`[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]






 CHILDREN ARE NOT FOR SALE_GLOBAL EFFORTS TO ADDRESS CHILD TRAFFICKING

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                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON GLOBAL HEALTH,
                        GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
                      INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-116

                               __________

        Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs











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                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                   MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey     GREGORY MEEKS, New York, Ranking 
JOE WILSON, South Carolina               Member
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            BRAD SHERMAN, California        
DARRELL ISSA, California             GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia        
ANN WAGNER, Missouri                 WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 
BRIAN MAST, Florida                  AMI BERA, California
KEN BUCK, Colorado                   JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas  
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee              DINA TITUS, Nevada   
MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee             TED LIEU, California     
ANDY BARR, Kentucky                  SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania 
RONNY JACKSON, Texas                 DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota                         
YOUNG KIM, California                COLIN ALLRED, Texas   
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida        ANDY KIM, New Jersey  
BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan              SARA JACOBS, California
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN,       KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
    American Samoa                   SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK, Florida    
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas                GREG STANTON, Arizona    
WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio                MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania    
JIM BAIRD, Indiana                   JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida               JONATHAN JACKSON, Illinois
THOMAS KEAN, Jr., New Jersey         SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California        
MICHAEL LAWLER, New York             JIM COSTA, California        
CORY MILLS, Florida                  JASON CROW, Colorado                      
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois           
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas                                 
JOHN JAMES, Michigan                    
KEITH SELF, Texas                               
     
                Brendan Shields, Majority Staff Director
              Sophia A. Lafargue, Minority Staff Director

                                 ------                                

 Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International 
                             Organizations

               CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman

MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida        SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania, Ranking 
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN,           Member
    American Samoa                   AMI BERA, California
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas                SARA JACOBS, California
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
JOHN JAMES, Michigan

                Mary Vigil, Subcommittee Staff Director
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                
                

                            C O N T E N T S

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                               WITNESSES

                                                                   Page
Tim Ballard, Senior Adviser, The SPEAR Fund......................    13
Jeanne Celestine Lakin, Survivor-Expert..........................    22
Jennifer Podkul, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy, Kids in 
  Need of Defense................................................    27

                                APPENDIX

Hearing Notice...................................................    61
Hearing Minutes..................................................    63
Hearing Attendance...............................................    64

 
 CHILDREN ARE NOT FOR SALE--GLOBAL EFFORTS TO ADDRESS CHILD TRAFFICKING

                              ----------                              


                      THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

              House of Representatives,    
Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human
           Rights, and International Organizations,
                              Committee on Foreign Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 12:12 p.m., in 
Room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. 
Smith [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
    Mr. Smith. Good morning or afternoon, I should say. This 
hearing of the Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human 
Rights, and International Organizations will come to order. 
Over 20 years ago, the U.S. Congress approved and the President 
signed legislation, historic bipartisan legislation that I 
authored, known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 
2000, a comprehensive whole of government initiative to combat 
sex and labor trafficking in the United States as well as 
around the world.
    The TVPA created a bold domestic and international anti-
human trafficking strategy and established numerous, dozens and 
dozens of new programs to protect victims, prosecute 
traffickers, and to the extent possible, prevent human 
trafficking in the first place, as we all know, the three Ps. 
Though it's hard to believe now, my legislation was met with a 
wall of skepticism and opposition, outright opposition, 
dismissed by many as a solution in search of a problem. The 
administration even argued in this room as well as in 2172 that 
we didn't need a TIP Report which goes out every year.
    We did not need to have any sanctions or naming of 
countries with egregious records. It's all on the record. And 
somehow all of that would be counterproductive. And I'm a great 
believer that when you fight human rights and combat human 
rights abuses for human rights and combat abuses, you've got to 
name names.
    You got to be specific if you hope to effectuate change. 
And we pressed on again in a bipartisan way. And we were able 
to get the legislation over the goal line and into law.
    At the time too, many people thought when we said 
trafficking, including a number of U.S. attorneys that I talked 
to about what were they doing, they said, you're talking about 
weapons, right? You're talking about drugs, right? And I said, 
no, we're talking about human beings.
    There was this sense that what's that, human trafficking? 
It was kind of sad. I started working on this issue in 1995. It 
wasn't until five years later that we actually got the bill 
enacted into law.
    Reports of vulnerable persons, especially women and 
children, being reduced to commodities for sale were often met 
with surprise, incredulity, or indifference. The bill was 
signed into law on October 28th. And within a year, and I did a 
number of oversight hearings as well, nobody was arguing that 
the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and especially the three 
Ps was flawed, unworkable, unnecessary, or especially 
counterproductive. Everybody seemed to then be on board.
    Today we will examine--again, examine child sex and labor 
trafficking, a particularly devastating and egregious form of 
human trafficking that targets the most vulnerable among us. 
Tragically, this heinous crime has become more prevalent in 
recent years. Child predators it turns out are everywhere on 
the prowl, kidnaping, buying, or renting children to exploit.
    The child predators never waste a crisis and are especially 
skilled at taking advantage of conflict, poverty, lawlessness, 
poor governance by governments, corrupt officials including at 
the police level--especially at the police level. They take 
advantage of IDPs, refugees, and migrants. During the COVID-19 
pandemic, and we held a series of hearings in this committee on 
this, we found the child predators found new and devious ways 
via the internet and social media to groom and to sexually harm 
children.
    On any given day, over 27 million people around the world--
and there are varying estimates, but that's one of the 
estimates given by the U.S. Department of State--are enslaved 
in forced labor or sex trafficking. It is estimated nearly a 
third of all trafficking victims are children. But we believe 
that the true number is likely to much, much higher.
    To combat child sex tourism in 2016, I authored the 
International Megan's Law. After eight years of argument and 
callous disregard for child victims, it passed the House three 
times with huge bipartisan majorities but was blocked by the 
Senate. International Megan's Law was finally adopted in the 
Senate and signed into law.
    International Megan's Law seeks to protect children from 
sex tourism by notifying destination countries when convicted 
pedophiles plan to travel. The penalty for failure to disclose 
is identical to their failure to disclose to their local-state 
law enforcement, up to ten years in prison. When they say, I'm 
going to this country, X, Y, or Z, they have to tell us that.
    If they lie, they could be prosecuted and, like I said, get 
up to ten years in prison for it. So we're very serious. This 
child sex tourism has got to be stopped, and one way of doing 
is to say, you tell us where you're going. We inform the 
country of destination.
    We have the Angel Watch program that's doing a magnificent 
job on that. And then they're free to say, you're not coming in 
or you can come in and we'll watch you like a hawk. A number of 
countries, there's been more than 20,000 notices made to other 
countries.
    We've asked that it be a sense of reciprocity. We wrote it 
right into the law. We haven't gotten a lot of people telling 
us in other countries, so-and-so is coming who we convicted as 
a pedophile. I wish we could get that, and we're still pushing 
for that so we can be on guard or making them inadmissible to 
the United States.
    Megan Kanka on who each and every one of our states has a 
Megan's Law, she was a 7-year-old little girl who lived in my 
old hometown of Hamilton. I know the parents very well. I 
worked with them on Megan's Law as well as International 
Megan's Law.
    She was sexually assaulted and murdered in 1994 by a 
convicted pedophile who lived across the street. Nobody, I say 
again nobody knew who he was. He was actually handing out 
fliers, have you seen Megan, as part of the search when she 
went missing and he had brutally raped her and then buried her 
in a shallow grave.
    He's in prison and hopefully will never get out. But that 
led to Megan's Laws everywhere. And I had a meeting about 12 
years ago. I always meet with delegations when they come in and 
we talk about trafficking.
    This one was from Thailand. And I asked them, what would 
you do if you knew a convicted pedophile who was coming to 
Bangkok or Phuket or any of the other places where child sex 
tourism is very, very prevalent. They said, we wouldn't let 
them in.
    That day, we started drafting the legislation. And again, 
eight years later, we finally got it enacted into law. I just 
have right here because we were very concerned that they would 
lie and not get caught as to where they're going, they'll say 
they're going to Narita, to Japan, and they're really going 
somewhere else like Malaysia or to Cambodia or to Thailand.
    We got the legislation to include that the passports will 
have to have this inscription on it. The bearer was convicted 
of a sex offense against a minor and is a covered sex offender 
pursuant to the U.S. code. And we know that many of the people 
at the border now are looking for that.
    They see that, and they say, get out of here. You're not 
coming in to abuse our children because we know that these are 
very rampant. And very often these sex tourism things are just 
horrible.
    We also know and all of you know that, especially our very 
distinguished witnesses, that refugees, migrants, and 
internally displaced children are especially vulnerable to 
trafficking. And then traffickers take advantage of conflict 
and chaos to target young victims. We are seeing this in 
Ukraine where it is estimated over 90 percent of the Ukrainians 
fleeing Putin's war are women and children and that more than 
half of Ukrainians children have been displaced by conflict.
    Thousands of Ukrainian children have been forcibly removed 
from their homes and from orphanages and taken to Russia in 
mass abductions. Part of Putin's genocidal plan to erase the 
Ukrainian culture. Tragically, the problems of child 
trafficking is rampant right here in the United States, right 
under our nose.
    A lot of our law enforcement are working hard to combat it. 
But it's happening right here with American children. Now we 
know there's a serious family concern that unaccompanied minors 
coming across our southern border, many of them from Central 
America and South America, may be the new victims. According to 
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, at least 345,000 children 
from other countries have crossed the U.S. southern border 
unaccompanied since 2021.
    These unaccompanied minors are especially vulnerable to 
traffickers. And shockingly, Department of Health and Human 
Services has lost contact with at least 85,000 of these 
children after placing them with sponsors in the United States. 
I would note parenthetically and I work very closely 
intercountry adoption as well as adoption domestically.
    There's a great vetting process to ensure that who is 
applying to be a parent of an adopted child gets a home study, 
gets all kinds of due process, due diligence to ensure they are 
who they say they are and the child will be in a good home 
where he or she or they if it's a group of siblings will not be 
hurt. What kind of due diligence is being done for these 
children as they're handed off? I've heard so many anecdotal 
stories that have just--were chilling about how low the bar is 
in order to procure one of these children.
    And that's the word that I use because I think some of this 
obviously is human trafficking. The U.S. government has a 
responsibility to protect these vulnerable children and to 
fully vet the sponsors. Without any means to contact these 
children, many of whom endured countless risks to reach the 
U.S. border, I put in our last hearing that we had with 
Ambassador at Large Dyer that the President of Guatemala told 
me that about 80 percent of the women and young girls making 
their way up the border--to our border are sexually assaulted, 
80 percent.
    Tim, you brought out, and I hope you bring out in your 
testimony about these other Central American Presidents who are 
speaking out and saying, these are our kids. Whether they're 
ultra left or ultra right as Presidents, they're concerned that 
their kids are being maltreated in the most ruinous ways as 
they make their way to the U.S. Without any means of contact, 
these children, many of whom endured countless risks to reach 
the U.S. border could be in immediate grave danger and at risk 
of death, child sex exploitation and abuse, severe forms of 
trafficking and persons including forced labor and of course 
sex trafficking.
    Earlier this week joined by 22 sponsors, I introduced H.R. 
5415, the Safeguarding Endangered Children, Unaccompanied and 
at Risk of Exploitation Act or the SECURE Act to compel the 
federal government to report our efforts to locate, establish 
contact with, conduct wellness checks on, and investigate any 
suspicion of human trafficking related to the approximately 
85,000 unaccompanied minors where ORR has lost contact with. It 
is imperative that the executive branch locate and assess the 
well being of these minors. And we must inform our border 
security policies--reform them so that this ends.
    We are joined here today by an outstanding group of 
witnesses. I'll give a proper introduction to each of you. You 
are just amazing leaders, including a man whose life experience 
provided the foundation for the recently released file, Sound 
of Freedom, Tim Ballard. The Speaker of the House Kevin 
McCarthy did a premiere for members of Congress, and many 
members came.
    And even though for my wife and I it was the second time 
that we saw it, I had tears in my eyes about the heroic things 
that Tim did and the kids, the plight of those kids, in this 
case, kids from Colombia. On May 14, 2015 in this room, Tim 
Ballard testified at one of my human rights committee hearings. 
He told us how he had served for 12 years as a special agent 
for the Department of Homeland Security's Internet Crimes 
Against Children Task Force and the sex tourism [inaudible] and 
worked as an undercover operative infiltrating organizations at 
home and abroad that were abusing and trafficking children.
    Tim told us, however, that he often felt helpless, his 
word, ``by the fact that the vast majority of the child victims 
that we would find fell outside of the purview of the United 
States. And unless we could tie it to U.S. travel to the case, 
I would not be able to rescue the children,'' close quote. 
Working with the Colombians, for example, Tim pulled off one of 
the largest rescue operations ever, more than 120 victims, 
children as young as 11 in just one day.
    An example of working with local law enforcement like in 
Colombia and with many of our folks that were just absolutely 
motivated to rescue children, 120 victims in just one day. 
Tim's heroic lifesaving work--and it was very, very dangerous, 
continues to be, rescuing children from the cruelty of sex 
trafficking, almost always at great physical risk to himself 
and his colleagues--is the stuff of legends. I said it the 
other day, we often use the word, hero.
    We use it too much I think sometimes in Congress. We're all 
legends in our own mind after all. But this man is a hero. And 
you ladies are heroes on the front line fighting so hard.
    The Sound of Freedom tells his true story. It not only 
informs and educates, it motivates and is going all around the 
world motivating and informing people to take stronger action 
and to be aware situationally. I would also like to extend a 
very special thanks for Jeanne Celestine Lakin, a courageous 
survivor expert who joined us today to share her very personal 
perspective, what impact these crimes have on children, and 
what more we should be doing to prevent them.
    I've always considered it essential to listen to the voices 
of survivors. We all believe that. And in the process of 
developing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, it was 
survivors who moved the needle and convinced lawmakers that the 
legislation was necessary.
    Our bill was dead. The administration was against it. And 
then we had victims come and testify, including two especially 
persuasive women who have been forced into prostitution 
trafficking in Moscow. And they told their stories.
    I met with them in 1989 along with my wife. And it was just 
mind boggling what they had been through. And you could've 
heard a pin drop when they told their stories.
    And people said, wait a minute. We need to do something 
about this. So thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Lakin. And 
I'm so happy to welcome and we're deeply grateful that Jennifer 
Podkul, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy of Kids in Need 
of Defense will shortly testify as well.
    And I will introduce her more robustly in a few moments. 
But I want to thank you, all three of you for your leadership. 
I'd like to yield to Ms. Wild.
    Ms. Wild. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you 
so much to our witnesses. Coincidentally, the timing of this 
hearing is occurring just as I've returned from Nepal with 
several of my congressional colleagues where we had a number of 
visits with young women in particular who were survivors of 
trafficking as well as meeting with USAID employees and NGOs 
who are working very hard to combat child trafficking in 
particular but also trafficking of women.
    And it was a very sobering trip and really just made me 
realize how extensive the problem is around the world. Mr. 
Chairman, you mentioned that trafficking often thrives in 
places of conflict and chaos. I'd add to that, that trafficking 
thrives in places with extreme poverty which is really tragic.
    We spoke to people whose parents had essentially acquiesced 
to their young daughters being taken away for what was 
euphemistically called education or a job. We talked to one 
young woman who had survived trafficking but had been taken 
away from her village at age 8 and was injected with something 
that caused her to go into early puberty. And it was really 
just a terribly difficult thing to listen to.
    So I feel incredibly strongly that combating the scourge of 
human trafficking particularly among children but all of human 
trafficking should never become a partisan issue. It's one of 
those core priorities where we can and must continue to find 
common ground. We can't let this tragic issue fall into the pit 
where partisan divide causes important causes to be relegated 
to the cutting room floor as we have seen all too often.
    And I hope that we can all come together in the name of 
humanity and decency and protection of children to cross that 
divide. Addressing the root of this issue requires being 
willing to engage in tough, robust, and effective diplomacy and 
partnership with partners and allies bilaterally as well as in 
international forums. And one of the things we have to be 
prepared for is that often in countries where trafficking is 
particularly prevalent, there will be great denial of that at 
the governmental level, in very uncertain terms that it's not 
happening there.
    And we just need to be able to look past what we often do 
in the name of diplomacy, accepting what a government official 
in another country tells us to really look at what is happening 
around the world. And it requires consistency in how we report 
on countries regardless of geopolitical considerations. We 
cannot show favoritism in this issue to countries that we may 
have an allied relationship with because we're worried about 
upsetting a balance of trade or some other issue.
    It's absolutely too important. And this issue, in my view, 
supercedes all other considerations. And it requires being 
willing to take on powerful interests here at home quite 
honestly particularly when it comes to some disturbing recent 
reports that we have seen of the prevalence of child labor in 
corporate supply chains, including among some very profitable 
corporations doing business here in the United States.
    And I don't mean to suggest that we are at the heart of the 
problem. But I think it's very, very important that we not 
close our eyes to any evidence of child trafficking in 
particular, human trafficking in general. So to all the 
advocates and the survivors who may be watching this hearing, 
wherever you are, please know that you have an ally in me and 
my office and this subcommittee.
    With that, I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to 
working together on this. And I yield back.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ranking Member. I'd like to 
yield such time as you may consume to Ms. Radewagen. And thank 
you for being here.
    Mrs. Radewagen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also want to 
thank the ranking member for holding this important hearing. 
Mr. Ballard, I have several questions for you, but they're sort 
of interwoven. But let's start by, can you tell us more about 
what you learned about the crime of child trafficking as an 
agent for the Department of Homeland--I'm sorry. Erase all 
that.
    But I wanted to just take the opportunity to thank the 
chairman and the ranking member for holding this tremendously 
important hearing. And I particularly want to thank the 
witnesses for appearing here today to share all this very, very 
important information with us.
    Mr. Smith. I'd like to yield to Ms. Manning.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to 
Ranking Member Wild. Thank you for your remarkable words on 
this critically important heartbreaking problem. And Chairman 
Smith, I would just like to thank you for your many, many years 
of tenacious work on this issue, more than 20 years of work.
    And I just want to congratulate you on your achievements 
because I think without your work, we would not have some of 
the laws in place that are hopefully having an effect on 
getting to this issue. So thank you for all of that. I guess I 
want to start with Ms. Podkul. Can you talk to us about how has 
human trafficking evolved--thank you. With that, I yield back.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you, Ms. Manning. And thank you, Ranking 
Member Wild. Let me introduce our three distinguished witnesses 
beginning first with Tim Ballard who is senior advisor to the 
SPEAR Fund which combats all forms of human trafficking.
    Mr. Ballard previously spent over a decade working as a 
special agent on some of the background I already shared with 
the committee and with the audience where he was assigned to 
the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, an undercover 
operative. And again, I would encourage people to watch Sound 
of Freedom to get a sense of what it is really like to be on 
the front line to plan, to do all of the intel that was 
necessary how to best rescue those children with the greatest 
possibility of them as well as the rescuers not getting hurt. I 
mean, the traffickers did think nothing of committing murder.
    They rape. They also murder. So I'm so grateful, but I hope 
people will take the time to look at that and watch that very, 
very powerful movie.
    Now we'll hear from Jeanne Celestine Lakin, who is a 
survivor of child trafficking and an expert on the 
vulnerability of children to trafficking and the impact that it 
has on their growth and development and what can be done to 
protect and prevent this crime. Ms. Lakin serves as the chair 
of the International Survivors of Trafficking Advisory Council, 
for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's 
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. And 
parenthetically, I serve as the special representative for the 
Parliamentary Assembly of Trafficking as the special rep.
    So she's a colleague as well but working with ODIHR and 
deeply appreciate that work. She's an award winning author of A 
Voice in the Darkness, a memoir of a Rwandan genocide. And I 
just got a copy and will read it, probably in October when we 
have a break.
    And she wrote, as a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda, we 
all remember the Tutsis and Hutus and the horrible bloodletting 
that may have been prevented but it wasn't by the international 
community, the UN, and the United States. But she's a survivor. 
So thank you for being here. She obtained her MA in public 
administration and public policy from Eastern Washington 
University. She founded the One Million Orphans initiative 
dedicated to providing sustainable support to the world's most 
vulnerable children.
    And we'll hear from Jennifer Podkul what happened is an 
international human rights lawyer and expert on child migration 
in the United States. Prior to joining Kids in Need of Defense, 
Jennifer was a senior program officer at the Women's Refugee 
Commission where she researched issues facing vulnerable 
migrants seeking protection in the United States and advocated 
for improved treatment. She is a national expert on issues 
affecting immigrant children, has published articles, 
handbooks, and reports on U.S. immigration law, and she 
presents regularly as an expert at various conferences, 
briefings, and professional training and includes speaking to 
us here on the subcommittee. Thank you. She co-authored Forced 
from Home: The Lost Boys and Girls from Central America and was 
a contributing author to Childhood Migration and Human Rights 
in Central and North America: Causes, Policies, Practices, and 
Challenges.
    Thank you, each of you. Please take up to ten minutes. If 
you need a little more, that's fine. And any additional 
materials you want to be included in the record, without 
objection will be so ordered.

  STATEMENTS OF TIM BALLARD, SENIOR ADVISOR, THE SPEAR FUND; 
JEANNE CELESTINE LAKIN, SURVIVOR-EXPERT; JENNIFER PODKUL, VICE 
   PRESIDENT OF POLICY AND ADVOCACY, KIDS IN NEED OF DEFENSE

                    STATEMENT OF TIM BALLARD

    Mr. Ballard. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Wild, and 
members of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, it's an honor to 
present to you this statement. Human trafficking is real. It's 
tragic. And I'm grateful this committee is willing to bring 
attention to how human trafficking is the largest and fastest 
growing criminal enterprise in the world, how United States 
actors have played a role in that growth, and what we can do to 
end trafficking in our time.
    Human trafficking is a global humanitarian crisis with the 
U.S. State Department estimating that there are over 27 million 
global victims of human trafficking at any given time. 
Tragically, some people in the media and in Washington, D.C. 
have tried to minimize the impact of human trafficking and the 
destruction it creates, especially in the lives of innocent 
children. Regardless of ideology or party label, I believe 
every member of this committee and good people everywhere can 
agree that human trafficking is a plague and an evil that must 
be eradicated.
    Evidence of this can be seen in the response to the new 
movie, Sound of Freedom, that has been a surprise box office 
success and is sparking a national conversation on child sex 
slavery and trafficking. American people on all sides of the 
aisle are realizing that ending human trafficking is not a 
political debate. It is the moral imperative of our time and 
our nation is not alone in this mindset.
    In my career, I've traveled extensively around the globe, 
most recently for the international release of the film, Sound 
of Freedom. I have met with heads of states and government 
officials in countries we count as close allies who share with 
great sadness the impact and the scourge that human trafficking 
is having on their own borders. They understand the magnitude 
of the evil that trafficking represents and share their strong 
conviction to work with the United States in bringing powerful 
solutions to the fight against human trafficking.
    The conclusions I offer today in this testimony are based 
on my professional experience as an anti-trafficking operator, 
both as a U.S. federal agent and the leader of an anti-
trafficking NGO. After starting my professional career with the 
CIA, I transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. At 
DHS, I spent 12 years as a special agent and undercover 
operator for Homeland Security investigations.
    For 10 of those years, I combated sex trafficking on the 
southern border and became one of the country's foremost 
experts on the issue of trafficking through years of undercover 
work and research and investigation. After leaving the federal 
government, I've continued the fight against human trafficking, 
first as the founder and CEO of the anti-trafficking 
organization Operation Underground Railroad, also as the CEO of 
the Nazarene Fund, and now as a senior advisor for the SPEAR 
Fund which is an organization that funds and collaborates with 
a coalition of experts, operators, organizations, and concerned 
citizens around the globe to end human trafficking. Through my 
experience as a federal agent, I'm working with several of 
these NGOs.
    I work closely with the heads of every U.S. agency whose 
job it is to find and rescue children being trafficked across 
our border as well as working with government officials and law 
enforcement agencies from around the world. But our federal 
agents and local law enforcement along with anti-trafficking 
agents around the globe work with professionalism and 
dedication. Their tireless efforts result in not just 
disrupting the flow of human trafficking but rescuing those who 
have become victims of human trafficking.
    I would like to share two recent experiences that'll 
highlight the role the U.S. currently shares in aiding human 
trafficking in the world while also showing what is possible if 
we redouble our efforts and lead other countries in the fight 
against human trafficking. First, the United States is 
generally understood to be the number one consumer of child 
exploitation material in the world and a major contributor to 
the abhorrent sex tourism agency around the globe. And policies 
here at home have a ripple effect throughout the world.
    Earlier this month, I had the heartbreaking conversations 
with President Castro in Honduras and President Giammattei in 
Guatemala. It was clear from my conversations with each 
President that U.S. policies are forcing our neighbors into 
crisis. The leadership in these pathway countries are working 
hard to warn their people against the dangerous practice of 
submitting to smugglers and traffickers.
    However, contrary to their pleas, the current 
administration's make it too alluring. And the smugglers or 
traffickers who can make up the 14 million dollars a day are 
way too convincing. So alluring and convincing in fact that the 
Council on Foreign Relations reported that the northern 
triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras 
account for three-quarters of unaccompanied children 
apprehended at the southern U.S. border in fiscal year 2022.
    Sadly, U.S. government policy is currently reinforcing 
those numbers, creating havoc and making the anti-trafficking 
efforts of countries like Honduras and Guatemala more 
difficult. In contrast of this, recent operation efforts not 
covered widely in the news show it was possible with close 
international cooperation between multiple governments and 
NGOs. During the earlier days or the early days of the Russian 
invasion, I was alerted about women and children who were being 
victimized and being trafficked outside of Ukraine.
    For human traffickers, geopolitical events like natural 
disasters or like the war in Ukraine are sometimes and 
sickeningly referred to as harvest time by the traffickers 
because of their ability to easily prey upon vulnerable women 
and children. After recognizing the need in Ukraine, I began 
looking for an NGO that was on the ground in Ukraine that had 
the legal right to be there and had strong working 
relationships with the local government and proper authorities. 
Little did I know at the time that leads uncovered during our 
work in Ukraine and in eastern Europe would lead to a rescue 
operation represented by several NGOs including Operation 
Underground Railroad, Aerial Recovery, Free a Girl, and other 
organizations which because of operational security can't be 
named at this time.
    I led this operation beginning in Ukraine. We went through 
three continents, six countries, and we identified a pedophile 
organization, actually a political organization of organized 
pedophiles in Holland who were fugitives. And they were hiding 
in Latin America while working to smuggle more victim children 
into their arms and into the possibility of being trafficked in 
these countries.
    We were able to identify the leader of this group. And he 
was hiding in Mexico City working with Mexican officials. He 
was arrested last summer. And that led us to fund his 
lieutenants, also fugitives from Holland for crimes against 
children, who had stood up a sex hotel in a little village 
called Canoa in Ecuador working with the National Police of 
Ecuador and with the U.S. embassy, HSI, who supported greatly 
in this operation.
    We were able to dismantle that organization completely. And 
both those pedophiles have been convicted and serving 
significant prison sentences in Ecuador. We also identified two 
other Dutch pedophiles as part of this group that we worked to 
get them back to their country where they are facing the 
charges there as well.
    All this we did in four short months and was able to rescue 
900 orphans out of Ukraine during the invasion. The only 
reason, the only way we could do this was by private-public 
partnerships, multiple NGOs, multiple government organizations, 
government agencies all working together. That's how you move 
fast. That's how you rapidly rescue and protect children.
    But make no mistake, the war against human trafficking 
cartels and their allies, it's going to be long. It's going to 
be difficult. It's a hard fight, but I believe we can win if we 
work together.
    The first step in that fight is ensuring U.S. policies that 
make human trafficking more difficult and not easier. I would 
be remiss if I didn't mention the plight of 85,000 
unaccompanied immigrant children that according to HHS were in 
the government's care handed over to sponsors with minimal 
vetting and now cannot be accounted for. We have in large part 
thanks to the whistleblower at HHS, Ms. Rodas, who's here.
    I was so happy and surprised to see her here. It's thanks 
to her, her efforts and courage to stand up and sound the alarm 
about what was happening, that these children were being 
released way too rapidly and without the proper vetting. 
Congressman Smith's the SECURE Act in particular will help find 
these kids that this administration has claimed on record that 
it's not their problem anymore despite these children being at 
great risk of sexual abuse and other forms of exploitation.
    Secondly, the U.S. can re-double our commitment in the 
international enforcement efforts. The Presidents of Guatemala 
and Honduras both share the value they see in policies like 
International Megan's Law which allows the U.S. to alert our 
allies when registered sex offenders are entering their 
countries. In fact, I told both Presidents--I didn't bring it 
up, Chairman. They brought it up.
    And they said, that law, International Megan's Law, wow, 
thank you. And I said, well, I know the person who wrote that 
and sponsored that. In fact, I had the privilege to actually 
testify before Congress.
    And they were so proud and they gave me the numbers of how 
many alerts they're getting from the U.S. government. And they 
know it's preventing child sex abuse. And so from the 
Presidents of both Honduras and Guatemala, they sent me to 
thank you, Chairman Smith, and all those who sponsored that 
bipartisan bill because it's saving lives.
    And it taught me an important lesson. What you do in the 
halls of Congress despite what others might say actually does 
work, actually can do tremendous work in saving lives. And so 
all the more reason to be here and to continue to support this 
next piece of legislation, the SECURE Act.
    As I shared earlier, the United States is generally 
understood to be the number one consumer of child exploitation 
material in the world and a major contributor to the abhorrent 
sex tourism industry around the globe. Now it's up to us to 
solve this problem. Too often people say in this country, this 
is a problem far, far away. This is a problem that we have 
nothing to do with.
    Well, that's not true. Not only are we--according the State 
Department, the TIP report, we're in the top three countries 
for--destination countries for human trafficking. We create so 
much of the demand.
    We so often are the tourist abusing children, so it is our 
problem. And we must solve that problem right here. Countries 
around the world are in fact looking to us and looking to you 
to solve this problem and end this horrific plague that really 
is the slavery of children. Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Ballard follows:]

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    Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much, Mr. Ballard. I would 
note parenthetically when you did testify in 2015, you gave our 
bill a major, major boost. Given your background when you said 
pass it because it had passed the House three times, it did 
help over in the Senate. So thank you.
    Mr. Ballard. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith. Ms. Lakin.

              STATEMENT OF JEANNE CELESTINE LAKIN

    Ms. Lakin. Chairman Chris Smith, Ranking Member Susan Wild, 
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for this 
opportunity to testify before you here today. My name is Jeanne 
Celestine Lakin, and I'm deeply honored to be here as a witness 
in the subcommittee hearing on child trafficking. I'd like to 
express my gratitude to the subcommittee for addressing this 
critical issue on child trafficking and it's devastation impact 
it has on children, particularly children of refugees.
    I testify here before you today as a proud American, also 
as a survivor of child trafficking and a survivor of Rwandan 
genocide against Tutsis. I am one of the lucky ones who found 
safety here in the United States. After losing my family and 
also losing my home and experiencing the depth of inhumanity 
and suffered unimaginable violence, I call on all of you to 
ensure that children who are coming from armed conflict are 
protected from human trafficking.
    I also want to call on all of you to implement policies, 
especially immigration reform, that really embodies humanity. I 
believe that we all should protect our borders, yes, but also 
to look at the people who are crossing the borders or people 
who are fleeing the conflicts as we see it today. When I came 
to the United States, I was a 14-year-old. But it took me about 
14 years to actually become a U.S. citizen, and that is just 
such a long time waiting.
    A lot of people are exploited during that phase because 
they wait without documentation and they're vulnerable. And 
that's women and children. I come to you with true faith that 
as decision makers in this room that you will do everything in 
your power to ensure that children are protected from human 
trafficking, not only here in the United States but all over 
the world, especially again looking at the war torn countries, 
looking at those countries where they have conflict where 
children are fleeing, where women are fleeing and girls.
    The Bible in Psalms 82:3-4 tells us, give justice to the 
weak and the fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted 
and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them 
from the hands of the wicked.
    I believe in this Bible verse. I live by it every day. And 
that's why I'm sitting here today testifying. And that is why 
chartered One Million Orphans.
    Will you join me to create laws and implementing policies 
to protect children, children who are scarred by the loss of 
their mothers and children who have been scarred by the loss of 
their fathers, and the children who traffickers seek to make 
profit off their little bodies? I have faith that we can 
restore their faith if we all come together in the sake of 
humanity. And the best way to do it is really to have a place 
or system to support people who have been victimized.
    A lot of times people don't realize that me as a survivor, 
not only was I raped but I was also traumatized from what I've 
seen. So we need to find a system that supports, that addresses 
mental health for the victims as well, also for the survivors. 
UNODC, a 2020 Global Report on human trafficking estimated that 
65 percent of trafficked were women and girls.
    And 92 percent of those individuals were trafficked for the 
purpose of sexual exploitation. And again, you're looking at 
more women and girls. We know that in Rwanda, for example, rape 
was used as a weapon of war.
    It is the same thing that is happening in Congo right now. 
It's the same thing that is happening in Ukraine. It's the same 
thing that is happening is South Sudan.
    More so to say when women are fleeing, they leave even--
when they're being trafficked, they're leaving behind those 
vulnerable children. I had many opportunities to speak to women 
who are fleeing Ukraine. And their bravery, their courage, they 
speak about their husbands fighting in a way or their husbands 
who have been killed. They talk about also the journey to 
making to a safe place and how tough that's been, and those 
women and girls are even more so vulnerable.
    As a chair of OSCE, the Office for Democratic Institutions 
and Human Rights, International Survivors of Trafficking 
Advisory Council, also known as ISTAC, I serve with 20 other 
members, survivor members. And today I am here to represent all 
of them. Those survivors have encountered inhumanity.
    But they speak, they work to make sure that they make a 
difference in the world. One of my suggestions for the group is 
there was a book that was put together, the National Referral 
Mechanism by survivors. And that book, I believe, that should 
be in every single country really because it puts out a 
framework and also ways to identify and a way to provide 
resources to support survivors and victims.
    I just want to bring this attention to OSCE region on child 
trafficking. According to 2020 UNODC Global Report on Human 
Trafficking in Persons, 40 percent of all global human 
trafficking cases occurred in OSCE region. I want you to pay 
attention to this number.
    Out of the 40 percent, 27 percent were the cases on 
children, human trafficked children, 27 percent. Girls 
represented 16 percent and 11 percent represented the boys. 
While human trafficking a lot of times we talk about labor 
trafficking and also sexual exploitation, a lot of times we 
miss that in this report, 10 percent of those that were 
trafficked, 10 percent of those children were trafficked for 
the sake of harvesting their organs. And many of them do not 
survive.
    So we see that children in institutions, children who are 
in alternative care, runaway youth, unaccompanied children, 
separated children, children with disabilities, children who 
belong to national minorities such as Romas and Sintis, and 
also children in armed conflict, all of these children become 
very vulnerable. And we need to find a way to be united behind 
them. I also want to bring this tragedy to--to highlight the 
tragedy that I've seen coming from Ukraine, of course, that's 
been forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
    As a mother, I cannot fathom not seeing my boy again. Many 
of these children have been indoctrinated against Ukraine and 
some of them have had their document changed and have been 
adopted by Russia. These children are not going to be able to 
reunite with their families.
    Before I share my lived experience, I would like to take 
this opportunity to congratulate Chairman Smith for leading the 
way in uniting OSCE States on protecting Ukrainian women and 
children. Thank you for the work you do. Your unwavering 
commitment and leadership in combating human trafficking here 
in the United States and around the world is truly remarkable 
and has made such an impact and it's going to continue to make 
an impact.
    So as survivors of human trafficking, we want to thank you, 
Chairman Smith, for the work that you are doing today. I want 
to share my story really quick. But I want you to know that my 
story is not a unique story.
    It is a story of a Ukrainian girl. It is a story of an 
Afghan girl or a boy. It is a story of many children around the 
world. It's story of refugee boys and girls fleeing from 
different places like Ethiopia, South Sudan or boys fleeing 
from Venezuela or a little girl fleeing from Myanmar.
    I grew up in a Christian family. I had ten siblings. My 
parents really served the community. They embodied the 
humanity. They served tirelessly to the community.
    But when 1994 genocide came knocking on our doors, my 
parents were--I don't want to say it this way. But I believe 
they were a bit naive. They didn't believe--because of the work 
they've done in the community, they believed that we would be 
safe.
    The propaganda campaign were on radios. They were on 
television, the ideology of hate. We went from being part of 
the human family to being called things like cockroaches and 
snakes and everything else except humans. We had been 
dehumanized.
    And one of the things, again, I advocate for in terms of 
immigration reform, as I was filling out forms before I 
received my U.S. citizenship, when you fill out forms that says 
you're an alien, for me that was trigger because in my own 
country, I was called the alien, the other. So as decision 
makers, policy makers, I will call on all of you to changes 
those forms. People should not be referred to as aliens.
    But in the course of three months in 1994, my parents 
divided us in groups of three children. I ended up with three-
year-old twin sisters. We lived in the bushes in the swamps. We 
ate plants. We ate grass, drank red water.
    All around us we heard killers, inciting things to kill us 
because we were supposed snakes and cockroaches. At the end of 
the genocide--actually, before the genocide, I had witnessed my 
father being killed with machetes in the streets. My father was 
my hero.
    Before the end of the genocide, I had seen my mother's--
witnessed my mother's dead body and my three-week-old little 
brother. Give me a moment. I'm sorry.
    At the end of the genocide, I was captured by a man who not 
only physically abused me but verbally and sexually raped me as 
a nine-year-old. This man decided that he would actually 
migrate to Congo with me. And it was in the Congo where he was 
negotiating with adult men how much money I was worth, to be 
sold into marriage. And at that time, I was ten-years-old.
    I ran back from Congo, made it to Rwanda. I grew up in a 
family where I had everything a child could've dreamed up. My 
parents were business people.
    By the end of the genocide, I was a homeless kid in the 
street begging. So as you make policies, as you write laws, 
keep in mind the human aspect. Keep that embodiment of humanity 
as you make these decisions because girls like myself, children 
like myself should not go through what I had to go through.
    Came here to the United States. I was placed with a family 
who also sexually abused me as well. So it wasn't once, I was, 
like, God, how much more can I take? But I'm here because I 
believe that we have to be the voice of the voiceless.
    And Chairman Smith, I appreciate what you said about 
vetting system. We need to have screening system to families 
who are receiving migrant children are vetted just like 
families that are adopting because it's easy to say you might 
have the same DNA or somehow matching DNA or related to this 
person. It doesn't mean that person is a safe place for a 
child.
    That's something that really people need to look into. 
Another thing that I really would encourage you to do is to 
really as you make these policies and these decisions to have 
survivors like myself be in a room because I believe lived 
experience speak volumes. And by giving me a platform today, 
you have given a voice to countless survivors and victims 
today. So thank you so much.
    [The statement of Ms. Lakin follows:]

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    Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much, Ms. Lakin, for your 
courage, for your wisdom, your resilience, your faith. You're 
truly an inspiration. Thank you so much.
    I'd like to yield to our final witness, and thank you for 
your testimony.

                  STATEMENT OF JENNIFER PODKUL

    Ms. Podkul. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Smith and 
Ranking Member Wild. My name is Jennifer Podkul. I'm the vice 
president for Policy and Advocacy at Kids in Need of Defense. 
I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak to you about KIND's 
mission, to ensure the protection of unaccompanied and 
separated children.
    Early in my legal career, I solely represented trafficked 
children and their complex legal matters. My clients are from 
around the world. They're from Mexico, Russia, Thailand. And 
they had survived brutal exploitation as domestic servants, as 
farm workers, and some in the sex industry.
    All of these cases had one thing in common. Close 
collaboration between experts was key to ensuring that these 
children were safe, that they could begin their healing, and 
that they could thrive in their communities. In my current role 
at KIND, I have the honor of working with attorneys and social 
workers around the world, implementing through partnerships a 
child-focused iteration of the three Ps, the prevention, 
prosecution, and protection that's outlined in Mr. Smith's 
landmark bill, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
    As you've seen in my written testimony, my colleagues are 
doing tremendous work in Mexico and Europe to collaborate with 
government officials, law enforcement officers, and child 
protection professionals to prevent child trafficking and then 
to serve survivors. Prevention of child trafficking is a 
priority. By the time we have to intervene, children have 
already experienced harm.
    In KIND's experience, prevention work requires meaningful 
relationship building to identify and then to work to reduce 
children's vulnerabilities. We're conducting trainings and 
partnering with community-based organizations in Central 
America, Mexico, and Europe to provide children with 
information about their rights and how to seek assistance if 
ever necessary. Although we've made progress on many fronts, 
there's more that needs to be done to protect children.
    First is set forth in the TVPA. The U.S. government should 
make every measure to ensure kids are connected to attorneys. 
Having been the only trusted adult in a child's life when I 
served as their attorney, I can tell you that counsel is a 
crucial tool to identifying and helping a child that's being 
exploited or who's at risk.
    Second, the government should institute safe return and 
reintegration programming that's outlined in the TVPA for 
unaccompanied children who can safely return to their country's 
of origin. Integration services can decrease the likelihood 
that a child will be compelled to attempt another dangerous 
journey to the United States. Third, to ensure unaccompanied 
children are screened at the border for trafficking concerns, 
the Department of Homeland Security should assign state 
licensed child welfare professionals to help administer those 
screenings.
    I applaud Representative Salazar and Representative Jacobs 
bipartisan leadership in ensuring that proper funding for child 
welfare professionals is in the fiscal year 2024 budget. 
Fourth, the administration should immediately ramp up and 
Congress should provide the necessary resources for the Central 
American minors program. This is in-country processing program.
    It enables certain vulnerable children to apply for 
potential relocation to the U.S. as refugees. This is a 
lifeline for children who are in danger who may otherwise have 
no choice but to make the hazardous trek to the U.S.-Mexico 
border. Fifth and finally, the U.S. should increase funding for 
programs that prioritize building capacity abroad.
    As an example, KIND and its partners in Europe have 
supported efforts to provide refugee children and family 
services and coordinated support hubs, otherwise known as blue 
dots. They've been created by government authorities in 
partnership with UNICEF and UNHCR. At these sites, children can 
register protection authorities and receive basic needs. They 
get legal information and then they can get help with family 
reunification.
    This model should be replicated in other areas of the 
world. This is a very difficult topic, and there are a lot of 
very tragic stories that we all hear doing this work every day. 
So I just want to end my testimony with a story.
    A few years ago, I was in National Airport and I heard 
somebody yell my name. So much to my surprise, a young woman 
came running at me. And I realized it was a former client of 
mine.
    So this girl who had become a delightful woman had come 
into my office seeking help when she was a child. And at the 
time, she didn't even realize the horrors that she experienced 
had a name. It was human trafficking.
    So during our joyful reunion in the airport, I learned that 
due to the hard work put in by my social work colleague, the 
intrepid prosecutor who was willing to go after a diplomat who 
was exploiting her, and this girl's bravery and tenacity, she 
had been able to craft this life that was filled with formal 
education, dignified work, and limitless possibilities. It's a 
reminder that when children are given the chance at safety and 
security, their resilience knows no bounds. Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Podkul follows:]

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    Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much for your leadership and 
for making such a difference. I'll begin some of the questions. 
Ms. Lakin, you talked about the importance of faith.
    I was visiting a shelter, a Christian shelter in Goma in 
Congo where virtually every woman there had been raped, often 
gang raped by these paramilitaries and by government troops. 
And the transition within their hearts and souls, the trauma 
doesn't go away. But the ability to cope and overcome and have 
renewed hope and faith does when there's faith involved.
    I met a number of the women. I spent hours talking to them, 
almost all listening. I didn't ask questions. They just spoke 
and I took notes.
    And their lives were restored. But obviously with a huge, 
huge trauma that, like I said, never goes away like you deal 
with such agony as well. In the help that we do provide, 
shelters, I've been in shelters all over the world in Bolivia, 
in El Salvador, in Ethiopia, faith-based shelters.
    In Peru, they have a number of shelters there. And I've 
always been incredibly impressed and I often get into arguments 
with some of the people at the OSCE, not you. They think that 
having a faith-based component which psychologists can do great 
work, psychiatrists can do great work, social workers, great 
work.
    But almost like with Alcoholics Anonymous, there is that 
next step where faith in God certainly helps to overcome and to 
find a new way forward. And the outcomes are so much better 
when there's a faith-based component. And yet there's hostility 
to that among many.
    My counterpart in the OSCE years ago with the Parliamentary 
Assembly for the OSCE, she was with the OSCE itself, was openly 
hostile to a faith-based component. And I said whether it be 
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or any other faith, but having 
that comfort that comes with it. So if you could maybe speak to 
that as part of the healing process because what I've learned 
from--every law we write and every bill, every initiative is 
trauma informed.
    And you are informing us again as you have been doing and 
others. When you get to the healing process, it seems to me 
without that next step doesn't happen. And I too love the 
psalms. Psalm 82 is a great one and 73 and 37 are two of my 
favorite.
    And for those who have been so horrifically injured, even 
David said that he almost lost his way until he came into the 
sanctuary of the Lord. Then he learned what would happen to 
them and that God does hold you in the palm of his hand, even 
though it doesn't seem like it so often. So if you could speak 
to that part of the healing ministry that's so needed for 
trafficking.
    Ms. Lakin. Thank you, Chairman Smith. That is very 
important. It was also very important for me too. After the 
genocide, the way I describe the way I walked out of that 
genocide, I had survived but I was mentally dead like the 
Walking Dead, the movie.
    Literally, my soul was dead because everything that I had 
witnessed. And I battled depression, PTSD, trauma, you name it. 
I could've taken every pill on the market. Nothing would've 
been able to help me except the way God saved me.
    I grew up again in a Christian family with the value of 
faith was very, very important. And I remember just having this 
conversation with God because I was, like, God, you saved me. 
But I feel like I am dead inside.
    And I was, like, why would I have survived such tragedy to 
be walking around with a dead spirit to the point I couldn't 
feel. When you walk outside, you feel the sunshine and you feel 
joy. There was no joy in my heart.
    I felt like I had descended basically rock bottom after 
surviving. And so I spent time praying and asking God to free 
me. And that's why I feel like really shelters that are faith-
based are the most helpful.
    Counseling is great, and I encourage people to seek 
counseling for professional work. But having that touch with 
our creator is so powerful beyond what most people can imagine. 
When I prayed and I asked God to free me, he said directly 
through the Holy Spirit. He said, forgive them, so clearly.
    Forgive the people who have raped you, the people who have 
done a number on me, the people who have killed my family. 
Forgive them. And I said, God, I do not have the capability to 
forgive such inhumane.
    But if you want me to forgive, I want you to give me the 
strength to be able to do that. And honestly when I said that 
back to God, he gave me the strength where I said I forgive you 
for raping me, forgive you for killing my family. I forgive you 
for the reasons that I am an orphans, helpless in the streets.
    And I felt, like, as if I was flying high in the sky. That 
was the freedom. And so I do encourage to have faith-based 
organizations supporting these people who have been broken to 
where we cannot see.
    I serve as a manager of disability services at the college 
in Texas. When we don't see the physical disability, we assume 
people are fine. But there's a lot of disability that we may 
not be able to see. There's a lot of broken that only God can 
heal. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you. We will have votes around 1:40. I 
understand I have a lot of questions. I'll just do one, now and 
then yield to my colleagues. And this would be to Mr. Ballard.
    We had Cindy Dyer, a master at large for trafficking. And 
again, I wrote the law that created that position. And I have 
great respect for her.
    She gave tremendous testimony. But I did say before she 
came in that I'm going to ask you about the 85,000 
unaccompanied minors that have gone missing under the 
administration's watch. And I asked her that question after--
I'm not a gotcha kind of chairman.
    I want real answers. So I told her beforehand I was going 
to ask it. And she didn't know. She said, call Homeland 
Security.
    We've called Homeland Security. We don't get any answers. 
So we have this bill as you know. And you were very much a part 
of helping to draft it--I thank you, Mr. Ballard--called the 
SECURE Act which would penalize the FBI, Homeland Security, and 
HHS for unobligated funds, money in their bank account, 100,000 
dollars a day if they do not provide every 60 days a very 
important report on exactly what they're doing to do the 
welfare and whereabouts of these children.
    And it seems to me that how dare we look the other way. I 
mean, that was on May 12th we had that hearing. We've been 
reaching out non-stop and it's crickets. And it drives me a 
little bit crazy to think these kids could be sexually 
exploited as we're meeting here or labor or sex trafficking. So 
your thoughts on that.
    Mr. Ballard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a lot of 
thoughts on this. I first think of my--I have two adopted 
children who are migrants from Haiti. I have seven biological 
and two adopted.
    These are two children that we rescued in February of 2014 
from a trafficking organization. And we decided, my wife and I, 
to bring them home and adopt these 2, 2 of the 28. I was 
shocked and even a little frustrated though I shouldn't have 
been at the process that the State Department put us through to 
be vetted to receive two precious children.
    I appreciated it. I thought, wow, the U.S. government 
really cares. They really care to make sure--I saved them for 
heaven sakes. And I didn't get any shortcuts.
    Home studies, background checks, and I thought this is 
wonderful how we as a nation value the lives of foreign 
children even, even foreign children who are coming into our 
homes. I think of what would happen having worked in law 
enforcement in some capacity over 20 years. I can tell you if a 
child unaccompanied showed up in New York City or Washington, 
D.C. or you name the city and that child showed up 
unaccompanied, alone, what would happen to that child once the 
authorities were notified?
    That child would be protected. I know this. I've watched 
them do it. If someone comes and says, I'm the sponsor guardian 
of this kid, they're not going to release that kid.
    We're talking again background checks, DNA testing, 
extensive research because this is a precious child of God. So 
the question I have for the administration, why would you not 
afford the same protections to a foreign child whose inside of 
our country? I don't care how they got there.
    Let's worry about that later if they're here. They're here 
right now. Why on earth would you not afford the same 
protections?
    I've seen the process. I've been on the border. I was ten 
years as a special agent there. I've been there since that time 
watching what happens.
    These children have to be released. And by the way, the 
people I've talked to that where their uniform, the people at 
HHS, they don't like it either. I've talked to them, talked to 
Ms. Rodas about it. She works there.
    They don't like it. They don't like that they are by 
mandate, by policy, forced to pick up the phone and call a 
number that's the sponsor. And they don't that they have to use 
taxpayer dollars to then send that child to the unvetted 
sponsor not knowing whether or not they are, in fact, part of 
the final leg of a child trafficking experience.
    Why is the suicide rate up higher than ever at Border 
Patrol? Because they are being asked and even compelled to be 
part of a child sex delivery service. That's where we're at 
right now.
    This needs to stop. And we can do it. The SECURE Act is the 
best first step here. We need to do it and we need to do it 
now.
    I was with the President of Honduras last week, President 
Castro, amazing woman. She wept as she told these stories. The 
very next day I was with President Giammattei in Guatemala.
    And here's what's interesting. Children over politics, 
that's how it should be. I think in this country, it's politics 
of children.
    President Castro is a devout socialist. President 
Giammattei is a devout conservative. And they said the same 
thing to me. That didn't matter at all.
    What mattered was the lives of children. President Castro 
is heading up to the border in a few weeks. There's 3,000 
children from Honduras that are in the care of HHS. She's 
scared to death of their plight.
    She wants us to find their families. I agree with her. I 
don't care if the families are in the U.S. or outside of the 
U.S. Reunite them with their families.
    And she said, well, the administration is telling me, don't 
worry. They're getting fed. They're getting educated. She's, 
like, I want them to be with their moms and dads. That's where 
I want them or find a loving home for them somewhere else if 
there is no mom and dad.
    She's coming up to the border. I was so proud of her. And 
with tears, she said this to me. President Giammattei told me 
about a program he's launched called [speaking foreign 
language] which is to say making visible what is invisible.
    And it's a warning to the people, don't go with the slick 
salesmen coyotes. They give a good pitch. Oh, you can't pay 
now? You can pay later. Yeah, with your body which we're not 
going to tell you about until maybe you get to around Guatemala 
or Mexico and close to the border.
    And then after that, who knows what's going to happen to 
you. But don't worry. There's a sponsor who will pick you up. 
This s sick that we are participating as a country in this is 
sick.
    Mr. Smith. Ms. Wild. Thank you very much.
    Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Podkul, I read your 
testimony with great interest and listened to what you had to 
say today, particularly your references to this blue dot 
program that KIND has implemented along with, I understand, 
partners in Europe have also assisted. And based on your 
testimony, I understand that these sites are situated at 
different border locations to best serve children who are 
fleeing or displaced by the situation in Ukraine where they can 
register with protection authorities, can receive some basic 
necessities, medical aid, information counseling, and 
assistance in locating and reunifying with family.
    Can you quantify in any way how successful this program has 
been in assisting vulnerable Ukrainian children? And it doesn't 
have to be in terms of numbers. But give us an idea of how 
effective this has been.
    Ms. Podkul. Sure. Let me describe kind of what it looks 
like because when I went to the Romanian border with Ukraine as 
soon as the war broke out to see what was going on, we knew 
women and children could leave and men could not. So we went to 
see, are there separated children? We're talking to children on 
the move.
    So when I was there, you cross into the border into 
Romania, this was a time of chaos, right? This was at the very 
beginning of everything, lots of people leaving as quickly as 
they could get out. There was a host of services that had been 
set up.
    So there were tents and it was all different kinds of 
people and churches, individuals wanting to help, and a lot of 
good hearted people, not necessarily official organizations, a 
lot of good hearted people. Probably also a lot of nefarious 
people there as well. And it was just a lot of chaos.
    And so people coming out, they were tired, they were 
hungry. The kids needed snacks. So it was important to get help 
to them. And it was confusing. Who's the right person to go to? 
Which tent do I go to?
    There's all these people offering to help. So the blue dot 
is intended to be kind of a physical something that people can 
see easily and know that these are run by U.N. agencies. These 
are trusted partners and entities, and it's a physical space. 
It's, like, you can go inside so people aren't harassing you, 
right?
    You don't have people just walking up to you, hey, I can 
help you. Hey, I can get you a hotel room, right? You're safe. 
It's quiet. You can charge your phone. You can get oriented. 
These are the rules and policies in this country. This is how 
you would register the child protection agency. What do you 
need?
    Ms. Wild. And this is only unaccompanied----
    Ms. Podkul. What questions do you have?
    Ms. Wild [continuing]. Minors?
    Ms. Podkul. It's for children and families.
    Ms. Wild. Okay.
    Ms. Podkul. So families can take advantage of this too. So 
it's funded and supported by UNHCR, the refugee agency, and 
UNICEF, the U.N. agency to protect children. So they do this 
jointly and then they collaborate with groups. So for example, 
we have colleagues who are working in those to provide the 
legal assistance.
    And so to give information, what is your right? The child 
should have a guardianship. They're allowed to have temporary 
protection right now throughout Europe.
    They're allowed to enroll in schools. So they need to 
understand what their options are. So these kinds of hubs, it's 
a way to make sure that in a moment of chaos, somebody is very 
clear who are the safe actors.
    What are their rights? What's available to them? So that 
they get put into the registration systems and referral systems 
that these countries are setting up because we all know, right, 
the exploitation that thrives in the shadows and in darkness. 
And so getting kids into these official systems and channels is 
going to be the best protection for them.
    Ms. Wild. So my follow up to that is, is this blue dot 
process being used elsewhere in the world?
    Ms. Podkul. Yeah, so it actually started before----
    Ms. Wild. Right, in 2008, right?
    Ms. Podkul [continuing]. The Ukraine emergency. Exactly. 
Later in 2000s, it's in different places in Europe. And I think 
right now the question is where else could we be implementing 
this knowing there's so many children on the move.
    Ms. Wild. And so that was my question. Is it being used at 
all in Central America?
    Ms. Podkul. I don't know of any blue dot facilities that 
are set up in Central America. There's a virtual version of it. 
So people who have mobile phones can get at least some 
information.
    There are other entities and programs in which governments 
are collaborating with service providers to do similar things. 
I use this as an example because this was funded by U.N. 
agencies. And so they have kind of a global perspective on best 
practices which has been particularly useful.
    Ms. Wild. And how critical has the role of UNICEF and UNHCR 
been in this work?
    Ms. Podkul. It's been incredibly important. I mean, they 
are able to bring authority and work with governments to really 
identify best practices. When you have entities, civil society 
organizations and international organizations like these U.N. 
organizations, they have an understanding of best practices and 
also how to collaborate with each government, right?
    Each system--each government is going to have their own 
system and their own laws. So they're going to know in that 
local context what are the available protections. It's very 
important that they're able to expand their services to meet 
the demand, right? We know the number of children on the move 
is incredibly high all over the world. And so in order for them 
to be fully resourced to do this in all places and respond to 
children----
    Ms. Wild. Well, that's what----
    Ms. Podkul [continuing]. It's very important.
    Ms. Wild [continuing]. I was asking you because I saw 
evidence of the great work they were doing in Nepal also. And 
it does occur to me that it would be very useful to have them 
on the ground in Central America given what we know to be a 
crisis there. And I'm very deeply concerned about reductions in 
funding to those agencies which I think would greatly affect 
their ability to provide these services from everything I 
understand.
    So I hope that we will continue to provide funding. I think 
this hearing is a really good example of why certain forms of 
foreign aid are so essential. I mean, we often have to justify 
foreign aid to taxpayers and otherwise.
    But I think that this kind of hearing sheds light on where 
a lot of that foreign aid is going. So thank you very much. 
With that, I'm going to yield back for the moment. I know we 
have votes coming up.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you. I'd like to yield to the chairwoman 
of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, Maria Salazar.
    Ms. Salazar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I think it's 
laudable, and I congratulate you for putting this hearing 
together. And to Mr. Ballard, you were the guy. I watched the 
movie three, four years ago, the first cut in Miami, Florida.
    And you really caused a major impression. It's a thorn in 
my back that I've had ever since I learned about this 
phenomenon that we just do not know about. This movie has put 
this issue in the forefront, and we have to thank you.
    May the Lord pay it back to you in health, to your ten 
children, because this is--there are no words to describe. And 
I think Chairman Smith and myself, we are committed to do 
something about it, whatever that is. And to you, Ms. Jeanne 
Celestine, thank you for sharing your pain with us, Mrs. 
Jennifer for wanting to help those kids.
    So I have many questions. I know that we're going to be 
called for votes at anytime. But I introduced an immigration 
reform recently, the only immigration reform law that has been 
presented in Congress this cycle.
    And it's basically an immigration bill. And one of the main 
topics that I addressed thanks to the movie is to impose a 
minimum penalty of 25 years to those who are convicted of child 
sex trafficking. That's one thing.
    The other one is to give a better, more rigorous training 
to the Border Patrol agents in trying to spot where those child 
sex traffickers are, specifically including what you said about 
that just because they give you a phone number, you're giving 
the child back to the trafficker. We are, the United States of 
America. What?
    So not only that, taking care of our own agents but then 
going to the transnational criminals, the smugglers, back where 
it starts and creating processing centers to weed out and come 
to the conclusion whether that's the uncle or the father. So 
basically, the Dignity Act, I just want you to remember it. I 
want to work with you because everyone talks about the mess of 
the border and that we're having all these illegals and 
fentanyl and everything coming in.
    But not everyone mentions the child sex traffickers. And 
unfortunately, no one says either that we're the number one 
market. So that means that we have--the consumers are here 
among us. That's another--that's--no words to describe it in a 
public hearing of the United States Congress. So I would like 
to ask you what do you think we could do now? What's the number 
one step we could take as legislators to help this issue?
    Mr. Ballard. When we passed the SECURE Act which holds 
accountable the agencies. So no longer can they lose the 
children. And no longer could they say not our problem. It's 
devastating to hear that Chairman Smith had to call multiple 
times and he heard nothing back from these agencies.
    The other thing is we need to enforce our border. There's 
been this myth that somehow it's a mutually exclusive 
proposition to be for border enforcement and pro-migration. I 
don't understand that. I'm very pro-both. I'm for big walls. I 
know walls is a cuss word these days because somehow this got 
political.
    [Simultaneous speaking.]
    Mr. Ballard. It wasn't political, by the way----
    Ms. Salazar. Structures and cameras and drones.
    Mr. Ballard. It's everything. It's virtual walls.
    Ms. Salazar. It's technology. It's technology.
    Mr. Ballard. It's technology. I worked under two different 
administrations of two different parties on that border. And 
they all built more border protection, and everyone was thumbs 
up about it because it rescues children.
    We have to explain the concept of it forces the flow of 
movement, children being trafficked or drugs to a single place 
where dedicated women and men in uniform are trained to 
identify the child. Why is this so controversial? We use it 
everywhere we go, museums, amusement parks, concerts.
    It's okay for everybody else to do it. But all of a sudden, 
it's somehow bad or racist. I don't understand it. We're 
rescuing children from foreign countries.
    That's our goal. For ten years as an anti-trafficking 
operator undercover on that border, that was my goal, to rescue 
children from foreign countries so they wouldn't get into the 
hands of our pedophiles. And so I never understood----
    Ms. Salazar. Also, those kids are from Latin America.
    Mr. Ballard. Correct.
    Ms. Salazar. They belong to my region. They're Latin 
American kids that are being trafficked into the United States.
    Mr. Ballard. Correct. So let's give them the hope of one 
last window of opportunity before they're stuck into a very 
dangerous situation in that port of entry.
    Ms. Salazar. Give me an example, a regular example of what 
happens with that child that is let's say it's stolen from 
Honduras, from Colombia.
    Mr. Ballard. Sure.
    Ms. Salazar. It winds up at our border. And then what 
happens when they come into the United States?
    Mr. Ballard. Okay. So this is an important point. I learned 
this from the President of Honduras last week. These kids are 
coming--the families are coming through. A lot of them passed 
through the Darien gap. And it's a jungle. It's horrible.
    And by the time they get out and land in Honduras, the 
families leave their kids. They can't stand watching their kids 
suffer anymore. They put them in some kind of a very insecure 
kind of arrangement with a foster situation or something.
    And that's what makes them so exposed and available, the 
coyotes and traffickers, who say, oh, it's so easy to get them 
at this point. They bring them up. Oftentimes, they'll use 
these kids once they get there.
    And the abuse is extensive by the way on the way up. And 
once they get there, sometimes they're used as pawns. There's 
something called the Flores Settlement which was well 
intentioned, but the traffickers are always looking to exploit 
even well intentioned--in this case, it's a court decision.
    A child with a family member must be permitted within 72 
hours inside the United States. I get that. It sounds great. 
Except they start using these kids as pawns and pairing up 
false families, pairing up a child with the clients. Call this 
woman mom, call him dad, and you're going to get right in. 
Well, Border Patrol is sort of noticing the same kids were 
coming in with different parents.
    Ms. Salazar. And no DNA testing anymore at this hour.
    Mr. Ballard. At the time, it was implemented. My 
understanding was that it was taken away. The ranking member 
Thompson from the hearing yesterday at Homeland Security said 
it is actually still there. So I'm investigating what's true.
    But it has to be implemented if it's not. And so then the 
child whether they're used as a pawn in that strange loophole, 
eventually at any point during this process a sponsor can call 
in or show up. And it's very minimal----
    Ms. Salazar. And they're picked up by the trafficker. Then 
what happens next?
    Mr. Ballard. Well, and I'll say this before that. It's more 
difficult to adopt a cat from a shelter in my opinion than 
getting a child out of HHS into our country. And then after 
that, we don't know because they won't pick the phones up.
    But I'll tell you what. In a country that probably has more 
pedophiles than any other country in terms of just shear 
numbers, based on the fact that we consume more child 
exploitation material than any other country, it's very 
concerning. There's a case recently where 100 children were 
sent to the same address by HHS in San Antonio or Austin, I 
believe.
    One hundred kids to an address, I don't think that was a 
well intentioned sponsor. They're going to do something with 
those children, whether it's slave labor, whether it's sexual 
exploitation. But here's the problem. Now these kids are 
identityless.
    They don't speak the language. They don't have a name. They 
don't have any way to identify, and they're gone. And so this 
is our responsibility to protect these children just like we 
were protecting the other children.
    Ms. Salazar. The American news media, have they been 
receptive to your statements? Have they called you to do 
interviews and put this out there----
    [Simultaneous speaking.]
    Mr. Ballard. No, no. In fact, they just like to say things 
like, Mr. Ballard is wrong headed thinking that there's any 
kind of trafficking going on at the border. They make a 
statement like this without backing it up with anything. I 
don't know why they don't want to have the conversation.
    These are children. This is not partisan. It shouldn't be 
partisan. And I can't figure out why they don't want to talk 
about it.
    Ms. Salazar. These are Latin American kids.
    Mr. Ballard. They're Latin American children. And the 
reason I left the government frankly was because as Congressman 
Smith knows is because I didn't care. Human trafficking, child 
trafficking knows no borders and bounders.
    Unfortunately, bureaucracies do. And that's why I left. I 
couldn't handle the bureaucracy. I couldn't handle the fact 
that I was told, you can save this kid but not that kid. And so 
that's why I left, so that I wouldn't have any jurisdictional 
or bureaucratic limitations. And I wish our policies conformed 
to that way of thinking as well.
    Ms. Salazar. Of course. Human rights is across the board.
    Mr. Ballard. Correct.
    Ms. Salazar. Not only for some and not for others. Thank 
you very much. We are going to regroup and try to--we've 
created this bill to find where those 85,000 kids are at. 
Because according to your information, it was in the first 30 
days of the Biden administration when the border was more 
opened. That happened during----
    Mr. Ballard. That's correct.
    Ms. Salazar [continuing]. A 30 day period.
    Mr. Ballard. That's a correct. And I like the idea of 
streamlining our immigration laws. Make it easier. I want more 
asylum. I want more immigrants. I suggest long term can we not 
put our asylum and immigration courts--this may sound like a 
logistical nightmare.
    But if we can get those as an attachment to our embassies 
in these Central American countries. Imagine you deincentivize 
the traffickers. You stop the wind out of the sails of their 
criminal networks.
    And the honest and good people who want and need to come to 
the United States, make it quick. Make it fast. Don't make them 
take a 3,000-mile journey.
    Let them go to the embassy and get asylum immediately. And 
we can help them with passage. I love this idea what I just 
learned about called the Central American minors program. How 
amazing.
    Let's help these children. Let's help them get safety. Let 
them have the American dream. I agree with that. I mean, I'll 
look into that. And thank you for bringing that up. I didn't 
know about this. So there's so many things we can do.
    Ms. Salazar. Thanks to you, sir. Yield back.
    Mr. Smith. I yield to the chairman of the Africa Committee, 
Mr. James.
    Mr. James. I seem to think that the administration would 
care more about these kids if they weren't Black and Brown. 
Maybe they can prove it to us.
    Ms. Salazar. Yes.
    Mr. James. Prove me wrong. As the chairman of the Africa 
subcommittee, I've made ending child slave labor a top 
priority. In fact, my BRIDGE to DRC Act supports efforts to 
remove child slave labor from U.S. supply chains.
    In addition to my amendment to H.R. 1 which would reshore 
critical mineral mining and refining back to the United States, 
the BRIDGE to DRC Act also goes a long way in ending child 
slave labor and sex trafficking. In March, I asked Secretary 
Blinken directly for his commitment to work with me on efforts 
to address the issue of slave labor during his testimony before 
the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and we are still working 
with the administration on their compliance with his agreement.
    This is a matter of morality and critical importance 
regardless of where a child happens to be born. America wants 
to be the shining city on the hill. They want to be the beacon 
of hope for the world.
    We have to start acting, and I need your help. Can you 
share your assessment of the current administration's national 
action plan to combat human trafficking for all children 
regardless of whether or not they're Ukrainian, South Sudanese, 
North Sudanese, Guatemalan, Venezuelan, all children. Can you 
give your assessment?
    Mr. Ballard. Well, I don't hear it very often coming out of 
the administration. The agencies continue to do their wonderful 
work. They want more resources. I spent the last ten years 
trying to get resources to law enforcement offices, state 
mostly because the federal government won't take our grants. So 
we send them to task forces.
    There's not enough resources, and that's been a problem in 
every administration, by the way. I don't think it's a new 
problem. But I would love to see the President talk about it 
all the time.
    Mr. James. Not enough resources. So that might be an 
indication that resources we do have are spread too thin. What 
are the initiatives or organizations that are doing a good job 
that should get more resources? And in your opinion, what are 
some organizations that seem to be a waste of time and money?
    Mr. Ballard. Well, I'll tell you that in my opinion the 
solution is going to be a private-public partnership. I've 
worked on both sides of that fence. I've been a government 
agent. I've worked as a private citizen.
    There's so many things that NGOs can do that governments 
can't do. And of course, there's many things, of course, that 
governments can do that NGOs can't do. Together, we can pretty 
much do everything.
    That was the example I gave with the operation I led out of 
Ukraine last year. We had, I think, five, six NGOs working with 
six different agencies of different governments. It's amazing 
in four months we were able to do that many rescues.
    We need a better partnership. We need to get funding. Even 
more to the government agencies, to NGOs, NGOs are miracle 
workers. I'm telling. The NGOs are the ones----
    [Simultaneous speaking.]
    Mr. James. What are the barriers? Is the State Department 
getting in the way of the effectiveness of NGOs?
    Mr. Ballard. I don't know because I'm not qualified to 
answer that question. I've never dealt with the State 
Department in terms of funding anything. But I wish they would 
send a lot more funding to NGOs.
    Mr. James. This question is for the entire panel. What 
areas are you seeing of government inefficiency and what areas 
is the American government, most notably the administration, 
erecting barriers to saving children? Where can Congress help 
tear down barriers to saving children?
    Mr. Ballard. Well, I mean, first and foremost, I'm going to 
go to the border. I'll go out to the border first. The barriers 
are horrifying in my opinion right now simply to rescue 
children, meaning not enough resources are being sent to take 
care of those kids.
    We've talked about that at length I think already today. So 
that's the first thing, and that's where my focus is. My 
expertise isn't as much inside the United States or on the 
aftercare side in terms of getting grants, getting money.
    But I do know this, that the NGOs that I work with, that 
I'm most impressed with are way underfunded, especially because 
of the inflation and economic problems. Donations are down. I 
wish the U.S. government would rely more on private groups and 
NGOs who in my opinion have probably the most expertise in 
them.
    And there's so many organizations now over the last ten 
years that I've been so impressed with. And I just wish we 
could--that's the SPEAR Fund's whole model that I advise on is 
finding organizations, aftercare, and rescue intervention. And 
get them the resources they need. And I think the U.S. 
government should put more faith in NGOs.
    Mr. James. Agreed. Mr. Chairman, I am a father first. I'm 
an elected official second. And when I think of child 
trafficking, only two words come to mind: pure evil.
    It's unconscionable and I think that we all agree that 
someone could do this to a child. We talk about demon 
possession being relegated to the past, most notably our Bible 
stories. But I'll tell you the battle is not in the physical 
world and these people who perpetrate this evil on children are 
demon possessed.
    And we must make sure that we eradicate to the best of our 
ability any barrier that comes between saving children's lives 
and the platform that we have today. So I know my time is 
limited. I wish we could get to more questions. But I 
appreciate you all being here today, sharing your personal 
stories. And please count on me as an ally to support any way 
that we possibly can.
    Ms. Podkul. If I may, Representative----
    Mr. James. Yes, please.
    Ms. Podkul [continuing]. James respond to your question 
too. I think thinking about when we do give aid to other 
countries and the programs that Department of State or USAID 
are implementing, I really think focusing them on youth 
protection, right, and gender-based violence. Those have been 
key drivers and root causes of what we've seen, both children 
having to flee in the first place and also areas where there 
could be a lot of prevention and protection for children.
    So I think when we are looking at the programs that we're 
funding, making sure that there's a real eye to youth 
protection centering it on those principles, and also on 
gender-based violence, I think we can go a long way to 
prevention which is what we all want in the first place. So no 
child ever has to experience any of these harms. Thank you.
    Ms. Lakin. Thank you. I think really [inaudible] is the 
screening process when you have children who show up on our 
borders and there's no tracking system from origin country to 
the destination country. As you talked about, this is where we 
miss many children because if they're not being tracked, if 
there's a screening system where that says you're from this 
place and you're being placed from this place.
    One thing I can share with you really quick is that right 
after the genocide, my siblings were given to random people who 
have never been vetted with no social workers to follow up. 
They could've been dead. Nobody would've asked questions.
    When I was a 10-year-old, I was put into a place. I had my 
first job as a 10-year-old. The woman abused me at every level. 
Nobody would've asked questions.
    But if there was that tracking system that this child, this 
orphan is placed in this home and this person has gone through 
the background check, I think that would be great. The other 
thing that I believe that we need to really have a place and a 
platform for survivors to be part of decision-making because I 
think those voices are lacking. I think we have survivors come 
and maybe give a talk and so forth.
    But I think they need to be part of the decision-making as 
well to be hired in the decision-making. Also trauma informed 
is something that most people don't talk about. Not anybody 
could just deal with somebody who has survived this kind of 
trauma.
    People need to be trained and trauma informed on how to 
address these issues. My last request would be really to have 
businesses, schools, and airport to have where there's a poster 
says--gives information on how to report human trafficking 
because individuals who are coming in and do not have 
information, that really puts them at a higher risk. Thank you.
    Mr. James. Okay. I think that we are going to try to show a 
video quickly of an example that we got from--this is later? 
All right. Well, I'll just say this. Whether or not--we're 
dealing with votes right now. I think we need to get going.
    But from what I'm hearing, very helpful. NGOs are extremely 
impactful because they have the accountability, transparency, 
and focus on outcomes that it does not seem the federal 
government is acquainted with. And we should support those 
initiatives, also trauma informed treatment and processes for 
lessons learned and gender-based violence and a focus there. 
That's extremely helpful and I appreciate your feedback. Thank 
you for your time today.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you.
    Mr. James. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. As we leave, 
we are late for a vote. And I think we'll make it. Just very 
briefly, thank you, Ms. Lakin, for bringing up the issue of 
organ harvesting.
    For three years, I tried to get a bill passed to stop organ 
harvesting. It was bipartisan. As a matter of fact, Ms. Manning 
is one of the co-sponsors on the bill.
    It passed 413 to 2. It's sitting over in the Senate now for 
six months and I can't get it out on the floor for a vote. And 
it has real penalties for those who with intent procure forced 
organ harvesting organs.
    It focuses absolutely on China, but the rest of the world 
would be covered by this legislation. And we can't get it out 
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I thank you again 
for your extraordinary testimonies, and we are adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 1:49 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
    
    
    
    
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