President Trump Doesn’t Care About Trafficking Victims
By: Rachel Lloyd
Tags: Biden, Trafficking, Trump Administration, Trump, Anti Trafficking

President Trump Doesn’t Care About Trafficking Victims

An open letter to the anti-trafficking movement and anyone who cares about trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation and the wellbeing of vulnerable youth in this country:

For the last four years, Trump, Ivanka and this administration have claimed to care about trafficking victims and survivors and boasted that Trump has done more to fight trafficking than any other president in history. As a trafficking survivor and the founder and CEO of GEMS, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, the nation’s leading organization serving and empowering girls and young women who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking, and someone who has worked with thousands of survivors over the last 23 years throughout 3 prior administrations, I can unequivocally say that these claims couldn’t be further from the truth. Trump, his enablers and sycophants, are in fact harmful for victims and survivors and dangerous for those children and youth who are vulnerable and at risk for recruitment. The anti-trafficking movement, which has a significant intersection with the white evangelical community, has been silent and in many cases complicit in perpetuating the myth of Trump as a champion for trafficking victims, in some cases because they really believed it, mostly because they wanted to get legislation passed, funding allocated and attention paid to the issue. Those are worthy goals, and in some cases it’s worked; there have been some laws passed, federal funding allocated and awareness of the issue of trafficking, particularly child trafficking, has never been higher. A surface glance at a Trump press release might tell you that complicity was worth the price, after all there’s been gains, the movement has progressed forward and achieved those specific goals. Even a cursory glance at the reality however shows that while the administration is happy to tout its one tiny step forward, it’s the many huge steps back that really count. Legislation, public awareness, even federal grants that run directly counter to everything else this president and this administration says and does are at best meaningless, more often they have provided cover for the truly heinous actions of this administration. Anti-trafficking work began in the Bush administration, the Obama administration built upon that and helped ensure the inclusion of domestic victims. The Trump administration has taken credit for work and statistics that should rightfully be attributed to Obama and while there has been work continued under this administration none of it is impactful enough to balance out all the harm done.

Trump’s words, actions, policies, tweets, staff, allies, history, appointees and defenders explicitly show that he doesn’t care about people of color, he doesn’t care about women and girls, he doesn’t care about low income and poor people, he doesn’t care about the LGBTQIA community, he doesn’t care about people from other countries…but that’s who trafficking victims and survivors are. Can anyone really argue with a straight face that Trump values the inherent worth and humanity of a a 16 year old Black girl who has been in juvenile detention for stealing a car or a woman from Guatemala who escaped a domestic violence relationship by coming to the US with her child and entering without documentation or the Latinx trans young woman who is struggling with drug addiction? Because those are the trafficking victims I know. They are the faces of trafficking in this country and all the evidence says that Trump and this administration do not care about these individuals. They don’t even see them as fully human. Trump has mocked the cities they live in and the countries they come from, he’s repeatedly encouraged racism and misogyny in its most violent forms against them and anyone who looks like them; he’s encouraged police brutality and argued for harsher sentencing; he’s stopped domestic violence victims claiming the US as a place of refuge, ripped children from the arms of scared parents and put kids in cages; he’s rolled back protections and rights for trans people, has tried repeatedly to take health coverage away and appointed justices who will do more of the same. He’s encouraged and empowered groups like QAnon and the #SaveOurChildren movement to spread lies and create imaginary trafficking scenarios that distract and pull resources from the real work and in some cases put people in real danger. Trump has vehemently condemned individuals who pulled down statues of Confederate heroes, — supporters of slavery — but when asked about Ghislaine Maxwell after her arrest for trafficking WISHED. HER. WELL. There are relatively few explanations for a sitting President to wish an infamous, alleged, child sex trafficker well. None of them are flattering to Trump.

Trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen in a world where gender based violence, racism, poverty, inequality are allowed to flourish. Trump only cares about trafficking and trafficking victims when he needs to make a speech and appeal to his base. The rest of the time he creates and encourages the very conditions that make children and adults vulnerable to trafficking in the first place. He has made his priorities clear. Now it’s about the movement’s priorities and all those who claim to care about trafficking victims and survivors. If you do, the only choice is Biden. Trump has used the pain and trauma of trafficking victims and survivors for his own gains. There’s no ‘worthy goal’, no short term win, no legitimate rationale that justifies allowing him and his administration to exploit and harm us anymore.