Date: 2014-07-23
Speaker: LORETTA SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I rise in strong support of H.R. 5116. the Human Trafficking Detection Act of 2014. and I yield myself as much time as I may consume. This whole issue of human trafficking is one. in my 18 years in the Congress. that I have been working significantly on. I sit on the Homeland Security Committee. and one of the things that we were able to do many years ago was to direct funds actually into my area. into Orange County. California. to work on a collaboration of State agencies. police officers. and the Federal Government. and we funded this to make one of the first task forces on human trafficking in our Nation. Originally. there were six. and we were one of six. Now they are. I think. in the double digits. So we have learned a lot. We have learned a lot about human trafficking. We have learned that there are some countries that are initiation or supply countries. There are some that just transit these young people. these children. these women. We have also learned that there are destination countries or demand countries. and. of course. the United States is one of the largest demand countries. We are also a transit country because we take our own children from one State and put them in the other States. We are also a supply country because we use our own children in this human trafficking process. these terrible people who do this. They are really just. most of the time. about making money any way they can. So what we know is that there are many children being trafficked across our State lines. but also across our borders. They come in through our airports. They come in through boats in Miami and my State of California. and. yes. they pour across our borders just as we see the humanitarian crisis that my colleague mentioned earlier. So some of the people who first see these young children. for example. or these women who are being trafficked are going to be our Customs people. They are going to be our Border Patrol. As you can imagine. depending on the circumstance. they have got a lot of other things going on in their mind. They are trying to stem people from coming across. They are trying to figure out whether these people have drugs in their stuff. and so they may not notice what you can notice. and that is the trafficking of people. because in order to traffic that person. you have got to have the trafficker coming along with them. So. if we train them. if we give them the tools. our Department of Homeland Security. our Customs. our Border Patrol people. our transport people will have a better idea and will be able to see almost immediately. which is what I have learned to do through this task force that we have. The signs are always there. It is do we know. do we have something in our mind that can show us what is happening? Now. the Department of Homeland Security has obviously tried. but they have got a lot of things that they have got to work with. So by actually doing and increasing the awareness and increasing the training of our frontline employees. we will do a better job. We will do a better job of stopping this trafficking. I thank the other side for working with us to ensure that this bill moves forward and becomes law to give that additional training that I believe our Department of Homeland Security employees need and want. With that. I will reserve the balance of my time.