Government

Human Trafficking in the United States: Rescuing Women and Children from Slavery

From the Office of John Cornyn, United States Senator - Texas

WASHINGTON--President Bush addressed a historic national conference on Friday in Tampa, Florida aimed at combating human trafficking and slavery. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who chaired a hearing last week on administration efforts to eliminate trafficking, called the training conference "unprecedented" and said the President’s personal involvement in the effort highlights the priority of ending the "scourge of trafficking."

"The President has recognized the importance of this issue and has instructed the Department of Justice to eliminate the scourge of human trafficking. In the last three years alone, we’ve seen the number of investigations and prosecutions of this modern form of slavery triple over what it had been in the previous three years," Cornyn said.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is hosting the three-day national training conference to advance its mission to combat human trafficking within the United States and rescue the victims. Human trafficking refers to adults or young people being brought into the United States and coerced into forced labor and sexual slavery.

Sen. Cornyn, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights, led a hearing last week that heard from Justice Department officials and representatives of numerous organizations involved in the fight against trafficking. Witnesses provided information on past successes and future needs.

"This is an unprecedented training conference put on by the DOJ in Florida and the President has spoken to the conference highlighting the priority which he has placed on this scourge of modern human slavery," Cornyn added. "In addition, the Department of Justice has created task forces around the country and my hope is that several of those new task forces will be established in Texas, particularly because we are on many of these trafficking routes that come through Mexico, either originating in Mexico or coming up through Mexico’s southern border in Central and South America."

Subcommittee members at the hearing, entitled "Examining U.S. Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking and Slavery," heard from Michael Shelby, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, and Johnny Sutton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas on efforts to prosecute human trafficking cases in Texas - including a number of pending investigations. Also testifying at the hearing were several representatives of organizations involved in the fight against trafficking and slavery, including Sister Mary Ellen Dougherty of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Dr. Mohamed Mattar, Co-Director of The Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University.

The DOJ’s conference is titled: "Human Trafficking in the United States: Rescuing Women and Children from Slavery." The focus on the conference is on investigation and prosecution of human trafficking"the coercion of adults and youth into commercial sexual activity, sexual exploitation, sweatshops, domestic servitude, and other criminal activity--and providing assistance to victims of such brutal crimes.

Sen. Cornyn chairs the subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights & Property Rights. He is the only former judge on the Judiciary Committee and served previously as Texas Attorney General, Texas Supreme Court Justice, and Bexar County District Judge.

On the net:

DOJ trafficking conference:  http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/humantraffickingconf/

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn:  http://cornyn.senate.gov

Source: Press Release

From the Office of John Cornyn, United States Senator - Texas