place,
including the ones that I mentioned, in a real world for better
public policy, but I think as that happens, market forces will
come to bear. And an American farmer; an American warehouse;
big retailer like a Wal-Mart, will know what kind of questions
to ask in holding their suppliers accountable for how they are
hiring their workers because now it is essentially an
unregulated industry, both here in the U.S., very poorly
regulated, and overseas even less so, where people who can just
register as a company and then go about charging people $20,000
to $30,000 to get a U.S. guest worker visa for a job in one of
these supply chains that I have been referring to.
So there is a lot of work to be done, but we and others
have a lot of recommendations for what companies can do in
their supply chains. And then we and Polaris Project and other
NGOs that are part of the Alliance to End Slavery and
Trafficking and the International Labor Recruiters Working
Group, another set of NGOs have a lot of recommendations for
stronger accountability for labor recruiters.
Ms. Gabbard. The Federal contract accountability that you
just mentioned, that is for Federal contracts that are
administered both here as well as overseas?
Mr. MacDonald. Yes.
Ms. Gabbard. Great. I think that is all. Thank you.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen [presiding]. Thank you very much. I want
to thank Chairman Royce, who just stepped out for a few
minutes, for holding this important hearing this morning. I
will recognize myself for my 5 minutes.
Human trafficking, as we know, is one of the worst, most
alarming human rights issues of our day depriving millions
around the world of their most basic dignity as human beings.
And, given today's interconnected global economy and the
reach of many organizations throughout the world, it is
imperative that we find more ways to enlist the help of
businesses and local organizations to help fight this awful
crime.
Many of the victims associated with human trafficking, as
we know, are women and young girls who are forced to enter
prostitution. Many who are attracted to our Nation are migrant
workers from Mexico and Central America.
So, Dr. MacDonald, how can we improve working relations on
the border to help fight labor trafficking from Latin America?
And what consequences should the U.S. place on companies for
blatantly ignoring trafficking problems in their business?
Also, it is not surprising that dictatorships around the
globe are the largest violators of international anti-
trafficking standards and do nothing to protect people from
this modern-day slavery. Once again, the regimes of Iran, Cuba,
Syria, and North Korea are designated as top tier III countries
in the 2012 Trafficking in Persons report issued by our State
Department.
In Cuba, the Castro tyranny supports and encourages the sex
tourism industry by exploiting vulnerable women and children.
According to a recent report by El Nuevo Herald in South
Florida, foreigners travel to Cuba to take advantage of young
women who are recruited to enter prostitution in order to fill
the coffers of the Castro brothers.
On Central America, reports are that drug cartels and gangs
are using their narcotic routes to traffic human beings across
the border. These individuals may be migrant workers, drug
traffickers, and even terrorists.
So, Supervisor Knabe, what actions is your local government
taking to prevent trafficking in the California-Mexico border?
And how can we ensure that our allies in the region prioritize
this threat as we have? As we consider the global scope of
human trafficking, we must be clear that it occurs within our
very borders, making this a domestic challenge as well as an
international one.
And this is especially true in my home district of South
Florida, a region with one of the highest rates of human
trafficking in the country. It is an appalling reality. And I
remain committed to making sure that we have every effort at
work in order to fight it because the promotion of basic human
rights and human dignity must remain a cornerstone for the
United States as our foreign policy initiatives.
So, Supervisor and Dr. MacDonald, if you could address the
issue that I brought up in my questions?
Mr. MacDonald. Okay. I will just quickly say that I think
it is--I am glad you brought up this issue of what is happening
in the border because I think it is really important that with
all of the attention placed on the drug war there and the
smuggling and trafficking of people across the border, that
many companies that have those workers within their supply
chain need to be held accountable for how those workers are
getting there. And it is really important to note that the
people who are trafficking the drugs, trafficking the weapons
are also trafficking the people, that there is a great deal of
overlap between these gangs and this organized crime.
And so if you are relying on workers who are taking those
migratory routes, then, without a doubt, you are entangled in
this problem. And to try to say that you are not is simply
burying your head in the sand.
And so, whether those people are coming here with documents
or not, very often traffickers are involved. And so companies
really must focus on what steps they can take, concrete steps,
rather than try to pretend that they are not entangled with the
issue. And that is where----
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir.
Mr. MacDonald. Okay.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
Supervisor?
Mr. Knabe. Well, great question. You have given me an
opportunity to do a little soapbox here. I mean, at the end of
the day, those of us in local government, our job is to solve
the problem, to fix it with the resources that we have. That is
the case in some of the cases, particularly like items like
this.
We are at the beck and whim of the Federal Government and
the state government to put the tools in place that covers
everybody. We only as a county can do so much. As it relates to
gang issues, penalties, those kinds of things, we need state
legislation, enabling state legislation. We need Federal
legislation to really raise the level so we can continue to do
our jobs.
You know, these young girls, nobody asked them whether they
are Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or Independent. They are
true victims. And those of us at the local level have to deal
with that. And that is why we appreciate your leadership here
and others because we need that leadership and we need that
assistance, both at the Federal level as well as the state
level.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. We thank you, each one of you, for what
you are doing.
So proud to recognize Mr. Vargas for his 5 minutes of
questioning.
Mr. Vargas. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you again for
allowing me to speak.
I want to thank all of you for being here also. This is a
horrible crime that happens right here in the United States, as
you have all said today. I represent the border area in
California, represent San Diego County. It is a horrible crime
there.
I have to say I have been working with the Federal
prosecutors because we do have some problems in the Federal
law, laws that we can change. And, in fact, I have sponsored a
bill, H.R. 1690, which does this. Right now a prosecutor has to
prove that a sex trafficker knew the child was a child. It is
very difficult to do to prove that the trafficker knew that the
child was a child. So what this bill says is that you don't
have to prove, the government doesn't have to prove, that this
pimp knew that the child was a child. The government has to
prove that the child is a child. So the government just proves
that this person is a pimp. He was sex trafficking this child.
The prosecutors say that that will go a long way in being able
to put people away.
We are working with the prosecutors in San Diego and a very
courageous young woman that escaped from these pimps. And her
pimp ultimately got 30 years because she did have the courage
and she did have the wherewithal to stand up in court, which is
very difficult for a child to do but to be able to put this guy
away for 30 years. And that is what we will be able to do if we
can change the law.
So I would hope that maybe we could get behind that bill,
H.R. 1690. I think it is a very good bill. And I agree we
glorify oftentimes the pimp. And we revictimize the victim and
in this case a child. So we need to change Federal law right
here in the United States to be able to go after these people.
Supervisor Knabe, you have been a hero to many of us. Would
you like to comment on that particular law or hopefully
change----
Mr. Knabe. I think this week, you are going to have five
young heroines here who will have the willingness to stand up.
And they are five victims that have survived that are coming
into town. You know, whatever tools are necessary when you go
back to the question about what we can do, we can only do so
much. But given the tools, like an H.R. 1690 or others, that
would really help us at the local level work with our Federal
prosecutors. You know, how we are able to raise this whole
issue as it relates to the penalties, the better off we are
that we are going to be able to--once we ID the folks, get them
to court, do all the things that we need to do, that we have
the laws that are on the books that everybody will recognize
and can put these people away, whether it is 30 years, whether
it is 60 years, whether it is 90 years.
But at the end of the day, you know, we need to wrap our
arms around these young ladies to give them the courage. And
that is the whole purpose behind the collaborative courtroom.
Mr. Vargas. Thank you. Again I would like to note that it
is very difficult, however, for a child to stand up in court
because, you know, the opposing is tough, you are before all of
these people. You know, we need to change this law. I mean, we
absolutely need to change this Federal law to say, ``No. You
know, if you are a sex trafficker, if you are sex trafficking
these children, the government has to prove that you are doing
that, but it ought to be strict liability if it is a child. You
are going to go away for a long period of time'' because
otherwise they have to, unfortunately, give them a light
sentence because the child doesn't want to or can't go and
testify. So I am hopeful that we can get behind the law and
change it right here.
Would you like to comment on this? I know that we are
reaching out to your group. Would you like to comment?
Mr. Myles. I think you are pointing out an important issue.
I know of one Federal case where they were trying to prove that
the pimp knew that the child was a child. And there happened to
be this bizarre occurrence where, actually, the father of the
child had been hunting his child down for months trying to
recover her. He finally learned she was in a hotel room. And he
kicked in the hotel room door. And he saw the pimp in the room
with his child, who was a minor. And he said, ``You'' so and
so, ``she is not yet 18. I am her father.'' And that father was
able to testify in the courtroom to say, ``I informed him that
the child--that he knew that the child was a child because he
heard me say that she was my daughter.'' How many times does
that actually happen in a case, right, where you could actually
find the father who hunts that down?
So I think you are right. I think that you are zeroing in
on an important area of the law where to prove that the
trafficker knew that the child was a child in a random
occurrence where the father bursts into the hotel room and has
to say it, but lightning has to strike for that to happen. So I
think that we can't rely on that to get this many pimps at
scale to create the turn effect at scale that we need to.
Mr. Vargas. Well, many of them are runaways to begin with.
Mr. Myles. That is right. And other times what the
prosecutor has to do, he has to search the record to show that
the pimp used his own credit card because the child didn't have
the credit card, a whole bunch of things to prove that the
person--it is very difficult. I hope we can get behind this
bill.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Vargas.
Mr. Kinzinger?
Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you, Madam Chair, appreciate it. And
thank you, all, for coming in, such an important issue.
You know, I always knew this was an issue, but I really had
my eyes opened. There is a documentary out there; it is
actually called ``Nefarious.'' And I don't know if you have
seen it. If you haven't, I would commend that to anybody who is
either watching this on television or is in the audience. An
outstanding documentary by basically a missionary I think that
was--his eye was opened to what was going on.
Specifically, they hid all over the world, but an area that
is really disturbing to me is what I saw in Thailand. And I
know we have been talking about Thailand a little bit, but you
see, you know, as he documents Americans going to utilize the
services, if you can say it so crassly, of a 10-year-old girl
sold into sex slavery as her Dad sits back in his village and
smokes and drinks all day long, you know, earning the profits
of his daughter, and really doesn't care, doesn't see her as
somebody he loves, more sees her as an opportunity, so that he
can smoke and drink all day long. I watched this documentary
and this video and it really opened my eyes and was jaw-
dropping.
One of the things that really has since kind of I guess
driven me in this issue is the idea that nobody I think when
you talk about the average American out there, they don't think
of this as a very serious issue. And I know we are doing
everything we can to bring it on the forefront. This hearing
today is part of that. But when you mention the issue to kind
of ``Johnny on the street,'' in many cases they are interested
in what you have to say, but they are unaware of the situation.
So I am actually a co-chair of the Thai Caucus, and in that
role, obviously, as Thailand, a strategic ally of the United
States from a foreign affairs perspective, but it gives us an
opportunity to really engage the government.
One of the things I saw in this video--and I don't know if
this is still the case, but that was interesting was the Thai
Government would actually sponsor billboards that say,
``Welcome to Thailand, where our greatest asset is our women.''
And, you know, you see things like that and it kind of makes
you wonder, and you start to begin to understand why this is so
prevalent there.
So I will ask you a couple of questions. First off--and I
will get to the second question, too. First off is, what can we
do to better engage Thailand from maybe a Thai Caucus
perspective, bringing that to the public attention?
And, secondly, I represent a district in Illinois, and it
is in between Chicago and St. Louis. And, actually, as you look
at domestic human trafficking, you see that Chicago and St.
Louis is a huge corridor for this. If you look at the numbers
of it, Chicago had over 250 I think cases of this, and there is
many in St. Louis.
What can we do from a domestic perspective? The other scary
thing is you see cities like Bloomington, Illinois; Normal,
Illinois; Rockford; where these issues are actually popping up.
What can we do to better bring this to the American people's
attention? Whether it is a 911 kind of call center, I don't
know, or whatever, to bring it so when people see that these
are occurring they are more aware of it. You know, they are not
at a club or something, and they are more aware of what is
going on and we can report it.
So two questions. I pose those to all three of you, and I
will start with you, Mr. Supervisor.
Mr. Knabe. Well, as I said, it is all building blocks for
us. I mean, we can do what we can do at the county level to
elevate this issue, and we are doing what we can. But at the
end of the day, we are going to need to get it where you would
like to see it and where I think we all would like to see it.
It is going to take a national campaign of some sort. That
is going to take a major collaboration of who knows who yet,
but we are trying to put that together because we can only do
so much.
Like I say, in our county, and we are doing a lot in a
matter of months, but at the end of the day it is going to take
a national campaign to elevate this conversation because it
goes--as the others have said, in addition to this human
trafficking, the workforce, you know, with the ports and, you
know, all of the other kinds of issues that we have to deal
with, it will take a national campaign of some kind.
Mr. Kinzinger. Well, it is like the issue of the war on
drugs. Everybody became very aware of it through a national
campaign like the issue of AIDS in Africa, and it is an
opportunity for the Federal Government to work on that level,
but mostly also for NGOs and nonprofits to come and make people
aware.
Mr. Myles?
Mr. Myles. Yes, sir. I am glad you saw the movie Nefarious.
There has been a whole explosion of movies out on this issue--
Nefarious, Not My Life, Very Young Girls, Trade of Innocence,
Taken. You know, all of these movies are coming out, and what
is happening is one by one people are becoming more aware as
they see those movies.
But it is still happening a bit like popcorn. It is kind of
all over the place. It is not a centralized national campaign
the way you are describing, the way the supervisor is
describing, and so we are moving the needle, but we are not
moving the needle enough on the national awareness piece.
And I think we need to be engaging faith communities way
more on the national awareness piece. I think Federal
legislation and Federal leadership can move that needle. But
right now the documentaries and whatnot, they are increasing
it, but we are not really getting to where we need to.
To the piece on Thailand, you know, I was in Thailand 2 or
3 months ago, and I experienced a number of the things that you
described of just the horror at the sex tourism and the men
buying children there and seeing it.
I think one--I asked some questions about hotlines there. I
said, you know, ``What are the hotlines here?'' They said,
``Well, there is a hotline operated by the Thai Government, but
it is not in all of these different languages.''
So I think maybe asking the question about hotlines through
the Thai Caucus there is some great work being done to build
better hotlines there, so put some focus on that, so there are
some victim identification mechanisms happening. I think that
is one piece.
I think the second piece is demand, and this is what Judge
Poe talked about, the consumer piece. When anywhere in the
world, or in the United States, when an economy becomes
dependent on the sex trade and the objectification of women and
girls, then there becomes an entrenched, monetized interest to
keep that going.
So whether or not it is present in a U.S. community or in
Thailand, that challenge is going to be, and that is going to
revolve around demand.
Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you.
Mr. Myles. Whether or not that is Protect Act cases,
whether or not that is cases of sex tourism, or whether or not
that is actually looking at the Thai law to crack down on more
consumers, that is going to begin to reverse that tide. But
until then, we have got a huge problem on our hands because
there is entrenched interest to keep that going.
Mr. Kinzinger. Great input. Dr. MacDonald, I have got to
cut you off because we are out of time. Sorry about that.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much.
So proud to recognize my Florida colleague, Ms. Frankel.
Ms. Frankel. Thank you, Madam Chair. I also thank the
chairman and panel for bringing this issue, which I think most
Americans don't realize the depth of this. ``Horrible'' isn't a
big enough word to describe what is going on in the
exploitation of folks.
I have a number of questions. My first question has to do
with the exploitation in the labor market, and you talked about
debt bondage, and so forth. And in that regard, number one,
could good immigration reform help, in your opinion, this
exploitation of the human laborers?
Number two, could stronger labor laws when we enact trade
treaties, could that also go toward minimizing this human
trafficking?
Mr. MacDonald. I will take a crack at that. I think with
the free trade agreements and the labor agreements that are
negotiated along with that, it is really important that the
full spectrum of labor abuses be considered, including the out-
migration and in-migration of workers.
Very often the way that labor issues are looked at when we
are investigating a particular country where there is a debate
about whether there should be a trade agreement, the full
extent of the labor dynamic is not always properly considered.
So what is that country doing, not just for enforcing law in
its own country, but protecting its workers who are moving
overseas and protecting the workers who are coming into their
country. So I think that is one point.
With immigration reform, I am just going to focus on
particularly this issue of foreign labor recruiters. I think
one thing that we have found in our own research, and I think
it is confirmed by a lot of other research, is that workers who
are confined to one particular job because of the way that
their visa is organized face a lot more vulnerability because
they cannot move.
So portability of employment is really important, as well
as, as I have discussed before, the issue of accountability for
the actions of the labor recruiters whom the farms are hiring
or the businesses are hiring to help them process these visas
to find the workers. So there are a lot of good proposals out
there in the world lobbying around immigration to focus on more
accountability for labor recruiters.
So I think those are really important points--more
transparency and accountability for labor brokers and issues of
portability of jobs for workers, whatever their visa status is.
Ms. Frankel. Thank you. Madam Chair, I wanted to give a
shout out to Brandi Macaluso from my hometown, who was just
recognized by Attorney General Bondi for her work in
trafficking.
In regard to the prostitution, trafficking, and so forth,
question. I mean, it is outrageous to hear these stories, and
there is a story playing out today. It is domestic, not
international, in Cleveland. I think the country is going to
be, you know, outraged by it.
My question is, though, do you believe that law enforcement
is really paying attention? Do we have the--because we have
been talking about awareness and hotlines, and so forth. But
let us talk about enforcement and getting the bad guys or
whoever is, you know, behind the trafficking.
In your opinion, is law enforcement at every level putting
in the resources and the attention to this problem that it
should have?
Mr. Knabe. From my perspective, no. I think the issue of
law enforcement is no different than the average person out
there in the streets that thinks this is Third World kinds of
activities and not here in our own backyard. I think the
element of training for our law enforcement personnel,
dedicated strike teams as it relates to this, and, most
importantly, the legislative backup that when they do get the
bad guy that the laws are tough enough to put them away for
awhile.
I think early on, and continuing beyond, right now when
they get the bad guy, the bad guy is in and out, you know, kind
of a thing. Again, going back to what Congresswoman Bass said,
I think we need to change the name from prostitution to
something else because they are truly the victim.
But law enforcement--I know in our own case when we started
out with these billboards and the flyers on the trains and
buses and Metro and everything else, it was a whole coordinated
effort that had to take place because our transportation police
were not aware of this. They know how to look for the bag that
is unattended, okay, but the identity of a young girl that may
be--you know, so it is a whole training and awareness effort
that they are not aware of. I don't think that they have the
resources yet, but they need to develop strike teams.
Ms. Frankel. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Ms. Frankel.
Mr. Chabot of Ohio.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Myles, let me begin with you, if I could. You described
in detail the successes of a U.S. national human trafficking
resources center hotline. As chair of the Subcommittee on Asia
and the Pacific, I can tell you that we have heard a lot of
cases about trafficking in Asia.
The subcommittee staff recently traveled to Cambodia and
Vietnam, and I had been there a while back as well and heard
the same things about the depth of the problem of human
trafficking there. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like it is a
whole lot better now than it was some years ago when I was
there, according to the subcommittee staff.
You indicated in your testimony that the only country in
Asia I believe that you are currently working in is Malaysia.
Does Polaris have any plans to expand its work in Asia to
include other countries such as Cambodia and Vietnam? You know,
the entire region's traffic cases are interrelated. For
example, the Vietnamese women are very highly trafficked in
Cambodia. They are considered to be the poor of the poor and
highly discriminated against, and Cambodians are trafficked in
places like Thailand and Malaysia.
Hotlines are certainly a good first step. Are there any
efforts to kind of tackle this problem from multiple sides?
Mr. Myles. Yes, sir. I think it is a great question. So one
of our partners on this global human trafficking hotline
network that we are working on through the Google Impact Award
is a group in Asia called Liberty Asia. They are working on
building a regional hotline that would apply to the six
countries in the Greater Mekong subregion.
So through that partnership, that is one of the ways that
we are working in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and other
countries there. The one country that we have directly engaged
with is Malaysia. But there is some temporal contextuality
there to that answer, which is we are starting off on this
project to try to identify and contact hotlines in every
country around the world, and provide them training and
technical assistance.
We do intend to work with countries methodically, country
by country, and not just handpick a few. So not only through
our work with Liberty Asia will we access more countries, but
through our own work through the State Department funding we
will be directly interfacing with Cambodia, with Vietnam, with
the countries that you talked about. So we just haven't gotten
there yet.
Mr. Chabot. Okay.
Mr. Myles. So just give us a few months, and we will get
there.
Mr. Chabot. Okay. Thank you very much.
Supervisor Knabe, if I could turn to you next. Our Embassy
in Vietnam indicated that many of the labor trafficking cases
are tied to criminal organizations in California. In situations
where the trafficked women are from other countries, how do you
handle those cases?
Specifically, what happens to those individuals who have
been trafficked to the United States via forged paperwork and
against their will? When you step in to rescue them in those
cases, is there anything in place to work with their respective
countries to ensure that if they are sent back that there is
some sort of safety net in place to help prevent them from
falling victim to other trafficking circles?
Mr. Knabe. The thing that I am most aware of is that there
is something in place when they come this way or come to
California, with our cooperation with the FBI, the Department
of Homeland Security, and ICE, and we have dedicated folks that
have that relationship with them.
So if we, as a unit or as a county, are able to rescue some
young girls coming across that are human trafficked from other
countries, we have the situation in place to handle that. I do
not know, and I can't speak to the fact that when they go back
what happens. I am not sure that there is that safety net. I
think that is what everyone is worried about.
There is a whole ethnic issue here. As an example, the
largest Cambodian population outside of Cambodia resides in my
district, in Long Beach, California. So you have issues there
that you can deal with because they are trying to educate
because you have an adult population that doesn't look at this
as horrific as the younger population does.
They have groups that can reach back into Cambodia, as an
example, to try to create that safety net. So we are trying to
use every activity we can, but I can't speak to the fact of
whether or not there is an exact safety net. I only know
through some of the Asian community members that I deal with.
They are trying to create that in their home areas, but I don't
know for a fact whether--we have it in place to rescue them and
to return them, but I am not sure at the other end.
Mr. Chabot. Okay. Mr. Myles, did you want to comment?
Mr. Myles. Yes. I would just comment briefly. I think you
are highlighting a really important area where innovation is
needed in the human trafficking field, which is right now
countries aren't engaging on a bilateral basis.
So, let us say, a huge bus of South Korean women is found
here in the United States. Is there a strong bilateral
relationship between governments, between law enforcement,
between nonprofits, to work that case from both Korea and here
in the United States? Not as much.
So we can imagine hundreds of those happening, U.S. to
Cambodia, U.S. to Korea, U.S. to Vietnam, U.S. to Mexico. And
building those bilateral relationships after the case is found,
so both countries are working the case together, I think is
something that the field needs to be doing a lot more of in
future years.
In the first 10 years in the field, they haven't been doing
that as much because we have been getting the infrastructures
in place. Now that the infrastructure is in place, we can begin
to partner them country by country in exactly the way you are
describing.
Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Madam Chair. My time has expired.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much.
Mr. Lowenthal?
Mr. Lowenthal. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question
for Supervisor Knabe. First, I would like to commend you and
Los Angeles County for your great work in both educating us,
but really providing kind of a model for the rest of the
counties and for the Nation in terms of what, at the local
level, we can do.
I followed your presentation earlier; I had to leave, but
in terms of raising awareness, of involving the private sector,
in terms of bringing in Federal grants and beginning to build
relationships with school districts, and working with victims.
So my question is--and I see how this is a process that is
taking years, that counties are not just going to jump in and
solve this. This takes a lot of work and a lot of coordination.
I am just kind of interested in if you can share with us how
that work with schools is doing.
Since this is--you know, we are talking about children's
mental health right now, and I am wearing a ribbon for
Children's Mental Health Awareness Month, if you could tell us,
with your experiences, how--and as you began with people who
are subjected to prostitution at ages 10 or 11, what kind of
recovery is going on? How does mental health work?
I just think that is such an important task, but I would
like to understand more how effective it is being.
Mr. Knabe. Well, it is effective. I think it is on two
fronts, Congressman Lowenthal. I mean, one is going back to the
collaborative court where we are bringing the wrap-around
services.
Mr. Lowenthal. Right.
Mr. Knabe. You can't operate in silence anymore. The mental
health piece is an absolutely critical piece to all of this.
You always have to remember that the victim is usually a
runaway or a subject of domestic violence, so they really have
no self-esteem----
Mr. Lowenthal. That is right.
Mr. Knabe [continuing]. The most significant part of the
mental health issue. Then, the housing, as I said, is the
biggest thing that is missing to be able to protect them,
because they may have a tattoo on their forehead or on their
shoulder to identify their pimp. So these wrap-around services,
you know, dealing with the victim.
As it relates to the other part, there has to be a public
conversation, you know, our school districts, getting the word
out through them about trafficking issues. Again, it is a very
uncomfortable subject, but I would venture, you know, that
there are kids out there that can identify other kids that may
be in that potential situation. There has got to be a level of
comfort.
So we can only do so much, but we try to do it through the
mental health programs, through outreach campaigns, and through
the school districts. We are having some limited success, but,
again, school districts aren't really comfortable about talking
about it either, and that is what we have to be able to raise
the level of attention, so that it is a comfortable subject.
Mr. Lowenthal. Thank you.
Mr. MacDonald. Can I just add one quick thing to that in
terms of services? As many of these victims are further
entrapped through drug addiction, where the pimps and other
traffickers are getting them addicted to drugs as a way to
further control them, and so services around addiction is a
really important component.
Mr. Knabe. We do have that. The health services and public
health folks are also part of this collaborative courtroom.
Mr. Lowenthal. I think it is important that we talk about
those kinds of issues also here.
Mr. Myles. The point that I would just jump in briefly,
there are some really exciting efforts happening around the
country related to schools. Georgia has been training its
schools, kids in schools.
There are a number of nonprofits that are particularly
focused on reaching out to high school age kids. One program
here in DC is called Fair Girls. They are trying to educate
kids in the DC public schools. They are also doing it in
Baltimore. There is a group called Love146 that is educating
schools in Connecticut, a group called the A21 Campaign in
Georgia, the Frederick Douglas Family Foundation is educating
kids through New York City public schools.
It is beginning to happen a bit more, and it is happening
in a spotty fashion around the country. But we need to get to a
point, maybe 2 or 3 years from now, where this is getting
introduced as a topic in all high school age public schools. It
is talked about like bullying, and it is not the difficult
subject that people are having a hard time talking about.
People need to recognize that pimps are targeting
vulnerable kids, and so it is an important outreach strategy to
make sure that kids can prepare themselves and talk about in
schools. So I think that these initial efforts that we have
seen around the country, including in California, are going to
spread. And what your instinct is is how do we talk about this
more in schools? We are going to see that spread and become
more of a national standard. So we are getting there, but we
are in the early nascent stages of what you are describing.
Mr. Knabe. Congressman Lowenthal, I would just say, you
know, we have that preventive curriculum that we use in our
probation halls called My Life My Choice. We are trying to
elevate and move that to middle schools where these
exploitation efforts could be the highest as possible
trafficking kinds of issues.
So we do have this program, My Life My Choice, that we are
using in probation. We are trying to take it to the middle
schools as well. But, again, we need the cooperation of the
school districts.
Mr. Lowenthal. Thank you. I think sharing that information
with us is vitally important, and I yield back my time.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Lowenthal.
And Mr. Connolly of Virginia is recognized.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Last, but maybe
not least.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. The best for last.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much. More chocolate for you.
Mr. Knabe, first of all, I just want to thank you. I spent
14 years on the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County, and I
always like saluting my fellow local government servants
because it is where the action is. And, God knoweth, you guys
get so much more done than some other levels of government.
I am particularly glad that you are so committed to this.
You know, I say to all three of our panelists, we had a series
of hearings on human trafficking in the Oversight and
Government Reform Committee in the last Congress from which we
passed a bill, actually, as part of the Defense Authorization
Bill.
Dr. MacDonald, you referred to the Executive Order, but our
bill actually codifies that and does a few other things. I want
to get into that in a second.
But it is so important that at the local level we have
leaders like Supervisor Knabe and others, and I hope the
National Association of County Supervisors is very seized with
this mission because that is a nationwide network that can make
a difference because we know that human trafficking doesn't
just occur in big urban areas such as Los Angeles.
It can occur even more successfully, unfortunately, in
rather remote areas in the country where it is not detected,
where the police forces are much weaker, the ability to gather
intelligence and the like. So your commitment and building a
network up to fight it from the local level I just think is so
critical.
Dr. MacDonald, are you familiar with the legislation that
got passed? Because what we highlighted was, frankly, U.S.
Government contractors and subcontractors, especially at DoD
and the Department of State, and we were shocked at the
testimony. I mean, shocked. It was rampant.
This is compromising human autonomy, and there can be
nothing more antithetical to American values than that. What we
found, frankly, was the practice was turning a blind eye
because we have got to get, you know, that building constructed
or that facility put up. If some foreign subcontractor feels
that is what they need, that is what they need.
Your comment on that?
Mr. MacDonald. Yes. I am quite familiar with it. I am glad
that you all took that effort to really make it happen. What is
really important now is that in the Federal regulatory writing
process, with the Executive Order and also in relation to your
legislation, that clear guidance for these contractors or
subcontractors is creating, and that there is real enforcement
from within the Federal bureaucracy, those who are in charge of
contracts, because, as you know, clear policy is in place there
around no fees, no contract substitution, all sorts of issues
about repatriation of workers, and so on.
So the things are spelled out there about what they need to
have in their due diligence plan. But whether or not the
Federal bureaucracy is going to take the step, have the
resources, train its contracting officials to actually identify
what is an acceptable plan in place for Federal contractors,
and whether there are systems in place for those Federal
contractors to use things like the ethical framework that I
mentioned that we created to provide a blueprint for labor
recruiters to show that they followed these rules, that is
where the rubber hits the road, will there be true enforcement
of that? Because people are really identifying the steps that
need to be taken.
There are good recruiters, there are too many bad
recruiters, and there has to be a way to recognize the good
from the bad and make sure that there is accountability within
these Federal contracts for that, because if it is happening on
our U.S. military bases and with our Embassies and others, you
can imagine what is happening in the private sector, the world
over.
Mr. Connolly. Exactly.
Mr. MacDonald. Routine practice.
Mr. Connolly. Let me just say, at least starting with our
contractors, our view was in our legislation there will be zero
tolerance, and you will not turn a blind eye. And if these are
subcontractors working for you, you will enforce these
standards, and you will debar.
When we asked how many were prosecuted, we heard testimony
about thousands and thousands and thousands of human beings who
had had their autonomy ripped from them. And when we said,
``Well, how many have been prosecuted? How many contractors or
subcontractors have been prosecuted?'' It was a handful. How
many have been debarred? And I believe I am correct; it was
zero. Unacceptable.
So we clearly need groups such as yours and yours, Mr.
Myles, to be being the watchdogs to make sure that that
enforcement is real, and that there is transparency because
there are lots of us here who are more than willing to partner
with you to make sure that--we first start by holding ourselves
accountable.
Mr. Knabe. Congressman, if I could just interject, you
know, it is amazing at the transportation level on
transportation projects across this country that there are all
of these debarment kinds of situations in place. And they are
prosecuted, you know, and to deal with an issue like human
trafficking----
Mr. Connolly. Exactly.
Mr. Knabe [continuing]. They should absolutely have the
same things in place. If you look at the template of most of
the transportation legislation that comes out of the Federal
Government, and the structure that is set up for debarment, it
could just transfer over as it relates to human trafficking and
the whole supply chain.
Mr. Myles. And the only point I would make briefly is just
to all of those contractors, as these regulations come out,
make sure that the workers are given hotlines and complaint
mechanisms to call. And so imagine the workers working for some
of those defense contractors. Did they know a hotline to call
when they were in that situation? Probably not. Or the workers
that are working on some other contract or subcontract, do they
know a hotline to call? Probably not.
What you can do through the regulatory process is mandate
certain complaint mechanisms that those companies, if you
contract with the Federal Government, part of the requirement
of contracting with the Federal Government is you need to tell
your workers about a complaint mechanism, and here is a hotline
to call. When those workers know those hotlines to call, they
will call in a whistleblower-type fashion. So that is one
component of this, just to make sure the worker's voice is
heard, too.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chairman, my time is up. I do want to be
very clear, however, when we are talking about the contractors
and subcontractors, we are talking about some bad apples. The
overwhelming majority, obviously, of contractors and
subcontractors would never turn a blind eye to this kind of a
phenomenon.
But, unfortunately, the further away we get from our own
shores in contracting for remote facilities, you have to rely
on sometimes other companies that may not be as committed
passionately to this, and that is where our enforcement
mechanisms really come into play.
I thank the chair.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Connolly.
We, again, say to Mr. MacDonald, Mr. Myles, Supervisor Don
Knabe, thank you very much for your testimony here today.
You know, today the eyes of our country are riveted by the
welcome rescue of three young women abducted and detained for
over a decade in a Cleveland home. As we rejoice at their
rescue, this hearing today, this testimony today, underscores
the sad reality that millions of other girls around this world
and, indeed, right here in our own communities and our own
counties, many are being robbed of their youth as silent
victims of forced sexual exploitation.
You have all highlighted important local and private anti-
trafficking initiatives that we can help get behind. But I
think our pledge on this committee is that we will remain
diligent in keeping the State Department honest in pressing
foreign nations to join us in fighting this modern-day slavery.
I thank you, again, and we stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:19 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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