[Senate Hearing 107-576]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-576
MONITORING AND COMBATING TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS: HOW ARE WE DOING?
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN
AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 7, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
senate
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware, Chairman
PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland JESSE HELMS, North Carolina
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota BILL FRIST, Tennessee
BARBARA BOXER, California LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia
BILL NELSON, Florida SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
Virginia
Edwin K. Hall, Staff Director
Patricia A. McNerney, Republican Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN
AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS
PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota, Chairman
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
BARBARA BOXER, California GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland BILL FRIST, Tennessee
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia
Virginia
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Cho, Hae Jung, project director, Coalition to Abolish Slavery &
Trafficking (CAST), Los Angeles, CA............................ 46
Prepared statement........................................... 48
Dinh, Viet D., Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal
Policy, Department of Justice, Washington, DC.................. 10
Prepared statement........................................... 12
Responses to additional questions for the record from Senator
Wellstone.................................................. 62
Dobriansky, Hon. Paula, Under Secretary of State for Global
Affairs, Department of State, Washington, DC................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Responses to additional questions for the record from Senator
Wellstone.................................................. 58
Ely-Raphel, Amb. Nancy H., Senior Advisor, Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons, Department of State, Washington,
DC............................................................. 23
Prepared statement........................................... 24
Responses to additional questions for the record from Senator
Wellstone.................................................. 65
Equality Now, New York, NY, statement submitted for the record... 57
Hanh, Nguyen Van, Ph.D., Director, Office of Refugee
Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services,
Washington, DC................................................. 26
Prepared statement........................................... 28
Responses to additional questions for the record from Senator
Wellstone.................................................. 66
Jordan, Ann, director, Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons,
International Human Rights Law Group, Washington, DC........... 42
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Loar, Theresa, president, Vital Voices Global Partnership,
statement submitted for the record............................. 53
Scalia, Eugene, Solicitor of Labor, U.S. Department of Labor,
Washington, DC, statement submitted for the record............. 54
Smolenski, Carol, coordinator, End Child Prostitution and
Trafficking (ECPAT-USA), New York, NY.......................... 36
Prepared statement........................................... 39
Wellstone, Hon. Paul D., U.S. Senator from Minnesota, prepared
statement...................................................... 3
(iii)
MONITORING AND COMBATING TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS: HOW ARE WE DOING?
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Near Eastern
and South Asian Affairs,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met at 3 p.m., in room SD-419, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Paul Wellstone (chairman of the
subcommittee), presiding.
Present: Senators Wellstone and Brownback.
Senator Wellstone. The hearing before the Senate
Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs will come
to order.
I want to apologize to all of you who are here, panelists
and those who are intensely interested in the hearing and the
issue before us. We had some votes and it was unavoidable,
otherwise I would not have kept you waiting. I am sure that
Senator Brownback is probably on his way over here as well, and
we will try to move things forward expeditiously. Senator
Brownback is here right now.
Certainly what I want to try to do is myself be relatively
brief and then hopefully Senator Brownback as well, and we will
ask each of you to try to stay within a 5-minute limit. Then we
will have questions. Probably some of the questions we will
submit in writing as well because we have a number of people
who are here to testify.
Sam, I was apologizing for the delay, explaining the votes
that we had.
A year ago, the Congress enacted landmark human rights
legislation to put an end to trafficking in human beings. This
was the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and it provided a
comprehensive plan of attack on trafficking from various
agencies of the Federal Government and the advocacy community
as well. There were prevention programs. I guess we called it
the three P's. There was the protection of trafficking victims,
and then there was the prosecution of the traffickers.
I would like to again, for probably the 100th time, thank
Senator Brownback for his wonderful leadership in this area. It
has been a joyous journey for me to be working with him.
Today's hearing is actually to assess our efforts against
human trafficking one year after the passage of the bill.
We have asked the witnesses to discuss the extent to which
various agencies of the U.S. Government have discharged the
responsibilities imposed upon them by the act. We need to know
whether we have effectively used the tools provided by the act,
and we need to know whether new tools might be necessary. A law
without vigorous and effective implementation and oversight, at
least in my view, is worse than no law at all because it lulls
us into the false sense that we have done something to solve
the problem. We are here today to learn whether or not we are
doing all that we can to end this trafficking in persons, and
we are here today to learn how committed the administration is
to truly solving this growing problem of modern day slavery.
I think the administration has done some very important
work. The State Department released its first Trafficking in
Persons report in July of last year. The Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons was established later that
October. We are now in the administrative comment period for
the regulations implementing the trafficking T-visa at the
Department of Justice, and the first meeting of the Interagency
Task Force on Trafficking was held last month. But I think much
more remains to be done.
I will finish with concerns. I wanted to start with the
positives because I think you should always give credit to
people when they are doing good work.
I am concerned that many victims of trafficking are not
getting the assistance they need because the programs may not
be designed appropriately or interagency coordination is
lacking. I am concerned that many victims are still not
recognized as trafficking victims due to lack of effective
training back in our states for law enforcement. And I am
concerned that our diplomatic message may not be getting
through. We expect other nations to take vigorous actions to
fight trafficking and we will hold them accountable if they do
not. All of these concerns I hope will be addressed by the
panelists.
I am going to be asking the Office of Trafficking to tell
me--I know there was a hearing just a day or two ago, but from
my point of view, the Office of Trafficking is critically
important in bringing the agencies together and having a real
clear focus and having some benchmarks. And I am not sure that
has been done in anywhere near as rigorous or vigorous a
fashion as I would like to see.
I am going to be asking questions about the INS because it
seems to me, on the basis of reports we are hearing, that you
have got some of these women and children in detention centers.
We need the INS to be going into those detention centers to be
interviewing these women and children and to be getting them
out. That has not happened to the extent that it should. I
understand we are only in one year, but I am impatient to see
this happen on the ground.
The Health and Human Services Administration. We received
some calls from law enforcement that are doing their best, and
they say, listen, we have got these refugees and they need
specialized services. These are victims of trafficking, and yet
we do not really know where to get the help for them.
Obviously, Health and Human Services needs to do a better job
of getting these specialized services to them.
We know that some of these traffickers are being
prosecuted, but I do not understand, Senator Brownback, why
they are not being prosecuted according to the new criminal
statutes that came with this legislation. And I am going to be
asking questions about that.
I do not want to take up any more time. I again want to
thank all of the panelists for being here. I want to thank all
the rest of you for being here, and I want to say that I am
privileged to be working with Senator Brownback.
[The prepared statement of Senator Wellstone follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Paul D. Wellstone
Thank you all for coming today. Just over a year ago, Congress
enacted landmark human rights legislation to help put an end to
trafficking in human beings. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act
(TVPA) provided a comprehensive plan of attack on trafficking from
various agencies of the Federal government and the private sector. It
provided for prevention programs, the protection of trafficking
victims, and the prosecution of traffickers. The purpose of today's
hearing is to assess our efforts against human trafficking one year
after passage.
We have asked our witnesses to discuss the extent to which various
agencies of the United States government have discharged the
responsibilities given them by the Act. We need to know whether they
have effectively used the tools provided by the Act, as well as whether
new tools might be necessary. A law without vigorous and effective
implementation and oversight can actually be counterproductive if it
lulls us into a false sense that we have solved a problem. We are here
today to learn whether we are doing all that we can to end trafficking
in persons. We are here today to learn how committed this
Administration truly is to solving the growing problem of modern day
slavery.
I applaud the Administration for the work it has done so far. The
State Department released the first Trafficking in Persons Report in
July of last year. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons was established later that October. We are now in the
Administrative comment period for the regulations implementing the new
trafficking T-visa at the Department of Justice, and the first meeting
of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Trafficking was held last month. But
much more remains to be done.
I am concerned that some victims of trafficking are not getting the
assistance they need because programs may not be designed
appropriately, or inter-agency coordination is lacking. I am concerned
that some victims are still not recognized as trafficking victims due
to the lack of effective training for law enforcement. And I am
concerned that our diplomatic message may not be getting through. We
expect other nations to make legitimate efforts to fight trafficking
and we will hold them accountable if they don't. I hope all of these
concerns will be addressed here today.
Trafficking in persons is one of the fastest growing areas of
international criminal activity, now ranking third as the largest
source of profits for organized crime behind only guns and drugs. We
should be very clear in our understanding of this problem. It is a
growing industry. It affects virtually every country in the world, and
it must be stopped. The United States has a moral obligation to lead
this fight, and I know we will do the right thing. I am confident there
is still broad bi-partisan support in Congress for whatever is
necessary--more resources, further legislation, whatever it takes--to
win the worldwide struggle against trafficking.
Senator Wellstone. Senator Brownback.
Senator Brownback. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It
has been my pleasure to be able to work with you and to hold
this hearing, that a year later we are going to look at the
progress being made under this particular bill that I think was
one of the most significant pieces of anti-slavery legislation
that has passed since 1865, when it moved forward and was
passed last year. We are moving and pushing for freedom.
Our assignment in this bill that we have given to the
administration and others pressing forward with this is to
eradicate slavery, starting with forced prostitution. The
central objective was and remains freeing victims everywhere
and empowering those who do this noble work.
I suppose there were similar tensions regarding objectives
and getting it initially implemented back in pre-1865 days. I
think of some of the legendary figures of that time, of William
Wilberforce, a parliamentarian in England, or Amy Carmichael in
India who faced overwhelming odds at that time, who poured
their lives into their work to end slavery, to end temple
prostitution in India.
I would like to think, Mr. Chairman, that we have in the
audience here today some like-minded people with those
individuals, heroic people who really worked a long time to try
to bring freedom to these people who are underserved, not
represented in some of the most difficult, dire situations that
today's modern culture could find. And we want to empower you
to work and to press this on forward.
There are some technical admonitions I could make, which we
will hear about today, but I really am more compelled to talk
about the larger issues.
I want to press the State Department and administration to
encourage them to engage in direct advocacy to end trafficking,
going beyond reporting, which is important. And I think your
initial reports have been fantastic. I have stated that to
Secretary Powell. I want to state that to Under Secretary
Dobriansky, but to also say we need to move on forward past
that into advocacy--and I am sure you will talk some about that
today--advocating directly with countries worldwide to end this
obscene practice, coordinating amongst countries regionally
because I assure you the traffickers do. And you know what it
takes and you are working on that effort, and I want to
encourage that to move forward on advocacy.
Combating trafficking is among the top human rights agendas
for this administration. Truly you are cursed with a great and
historic task and also blessed with that opportunity. Please
fully embrace this assignment to deliberately and aggressively
advocate for the eradication of trafficking both
internationally and domestically. This legislation was written
for you to do just that.
Separately, Mr. Chairman, there will be a witness also on
the third panel today. Carol Smolenski of ECPAT is going to
testify about an insidious practice of tour operators worldwide
on international sex tourism. I point this out because some of
the operators are deliberately targeting international
pedophiles and other adults who engage in this practice
offering children with impunity.
What I want us to do and look toward is the possibility of
legislation in this area to be able to prosecute those who
would engage in such a horrific international practice, and we
will be hearing Ms. Smolenski a little bit later on in the
third panel. And I am hopeful that we can press forward on
addressing that legislatively. A number of Senators have
expressed interest on working on that piece of legislation.
Mr. Chairman, I hope we can get at the problems here at
this hearing, but overall too, I want to make sure that people
understand that I am excited about what has taken place to
date. I think there are things that we need to continue to
press forward and, as the chairman said, we are impatient about
it. But the steps that have been taken I think have been great.
We want to keep moving those on forward because the little
girls and little boys who are being held in some of these
situations cannot wait, and we need to be as aggressive as we
can. I know the administration shares that objective.
Mr. Chairman, thanks for working with this legislation and
thank you for holding this hearing.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you, Senator Brownback.
We have some statements here, one from Theresea Loar,
president, Vital Voices Global Partnership, that will be
included in the record, and also one from Eugene Scalia,
Solicitor of Labor, U.S. Department of Labor. That will also be
included in the record.
Senator Brownback. I have a statement, Mr. Chairman, from
Equality Now to submit for the record.
Senator Wellstone. And another one from Equality now, which
will also be included in the record.
[The statements can be found beginning on page **:]
Senator Wellstone. We can actually hold the record open too
for another 2 weeks for additional statements if you want to
submit those.
We are going to hear the first panel. Again, I want to ask
everyone, if you can, to try to stay within a 5-minute limit.
Dr. Paula Dobriansky, who is Under Secretary of State for
Global Affairs. We thank you for being here and thank you for
your leadership. Mr. Viet Dinh, who is Assistant Attorney
General, Office of Legal Policy, and prior to that was at
Georgetown University Law Center. I could give you all much
more extensive introductions. You have got real impressive
resumes, but I think we want to get right to the substance of
it. Secretary Dobriansky.
STATEMENT OF HON. PAULA DOBRIANSKY, UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Dobriansky. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding today's hearing. I will submit my full text for the
record and make some brief comments.
Senator Wellstone. It will be included in the record.
Ms. Dobriansky. Thank you.
It is important to review the progress we have made on
monitoring and combating trafficking in persons since the
passage of the anti-trafficking law.
The United States Government's efforts to fight trafficking
and protect trafficking victims have been greatly enhanced by
the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. I applaud you
and your colleagues for your foresight in the creation of this
law. It was enacted due to your leadership, your commitment,
your tireless efforts and dedication.
This law has provided policymakers and prosecutors with the
tools necessary to fight trafficking in persons.
Since the law's passage, I am pleased to report that we
have released the first Trafficking in Persons report. We are
working on the next. We established the Trafficking Office and
convened the first President's Interagency Task Force on
Trafficking.
I might add that the law has also not only been an
important tool in fighting trafficking in persons, but it has
also been an invaluable model to share with other countries
that are committed to ending this horrendous violation of human
rights.
Let me just say a few words about the report. Last July,
the Secretary of State released the first annual Trafficking in
Persons report. It was based on information gathered from 186
embassies and consulates, as well as reporting from NGOs,
international organizations, and the press.
The report is an invaluable tool in our bilateral dialog on
trafficking. It has prompted many countries at senior levels to
engage with the United States on this issue. Significantly
several countries, in fact, have asked for our advice and
assistance in developing a plan of action to combat trafficking
as a result of the report.
In addition, the Department released earlier this week the
annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which
included expanded information on trafficking and which was
called for in the act.
We are now preparing the 2002 Trafficking in Persons
report, and in producing this next report, we have carefully
considered many suggestions that we have received from the non-
governmental community, from Members of Congress, from
congressional staff, and from others. One key area that we have
strengthened in our solicitation out to our posts is
governmental corruption. Basically we have asked our posts to
come in with much more specific, concrete data in this area.
Let me say a few words about the office. In October 2001,
the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking
was established. It reports directly to me and coordinates
policy and programmatic efforts with respect to trafficking in
persons. Ambassador Nancy Ely-Raphel is the Senior Advisor and
Dr. Laura Lederer is the Deputy Senior Advisor of the office.
I am also pleased to announce today that the office will
soon be fully staffed with 14 permanent positions and
complemented with personnel from other agencies, specifically
HHS, DOJ, CIA, and USAID. In other words, commitments have been
made and some are already in place as detailees to the office.
The office focuses on three key areas: the compilation and
the release of the Trafficking in Persons report, the
assessment and implementation of programs, and outreach not
only to partner agencies, to Congress, the non-governmental
community, but also outreach entails our diplomatic strategy.
A few words about the task force. Last month, the Task
Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons was convened
and chaired by the Secretary of State. I would like to thank
Senator Brownback and Mrs. Wellstone, as well as Representative
Chris Smith, for joining the first meeting of the task force.
At the task force, Secretary Powell announced the formation of
a senior policy advisory group.
I convened the first meeting of this group which is a
subgroup of our Democracy PCC. It will meet regularly, and it
is to provide policy oversight and coordinate policy and
programs on an interagency basis.
A few other words, and then I will bring my remarks to a
close.
The Trafficking Office is designing a State Department-wide
international program strategy to identify prevention,
prosecution and protection needs in each country, and to assist
governments and non-governmental and international
organizations to address trafficking. We will tailor our
programmatic initiatives to identify the opportunities for
greatest improvement and the greatest needs. We will ensure
that our programmatic and diplomatic strategy are complementary
to ensure that we are holding governments accountable and
encouraging strengthened political will, while providing
programmatic support where needed.
I have just a minute more.
Senator Wellstone. Absolutely.
Ms. Dobriansky. We are committed to also reaching out to
the public to educate them both domestically and
internationally about the issue and what the United States is
doing. At every opportunity, I have raised trafficking in my
meetings with foreign governments, and I know that also many of
my colleagues at the State Department have.
A last word about training. We also have looked for new
opportunities to educate U.S. officials about the problem so
they too can contribute to the fight against trafficking. We
have spoken to newly designated U.S. Ambassadors, to new
classes of Foreign Service officers, law enforcement officers,
and others as well as to senior Foreign Service officers who
have been taking courses at the Foreign Service Institute.
In sum, we have been busy. We have made significant
progress, but much remains to be done.
Mr. Chairman and colleagues, I want to thank you again for
your leadership on this issue and the act. It has provided a
solid framework for our efforts, impetus for increased
coordination, and a model which we are able to use in reaching
out to partners and partner countries.
I look forward to our continued partnership on this issue
and to a day when we can truly say that we have successfully
eradicated trafficking.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Under Secretary Dobriansky
follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State
for Global Affairs, Department of State
``IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT''
It is a pleasure to be here today to review the progress we have
made on monitoring and combating trafficking in persons, since the
passage of the anti-trafficking law, the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act of 2000.
Trafficking in persons is the new slavery of the 21st century. Both
its magnitude and the inhumane conditions in which its victims find
themselves are deeply troubling. The egregious nature of this crime has
clearly been the driving force for many of you and for those of us who
work on this issue.
The United States Government's efforts to fight trafficking and
protect trafficking victims have been greatly enhanced by the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. I applaud your foresight in
the creation of this law. It was enacted due to your tireless efforts
and dedication.
This law has provided policymakers and prosecutors with the tools
necessary to fight trafficking in persons, a truly grave human rights
concern and a growing transnational crime problem. And it has given us
a model to share with other countries that are also committed to ending
the horrendous violation of human rights. Let me just highlight two
mechanisms upfront. The report has been a crucial instrument in
fostering dialogue with other countries and heightening global
awareness. Similarly, the interagency coordination on policy and
programs--particularly the Task Force--has strengthened the USG's
efforts as a whole.
Since the law's passage, I am pleased to report that we have
released the first Trafficking in Persons Report, established the
Trafficking Office and convened the first President's Interagency Task
Force on Trafficking.
Annual Report on Trafficking in Persons
Last July, the Secretary of State released the first annual
Trafficking in Persons report. The report was based upon information
gathered from 186 embassies and consulates, as well as reporting from
NGOs, international organizations, and the press, regarding the extent
of trafficking and the efforts of governments to combat it. In
compiling the report, the Department assessed the efforts of
governments of those countries where it was determined that there were
a significant number of victims of severe forms of trafficking--82
countries last year--to determine whether and to what degree such
governments meet the minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking specified in the law.
As expected, the report has become an invaluable tool in our
bilateral dialogues on trafficking. It has prompted many countries--at
senior levels--to engage with the U.S. government on the trafficking
issue. I have met personally with a number of senior representatives of
countries who said that the report had motivated them to examine and
improve their efforts. Significantly, several countries even asked for
our advice and assistance in developing a plan of action to combat
trafficking. Many of our posts are reporting a higher degree of
interest, awareness, and, more importantly, action, since the release
of the report. This increased interest is indicative of a larger
positive trend as many more countries are beginning to take this issue
seriously.
In addition to the trafficking report released last July, and in
keeping with the provisions of the Trafficking Victims and Violence
Protection Act, the Department released earlier this week the Annual
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices included expanded information
on trafficking. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor worked
with our embassies overseas and with other offices within the
Department to include detailed information, including data on
conditions for victims and efforts to provide them with protection and
assistance.
We are now preparing the 2002 Trafficking in Persons report. In
producing this next report, we have carefully considered suggestions
received in our meetings with NGOs, members of Congress and their staff
and the interagency working group. One key area that we are looking to
strengthen is consideration of governmental corruption. Ambassador Ely-
Raphel will provide some specific examples of the changes we are making
in the substance and methodology of this year's Trafficking in Persons
Report process in the next panel. This report is an important and
evolving document.
New Trafficking In Persons Office
In October 2001, the State Department's Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking was established. The office reports directly to me
and coordinates policy and programmatic efforts with respect to
trafficking in persons, ensuring that both the human rights and law
enforcement components of this problem are adequately addressed.
Ambassador Nancy Ely-Raphel is the Senior Advisor and Dr. Laura Lederer
is the Deputy Senior Advisor of the Office. I am pleased to announce
today that the Office will soon be fully staffed with 14 permanent
positions and complemented with personnel from other agencies,
specifically HHS, DOJ, CIA, and USAID. We already have an HHS officer
on board, and expect officers from CIA, DOJ, and AID in the next month.
The office will focus on three key areas: the compilation and release
of the trafficking in persons report; assessment and implementation of
programs; and outreach to partner agencies, Congress, and the non-
governmental community. The office structure reflects these key
priorities.
President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons
As envisioned by the law, last month President Bush signed an
Executive Order formally creating the President's Interagency Task
Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which is chaired by
the Secretary of State. I would like to thank Senator Brownback and
Mrs. Wellstone, as well as Rep. Smith, for joining the first meeting of
the Task Force on February 13. At the meeting, led by Secretary Powell,
six agencies were represented--Department of Justice, Department of
Labor, Health and Human Services, the National Security Council, U.S.
Agency for Development, and the Central Intelligence Agency--in most
cases by their principals. Task Force members highlighted current and
future initiatives and discussed the need to enhance interagency
cooperation. In addition, Secretary Powell announced the formation of a
Senior Policy Advisory Group to address policy issues related to
trafficking in persons and to ensure the implementation of the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
I convened the first meeting of the interagency Senior Policy
Advisory Group this week. This group, a subgroup of the Democracy PCC,
will meet regularly to provide policy oversight and coordinate policy
and programs. The first meeting was very productive and provided an
excellent opportunity for extensive exchange among the agencies in
attendance. We identified next steps in a number of areas in which to
increase cooperation, such as intelligence sharing, coordination with
local and state actors, and strengthening the link between our
diplomatic efforts and our law enforcement efforts domestically.
Other Initiatives
Let me say a few words about other initiatives that we are
undertaking to strengthen our effort and broaden our information
database.
Programs: In the last year, the State Department has supported
approximately 100 global anti-trafficking programs or initiatives in
over 40 countries. Of these countries, two were in Tier 1, 24 countries
were in Tier 2, and seven countries were in Tier 3. There were several
countries not included in the 2001 Trafficking in Persons report that
received assistance. In these instances these countries were part of a
regional initiative, were countries where we saw a potential for an
increase in trafficking, or saw an opportunity to integrate trafficking
concerns into other bilateral engagement on, for example, human rights
issues such as protection of women from domestic violence, or alien
smuggling. The Trafficking Office is designing a State-Department-wide
international programs strategy to identify prevention, prosecution and
protection needs in each country, and to assist governments, and
nongovernmental and international organizations, where appropriate, to
address trafficking. We will tailor our programmatic initiatives to
identify the opportunities for greatest improvement and the greatest
needs. We will ensure that our programmatic and diplomatic strategy are
complementary to ensure that we are holding governments accountable and
encouraging strengthened political will, while providing program
support where needed. Certainly, any strategy will include a review of
the laws, law enforcement, victim protection, victim shelters/safe
spaces, victim services, and repatriation and reintegration.
The Office requested from our embassies a comprehensive listing of
proposals they believe would be effective in strengthening local
efforts to combat trafficking. The response has been great. The Office
is now reviewing anti-trafficking proposals from various embassies and
will spearhead the interagency review and coordination process for
these proposals.
Public Outreach: While the Act, our report, and other efforts have
significantly raised awareness of the issue, we are committed to
reaching out to the public to educate them about the issue and what the
U.S. is doing. At every opportunity, I have raised trafficking in my
meetings with foreign governments. Recently I have traveled to India,
Ukraine and South Korea where I took the opportunity to raise
trafficking at the highest levels. Amb. Ely-Raphel will outline the
extent of the audiences we have been reaching.
Training
We are looking for new opportunities to educate U.S. officials
about the problem so they too can contribute to the fight against
trafficking. We have spoken to the newly-designated U.S. Ambassadors,
new classes of foreign service officers, senior foreign service
officers taking courses at the Foreign Service institute, law
enforcement officers, and various other officials to educate them about
the problem and look at ways that they--through their particular work--
can fight this scourge.
Closing
In sum, we've been busy; we have made significant strides. But much
remains to be done.
Mr. Chairman and colleagues, I want to thank you for your
leadership on this issue and the Act, which has provided a solid
framework for our efforts, an impetus for increased coordination, and a
model as we reach out to our partner countries.
I look forward to continued partnership on this issue, and to a day
when we can say that we have successfully eradicated trafficking. Until
that day, we will continue to work in close partnership with you, our
allies, the NGO community, and those committed to ending this
unacceptable practice.
Thank you for this opportunity. I welcome your comments or
questions.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you very much.
Mr. Dinh.
STATEMENT OF VIET D. DINH, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE
OF LEGAL POLICY, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Dinh. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senator. With
your permission, I will also only make a brief statement and
submit my full statement for the record.
I am here to assure you that Attorney General Ashcroft--
who, as you know, supported and voted under your leadership--
for the Trafficking Victims Protection Act when he was a
Senator--is as impatient as you are for its full
implementation, and he has made it a high priority for the
Department of Justice to implement its provisions.
I am particularly pleased that you have invited Ms. Hae
Jung Cho of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking. I
had the opportunity to meet Ms. Cho, along with the Attorney
General, when we both traveled to Los Angeles in July of last
year, when the Attorney General met with a young boy named
Phanupong Khaisir, known as Got, a Thai boy who was used as a
prop in an international human trafficking scheme. At that
time, after that meeting, the Attorney General personally
granted Got humanitarian parole and ordered the INS to accept
his application for a T-visa non-immigrant status. The Attorney
General's personal attention to the case reflects the high
priority that he and the Department place on implementing the
act.
I will refer specifically to the Department's activities in
these two main areas: first, the prosecution of traffickers,
and second, the protection of trafficking victims. Our efforts
to combat human trafficking fall into three main categories:
prosecution of traffickers, outreach, and coordination.
First, to improve the Department's prosecution effort, the
Attorney General issued a guidance to all U.S. attorneys'
offices concerning Federal prosecution under the act. The
guidance details the important new law enforcement tools that
you have given us under the act that remove past barriers to
investigation and prosecution of trafficking or servitude
activities. And this is not an empty promise or an empty
guidance. The Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division
will add 12 new positions to its existing staff to prosecute
human trafficking cases.
This early emphasis has already brought some concrete
successes, and with your permission, I will highlight two cases
brought just this past year.
In August of 2001, a Federal grand jury returned a 22-count
indictment charging three defendants with violation of numerous
Federal statutes, including involuntary servitude. Two others
pled guilty to conspiracy and are awaiting sentencing. The
defendants here allegedly held nearly 250 Vietnamese and
Chinese workers in involuntary servitude for over 2 years in
American Samoa, and thanks to the effort of you, thanks to the
effort of Representative Chris Smith and others, the case was
brought to our attention, and the prosecution is continuing
apace. Approximately 180 of the victims remain in the United
States and are helping law enforcement to prosecute this
effort. Trial is scheduled for April of this year.
In March of 2001, a Berkeley, California multi-millionaire
pled guilty to using beatings and threats to hold girls captive
whom he had brought here from India to work in his real estate
business. The victims were predominantly from families of lower
castes and were allegedly subjected to sexual servitude while
they were here. The defendant was sentenced to 97 months
incarceration and was ordered to pay $2 million in restitution
to four of his victims.
Human trafficking cases are labor-intensive and time-
consuming, often involving many victims and requiring the full-
time involvement of multiple attorneys and investigators.
Nevertheless, the Department has prosecuted 34 defendants in
fiscal year 2001, four times as many as in the year before.
In addition, the Civil Rights Division has opened
investigation into 64 allegations of trafficking in 2001. As of
today, there are 92 investigations pending, which represents a
20 percent increase over the previous year.
Second, in addition to the Department's prosecutorial
efforts, the Attorney General has also enhanced the
Department's outreach efforts. He has created a community
outreach program to work with local community groups, victims'
rights organizations, immigrants rights' organizations,
shelters, and other interested groups. This outreach effort is
staffed full-time and has reached out to hundreds of
organizations in the past year alone.
The Department continues to hold roundtables with non-
governmental organizations and representatives of state and
local law enforcement to ensure that we all work together to
combat trafficking.
To assist this outreach effort, the Department of Justice
and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and
State have jointly developed two brochures in trafficking in
persons. The first is designed for Federal law enforcement
personnel to hand out to victims whom they encounter during the
course of their investigation and their activities. The second,
also produced in collaboration with the Departments of Labor,
State, and Health and Human Services, provides information to
NGOs about the services available at the governmental level to
help them in their important work. All of these brochures will
be distributed widely to ensure that they reach their intended
audiences.
We also have coordinated, both on an intra-agency basis and
on an interagency basis, as Under Secretary Dobriansky has
highlighted. All of these efforts require coordinated team work
and the Attorney General has ordered a number of training and
coordination programs to ensure that our efforts are effective
and humane.
But prosecuting traffickers is only half of the picture.
Equally important are the Department's efforts to protect and
assist the victims of trafficking. Mr. Chairman, as you noted,
earlier this year the Attorney General issued the final interim
T-visa regulations which went into effect on March 4 of this
year. Comments are still continuing, but because of the
significant need for the implementation of this act and for
this visa, he issued the regulation on an interim basis so
victims can get the T-visa status as of now.
Second, in July of last year, the Departments of Justice
and State together issued regulations to implement section
107(c) of the act, which gives victims the ability to have
continued presence here in the United States while we prosecute
the cases and while we investigate their complaints.
Third, under section 107(b), victims of severe forms of
trafficking are eligible for many federally funded assistance
programs, to the same extent as aliens admitted as refugees
under section 207 of the INA, and we are working very closely
on a daily basis, as a matter of fact, with our colleagues in
the Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS in order to implement
this provision.
Finally, last but certainly not least, as you know, the CJS
appropriations act for 2002 provides $10 million to the
Department of Justice for a grant program established under the
act. The Attorney General may use these funds in order to
develop, expand, and strengthen victim service programs for
victims of trafficking through grant making programs. The
Office of Victims of Crime, which is charged with managing this
grant program, is currently working with an interagency task
force to finalize the final proposals for this development.
In conclusion, I would only stress that we are as impatient
as you are to see that the act is fully implemented and to take
proactive steps to end this modern day form of slavery, as the
Senator noted. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dinh follows:]
Prepared Statement of Viet D. Dinh, Assistant Attorney General, Office
of Legal Policy, Department of Justice
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to present testimony concerning
the implementation of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence
Protection Act of 2000 (VTVPA). The Department of Justice is grateful
to Congress for passing this vital piece of legislation. The VTVPA
creates new tools that enhance the Department's ability to prosecute
traffickers, and it allows us to assist trafficking victims in ways not
possible before passage of the VTVPA in October 2000.
I am particularly pleased that Hae Jung Cho of the Coalition to
Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST) has been invited to testify as
part of the Subcommittee's third panel of witnesses. As the
Subcommittee is aware, CAST, a Los Angeles-based organization focusing
exclusively on victims of trafficking, has received funding from the
Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) since 1999. I
was fortunate to meet Ms. Cho when I traveled with Attorney General
Ashcroft to Los Angeles in July where he met and granted humanitarian
parole to Phanupong Khaisri, known as Got, a child who had arrived at
Los Angeles International Airport as a prop in an international
trafficking scheme.
The Department of Justice continues to fight the battle against
trafficking in persons--a form of modern day slavery--that persistently
victimizes helpless women and children. Victims are often lured with
false promises of good jobs and better lives, and then forced to work
under brutal and inhuman conditions. While many trafficking victims are
forced to work in the sex industry, trafficking also takes place in
labor settings involving domestic servitude, prison-like factories, and
migrant agricultural work. Under the VTVPA, trafficking in persons
includes the recruitment or transportation of persons through force,
fraud or coercion. The VTVPA facilitates efforts on three fronts in the
battle against trafficking in persons: providing protection and
assistance to victims, prosecuting offenders, and preventing human
trafficking by working with authorities in the victims' home countries.
My remarks will focus on the areas in which the Department of Justice
is most directly involved--the prosecution of traffickers and the
protection and assistance of victims in the United States.
The fight against human trafficking--a top priority of the Justice
Department--was the focus of one of the Attorney General's first
publicly-announced policy initiatives after taking office. In March
2001, the Attorney General set forth new steps to address trafficking
in persons, and in July 2001 and January 2002, he announced publication
of two regulations implementing portions of the VTVPA. The Attorney
General noted:
Human trafficking is a serious violation of the law. It is an
affront to human dignity. The Department of Justice is
determined not to stand idly by while the toll in human
suffering mounts. Human trafficking victims often are too
young, too frightened, too trapped in their circumstances to
speak for themselves. By setting high standards of conduct for
federal officials in meeting the needs of these victims, we
hope to be the victims' voice, to lessen the suffering, to
prosecute those who commit these crimes to the fullest extent
of the law.
The Department has taken a number of important steps to implement
the Attorney General's initiative. The Department continues to work
steadily to stem the tide of this form of modern-day slavery,
addressing the needs of victims, and sending a clear warning to
traffickers that this barbaric action will not be tolerated.
attorney general's program to combat trafficking in persons
In March 2001, when the Attorney General declared that combating
trafficking in persons was an important priority for the Department of
Justice, he stated that additional resources would be allocated for
prosecution, outreach, and coordination.
Prosecutions of Traffickers
To improve the Department's prosecution efforts, the Attorney
General issued the first guidance to all U.S. Attorneys' offices
concerning federal prosecution under the VTVPA. Among other things, the
guidance document details the important new law enforcement tools
available under the Act. For example, the guidance points out that
under the VTVPA, those convicted of trafficking offenses may be
imprisoned for up to 20 years and, in some instances, for life. This
represents a significant increase over preexisting servitude statutes,
which carried a maximum sentence of 10 years' imprisonment. Moreover,
the guidance explains that the new statutes created by the Act are
designed to address the subtle means of coercion that traffickers often
use to bind their victims in servitude. Such means include
psychological coercion, trickery, and the seizure of documents.
Preexisting servitude statutes and case law made it difficult to
prosecute such conduct, because they require a showing of physical
force, threats of force, or threats of legal coercion. The new statutes
permit federal prosecutors to address a wider range of activities that
traffickers use to facilitate their criminal objectives.
The Department is bringing on new prosecutors to assist in anti-
trafficking efforts. The Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations Act for
FY 2002 appropriates funding for twelve new positions in the Civil
Rights Division to prosecute trafficking in persons cases, seven
prosecutors and five support staff. In most trafficking cases,
prosecutors in the Civil Rights Division's Criminal Section serve as
co-counsel with the 94 U.S. Attorneys' offices across America. The
Criminal Section's attorneys have prosecuted servitude cases for many
years.
The following descriptions are illustrative of some of the cases
the Department has prosecuted during the last year alone:
In December 2001, a federal jury in Maryland convicted
Louisa Satia and Kevin Waton Nanji, of Silver Spring, Maryland,
of holding a teenage Cameroonian girl in involuntary servitude
and of illegally harboring her in their home to use her as
their domestic servant. The defendants were convicted of
involuntary servitude, conspiracy to harbor, and harboring the
girl for their financial benefit. In addition, Satia was
convicted of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and conspiracy
to commit passport fraud. Sentencing is scheduled for March 27,
2002.
In August 2001, a federal grand jury returned a 22-count
indictment charging three defendants with violations of
numerous federal statutes, including involuntary servitude. Two
others pleaded guilty to conspiracy and are awaiting
sentencing. We allege that one of the defendants, Kil Soo Lee,
held nearly 250 Vietnamese and Chinese workers (mostly young
women) in involuntary servitude for over two years in the U.S.
Territory of American Samoa, using them as forced labor in his
garment factory. He reportedly maintained a captive and cheap
labor force through various coercive means, including assaults,
beatings, extreme food deprivation, creation of company store
indebtedness, denial of other work opportunities, threats of
deportation with severe economic consequences including
bankruptcy, confiscation of passports, and false arrest. Lee
and his subordinates are alleged to have held the victims in a
guarded compound containing a factory, living barracks, and a
cafeteria. Approximately 180 of the victims remain in the
United States and are helping law enforcement. Trial is
scheduled for April 2002 (United States v. Kil Soo Lee)
In August 2001, a federal grand jury in El Paso, Texas
returned a six-count indictment charging two defendants with
recruiting women from Uzbekistan into the United States under
false pretenses, then forcing them to work in strip clubs and
bars in order to pay back an alleged $300,000 smuggling fee. We
allege that the victims' passports were taken away, that they
were required to work seven days a week, and that they were
told that their families in Uzbekistan would be harmed if they
did not comply with the defendants' demands. (United States v.
Gasanov)
In August, May, and March 2001, three defendants pleaded
guilty to rounding up and enslaving homeless and drug-addicted
African-American men in Fort Pierce, Florida, and forcing them
to pick oranges against their will by using crack-cocaine,
threats and violence. The two primary defendants were
subsequently sentenced to prison terms of 55 and 48 months.
(United States v. Lee)
In June 2001, three men pleaded guilty in federal district
court to bringing two sixteen-year-old Russian giris to
Anchorage, Alaska to dance nude in a strip club. The two main
defendants were sentenced in August and September to 46 and 30
months incarceration. (United States v. Virchenko)
In March 2001, a Berkeley, California multimillionaire
pleaded guilty to using beatings and threats to hold girls
captive whom he had brought into the United States from India
to work in his real estate business. The victims were
predominantly from families of ``lower'' castes and were
brought here by way of fraudulent employment offers or sham
marriages. The defendant was sentenced to 97 months
incarceration and was ordered to pay $2 million in restitution
to four of his victims. (United States v. Reddy)
As the facts of these cases suggest, human trafficking cases are
labor-intensive and time-consuming matters, often involving many
victims and requiring the full-time involvement of multiple attorneys
and investigators. Nevertheless, the Department of Justice prosecuted
34 defendants in FY 2001, four times as many as in the year before. In
addition, the Civil Rights Division opened investigations in 64
allegations of trafficking in FY 2001. As of today, there were 92
investigations pending, which represents a 20 percent increase in the
number of pending investigations we had a year earlier and a three-fold
increase since establishing our Trafficking in Persons and Worker
Exploitation Task Force toIl-free hotline in February 2000. Since the
new statute was only recently passed and its criminal law provisions do
not apply retroactively, only three of the Department's recent
indictments included charges under the new criminal statutes. Many of
our 92 investigations currently underway include allegations that may
lead to indictments under the VTVPA, however.
Outreach
To enhance the Department's outreach efforts, the Attorney General
announced in March of 2001 that there would be permanent funding of our
Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force toll-free
hotline (1-888-428-7581). He also announced the creation of a community
outreach program to work with local community groups, victims' rights
organizations, immigrants' rights organizations, shelters, and other
interested groups.
The Department plans to continue or initiate several outreach
activities during 2002.
First, various components in the Department will release
interagency trafficking in persons brochures. The Department has
developed two brochures on trafficking in persons: The first brochure
is designed for federal law enforcement personnel to hand out to
trafficking victims they encounter during the course of their
investigations and prosecutions. The Executive Office for United States
Attorneys, the FBI, and INS will send the brochure to their agents and
victim specialists in the field. Based on research about trafficking
victims found in this country, this brochure is designed to provide
information to victims about their rights and available services and to
give them specific contact information for the Department of Justice or
Department of State law enforcement agency working with them. We
anticipate translating the brochure into Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese,
Thai, and Russian. These five languages are among the most common
languages spoken by trafficking victims in the United States.
The second brochure is being published by the Department of Justice
in collaboration with the Departments of Labor, State, and Health and
Human Services (HHS). It is designed to provide information about
federal activities on human trafficking for non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) that are likely to encounter trafficking victims.
The Civil Rights Division plans to send this brochure to the 1,500
organizations and service providers in its trafficking database; post
the brochure on the Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task
Force website (other components within Justice will post it on their
websites as well); provide the brochures to the Office of Special
Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices grantees
(including faith- and community-based organizations), which conduct
public education programs for workers, employers, and immigration
service providers about immigration-related job discrimination; and use
the brochure in outreach presentations before appropriate audiences.
The Department's Violence Against Women Office (VAWO) plans to send the
brochure for NGOs to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the
National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (which collaborates with
1,800 shelters nationwide), STOP Violence Against Women Formula Grant
Program state administrators, and state and tribal domestic violence
and sexual assault coalitions.
Second, the Department will continue to hold roundtables with NGOs
and law enforcement groups. In January 2002, the Department held a
roundtable meeting with approximately 35 NGOs to discuss the main
features of the T nonimmigrant status regulation, and to inform them
that the T nonimmigrant visa was available for victims of severe forms
of trafficking. The Department intends to hold future meetings with the
NGOs, perhaps in smaller groups, to provide an overview of the
Department's efforts to combat and monitor trafficking in persons. The
Department is also planning to meet with national and local law
enforcement groups to present the trafficking brochures, and to discuss
collaborations between the Department of Justice and national and local
law enforcement groups to combat trafficking.
Third, the Department plans to continue and expand its public
presentations on trafficking with a wide range of audiences, including
the annual meetings of law enforcement groups, victim service
organizations, immigrant and refugee advocacy groups, public health
professionals, and others. This work frequently involves participating
in community-level meetings in places around the country. The
Department is also providing information on the Department's anti-
trafficking efforts to such groups for dissemination to their networks
through newsletters and other publications. Two specific areas of
Department activity in this area are as follows:
First, the Department continues to provide training and
assistance to VAWO grantees. The technical assistance providers
for each of the VAWO grant programs conduct several ``technical
assistance institutes'' annually; these institutes provide VAWO
grantees and subgrantees with an opportunity to receive
training and support. Throughout FY 2002, VAWO plans to use
these institutes as a vehicle to provide information to its
grantees about the new federal trafficking law and about
resources for victims.
Second, through the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section
of the Criminal Division (CEOS), the Department will
collaborate with police departments and federal law enforcement
to provide training on the trafficking of American youth for
exploitation. For instance, CEOS will offer programs through
the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center and Police Department's
annual program and the Children's National Advocacy Center
program in Huntsville, Alabama.
Coordination
The Attorney General stated as a third component in his March 2001
announcement that the Department would increase coordination among its
offices in order to investigate and prosecute human trafficking cases
more effectively. He directed both the FBI and the INS to work with the
Civil Rights Division to explore ways to identify victims of
trafficking and to refer these cases to the Division for prosecution.
The FBI and INS play critical leadership roles in identifying victims
and investigating these crimes.
The Department has begun, and will continue, to implement the
Attorney General's mandate for increased coordination by training
federal prosecutors and law enforcement. The Department's continuing
training activities include: training federal prosecutors and agents at
the Justice Department's National Advocacy Center (NAC) in South
Carolina; training FBI agents and civil rights supervisors at the FBI
facility at Quantico; training federal victim-witness coordinators at
the NAC; and training through the Justice Television Network (JTN), a
satellite television network broadcast to U.S. Attorney's offices and
other components of the Department of Justice. The Department is
planning another training course for federal prosecutors and agents in
October 2002.
The Department has also begun, and will continue, training INS
personnel regarding trafficking issues. In January 2002, the INS
conducted training at its Vermont Service Center on the adjudication of
T nonimmigrant status applications. The program included substantive
education about the dynamics of trafficking, identifying trafficking,
and the statutory and regulatory eligibility for T status. INS has also
produced a training video entitled ``Stopping Traffick,'' which began
airing on INS TV this week, and which is being distributed for viewing
in all INS Districts and Sectors. INS will also train new Border Patrol
agents, district counsels, new attomeys and advanced attorneys, and
asylum officers. INS's Office of International Affairs is also creating
a training film on ``Trafficking of Women and Children'' in
coordination with the INS Training Academy. INS through its Internet
website (http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/lawenfor/interiorenf/
antitraf.htm) provides employees and the public with information,
forms, and procedural guidance related to the provisions of the VTVPA.
In addition to these intra-agency efforts, the Department is also
actively pursuing inter-agency coordination on two fronts.
First, the Department of Justice has worked with the Department of
State to finalize the creation of an intelligence-sharing center: the
Migrant Smuggling and Trafficking in Persons Coordination Center, which
will be in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, will work
with the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, the National
Security Agency, the Coast Guard, the INS, the FBI, and others to share
intelligence information about trafficking in persons and alien
smuggling activity.
Second, the Department of Justice will continue its leadership and
participation in the Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation
Task Force. This interagency group helps coordinate the investigation,
prosecution, and protection of victims of trafficking and other
exploitive work practices. The Task Force is co-chaired by the
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and the Solicitor of Labor.
Other participating Department of Justice components include the
Criminal Division, the FBI, the INS, the Executive Office for U.S.
Attorneys, the Office of Legal Policy, the Office for Victims of Crime,
and the Violence Against Women Office. Participating Department of
Labor components include the Office of the Solicitor, the Wage and Hour
Division, and the Women's Bureau. Other federal partners include the
U.S. Departments of State, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services;
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and the National Labor
Relations Board. In addition, the Task Force has created fifteen
regional task forces, each of which has points of contacts from local
offices of federal agencies. In 2002, the Department will devote
particular attention to strengthening the regional task forces.
PROTECTION AND ASSISTANCE TO VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING
Issuance of the T Nonimmigrant Status Regulation
Section 107(e) of the VTVPA created a new nonimmigrant status (so-
called ``T'' visas) for eligible victims of severe forms of
trafficking. The Attorney General has signed an interim T non-immigrant
status regulation, which became effective as of March 4, 2002. The
interim final regulation addresses the essential elements that must be
demonstrated for classification as a T nonimmigrant alien, the
procedures for applicants to follow in applying for nonimmigrant
status, and evidentiary guidance to assist in the application process.
Five thousand T status classifications will be available annually to
principals. See 67 Fed. Reg. 4783 (January 31, 2002).
Issuance of the 107(c) Regulation
In July 2001, the Departments of Justice and State issued a
regulation implementing section 107(c) of the VTVPA, which provides
authority for the INS to arrange for ``continued presence'' to allow
victims of trafficking to remain in the United States while law
enforcement is investigating or prosecuting trafficking crimes. This
regulation also requires Justice and State to identify and
appropriately address the particular needs of victims of severe forms
of trafficking and to provide access to information about their rights
and translation services.
Specifically, the 107(c) regulation requires federal law
enforcement personnel, immigration officials, and Department of State
officials to: (1) identify victims of severe forms of human
trafficking; (2) protect victims in custody; (3) provide victims with
access to information and translation services; (4) establish legal
mechanisms for allowing victims of severe forms of trafficking in
persons, who are potential witnesses, continued presence and reasonable
protection in the United States; and (5) develop appropriate training
for Department of Justice and State personnel investigating and
prosecuting these cases.
Identifying Victims. Federal officials must identify victims
of severe forms of trafficking in persons. The regulation helps
clarify the roles and responsibilities of federal officials in
identifying victims of severe forms of trafficking in persons
as early as possible in the investigation and prosecution
process, to ensure efforts are made to see that such victims
are accorded the rights described in 42 U.S.C. Sec. 10606, and
to provide the protections and services required under 42
U.S.C. Sec. 10607 and under the VTVPA.
Protection. Victims of severe forms of trafficking who are in
custody must be protected. The regulation establishes
procedures for appropriate federal employees to ensure, to the
extent practicable, that victims of severe forms of trafficking
in persons are housed in a manner appropriate to their status
as crime victims, afforded proper medical care and other
assistance, and protected while in federal custody.
Access to Information. Trafficking victims must be informed
of their rights, provided information about pro bono and low-
cost legal services, and accorded reasonable access to
translation services if they are unable to communicate in
English. In order to help meet these obligations, the
Department and other federal agencies have created, and plan to
distribute, the brochures that I have previously described for
NGOs and victims.
Continued Presence. The regulation clarifies the procedures
for federal law enforcement officials to request that certain
victims of severe forms of trafficking in persons, who are
aliens and potential witnesses to such trafficking, be
permitted to have continued presence in the United States in
order to effectuate the investigation and prosecution of those
responsible. It also establishes procedures to protect victims'
safety, including taking measures to protect victims of severe
forms of trafficking in persons and their family members from
intimidation, reprisals, and threats of reprisals by
traffickers and their associates. The INS may use a variety of
immigration mechanisms to ensure the alien's continued presence
in the United States. The specific mechanism used will depend
on the alien's current status under the immigration laws and
other relevant facts. These mechanisms may include parole,
voluntary departure, stay of final order, section 107(c)(3)-
based deferred action, or any other authorized form of
continued presence, including applicable nonimmigrant visas. In
most circumstances, victims granted continued presence will be
eligible for temporary employment authorization. As of February
28, 2002, the INS had received, processed, and was tracking 216
requests for continued presence (of which 184 are in connection
with the case in American Samoa, mentioned earlier). To date,
none of the requests for continued presence has been denied.
Training. The regulation provides guidance about training of
appropriate Justice and State Department personnel in
identifying victims of severe forms of trafficking in persons,
in understanding the particular needs common to victims of
severe forms of trafficking in persons, and in providing for
the protection of such victims. In addition to general training
of internal federal prosecutors, agents, and INS personnel,
which have already been described, the Department continues to
conduct extensive training activities on various components'
responsibilities under the 107(e) regulation. The Department
plans to develop training modules to highlight the relationship
between trafficking in persons cases and other types of
criminal prosecutions, such as organized crime, money
laundering and other topics, as appropriate.
HHS Certification
Victims of severe trafficking in persons may be eligible for a
number of benefits and services, regardless of immigration status.
Under Section 107(b) of the VTVPA, alien victims of severe forms of
trafficking are eligible for many federally-funded assistance programs
to the same extent as aliens admitted to the United States as refugees
under Sec. 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. To be eligible
to receive this assistance, adult victims of severe forms of
trafficking must have been certified by HHS after consultation with the
Department of Justice. HHS will testify about the implementation of
107(b) at today's hearing; however, I can report that the Department of
Justice and HHS have worked very closely together since the enactment
of the VTVPA. We remain in frequent communication and coordination
about how best to implement the VTVPA and how to assist victims in
trafficking.
Federal Grants
The Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations Act for FY 2002
appropriated $10 million to the Department to fund a grant program
established by the VTVPA. The VTVPA provides that the Attorney General
may use these funds to make grants to states, Indian tribes, units of
local government, and nonprofit, non-governmental victims' service
organizations to develop, expand, or strengthen victim service programs
for victims of trafficking. The Office for Victims of Crime, which is
charged with managing this program, is currently working with an
interagency task force to finalize its development.
CONCLUSION
Since passage of the VTVPA, the urgent need for these measures has
only become more apparent. The Department of Justice continues to
encounter many human trafficking victims who need assistance and
protection. We commend Congress for passing this legislation and assure
the Subcommittee that we are working--and will continue to work--
diligently to implement the VTVPA and to help bring a measure of
comfort, justice, and dignity to trafficking victims in the United
States by combating this modem form of oppression.
Mr. Chairman, that completes my prepared statement. I would be
pleased to respond to your questions at this time.
Senator Wellstone. Let me thank both of you for your
excellent testimony. I think Senator Brownback and I will each
try to limit ourselves to 10 minutes for questions.
Let me start with Under Secretary Dobriansky. How high on
the agenda is trafficking for the Department of State? Let me
kind of operationalize that. In your diplomatic efforts, with
whom are you raising this issue? When President Bush meets with
President Putin for a summit in May, will he raise the issue of
trafficking? Who have you met with specifically to raise this
issue?
Ms. Dobriansky. First, I will begin with this important
point--the fact that as an Under Secretary of State for Global
Affairs, as I indicated, the office reports directly to me. I
have personally raised this issue. In fact, I was abroad just
recently in Ukraine, in South Korea, and in India. I had
meetings at, in a couple of cases, the head of state level and
at other levels. This was an issue that, in fact, was raised
and discussed.
Our Deputy Secretary has been very vigorous, very engaged
in these trafficking-in-person issues, very helpful I think in
a number of diplomatic exchanges and also in terms of our
interagency coordination.
Then finally, I would say a word about the Presidential
level. Recently, the President, as you know, was in Asia. I am
not aware and I cannot say that it was addressed in all of the
countries, but I do know that there was some discussion
actually in one of the countries, but actually for positive
reasons because of some positive movement.
Senator Wellstone. I think when some of the countries have
made the improvements, that is certainly part of what we are
asking for. It is high profile. That is important. And I would
hope that the President, when it is not so positive, would also
challenge governments and make it clear that this is very high
on our list of priorities.
What has the State Department done in domestic worker
trafficking or abuse cases involving foreign officials of
international organizations or diplomats in the United States
or, for that matter, American diplomats abroad? As you know, we
have had some sticky situations, and I am wondering what the
State Department----
Ms. Dobriansky. You are referring to, you said, domestic
situations. Is that correct?
Senator Wellstone. Yes. You have got a diplomat over here
in Washington who has a young woman working for a family who is
basically in slave labor conditions. What are we doing about
that?
Ms. Dobriansky. Well, to my knowledge, first, it goes back
to the question about diplomatic approaches, when there are
cases that are here in the United States, we do make
representations certainly to the respective embassies and also
certainly inform our posts overseas about the scale or scope of
any cases. In addition, I believe there is also collaboration
with the Department of Justice because it also would have
prospective domestic legal implications. Those are the kinds of
things that we have been doing.
Senator Wellstone. But do we do anything beyond
representations? Any kind of action taken that makes it clear
it is unacceptable?
Ms. Dobriansky. Absolutely. I would say it is also
addressed in a broader context. If you look at this issue, we
try to take it on more strategically. When we sit down with
other countries--and, if I may say, using the report as a peg--
that does not only mean at the time the report was issued--but
subsequently when we have bilateral exchanges with countries--
specific cases, specific examples are shared.
Senator Wellstone. Mr. Dinh, I was talking earlier about
the concern I have just based upon what I have heard or what we
have heard all together with staff around the country. And I am
now focusing on sort of the trafficking in our own country. By
the way, this is a question I will ask later of the Office of
Trafficking. We need to collect the data. I have heard so many
different reports on exactly how many women, girls--sometimes I
guess men or boys--we are dealing with. I think we need to have
a clear picture of the magnitude of the problem.
But one of the concerns I have is just in the states law
enforcement is not necessarily trained, so they do not really
recognize this when it is before them. Does the Department of
Justice have any plans to ensure a greater amount of
coordination among the assistant U.S. attorneys around the
country and here with you all in Washington?
Mr. Dinh. Yes, sir, and if I may highlight the coordination
and training efforts about which you are interested and also
highlight some of the things that we are doing in order to
further that effort.
In October 2000, immediately after the passage of the act,
the Department of Justice hosted a training program for
interagency personnel, including personnel from the Departments
of Labor, State, and HHS, on the impact of the act on the
investigation and prosecution of these cases and also on the
assistance of victims. We followed up again last year with
training of INS and FBI personnel on identifying victims and
processing them in a humane and cooperative way through the
process to assist the prosecution.
In March of last year, almost immediately upon taking
office, the Attorney General announced his initiative to combat
trafficking. As part of that initiative, he directed our
Intergovernmental Affairs Office, our U.S. attorneys, our FBI,
and INS to work with the Civil Rights Division in a cooperative
manner and also to work with our state and local partners, the
28,000 state and local police agencies, who really come in
contact at a very first level with these activities.
We will continue these efforts both in training and in
identification. We have worked with the Department of State to
finalize an interagency intelligence center, which will be
supervised by the Civil Rights Division, in order to get more
intelligence, more information sharing on this matter.
One of the things that we have encountered is the fact that
these crimes operate in darkness. The perpetrators hide in the
shadows. The victims suffer in silence and helplessness, so we
have to have a very well-coordinated effort to work together
with our state and local partners and the service agencies and
NGOs to identify victims, to put them into the loop so that we
can help them.
Senator Wellstone. Let me make a quick comment and put the
final two questions in one question to you. That way we can
move it right to Senator Brownback and we will move things
along.
I again want to emphasize what I said at the beginning. I
appreciate your comment. I am under the very distinct
impression--and I think Senator Brownback had the sort of mood
piece of this hearing. I think he hit it the right way, which
is to give a lot of credit. It is only a year and people are
moving forward. But I am impatient and I think we can do
better, and that is fine. I think we all agree. I am under the
impression we have a fine INS Commissioner, who was our
Sergeant at Arms.
I do think there has to be more training because I do think
that you have got some of these women or some of these girls in
these detention centers, and I do not think we are in there
interviewing them and understanding why they are there or what
they have been through. We need to do a better job of that. So,
I would just emphasize that and push very hard, and I think you
all could play a critical role.
Let me put two cases together and just get your response.
If the INS has determined a victim will suffer unusual or
severe harm upon return to the country of origin, but then
determines that the victim has not complied with the requests
of law enforcement, will the victim be deported even though it
is certain that she--usually we are talking about she--will
suffer harm? And are there efforts made to protect these women
or girls if they are deported? That is the first question. I
will have a followup real quickly.
Mr. Dinh. The requirements of the T-visa are specified
under section 107 of the act and they include both extreme
hardship and reasonable cooperation with law enforcement
requests. So, each one of these is a statutory requirement that
we, in implementing the non-immigrant status, have to comply
with.
With respect to your specific question----
Senator Wellstone. My question is based on that----
Mr. Dinh. Exactly, exactly. With respect to the specific
question on whether extreme hardship is met--your asking what
else we can do to ensure that this person is not returned to a
country where they would suffer hardship--first I would note
that the cooperation standard under the T-visa is only one of
compliance with reasonable requests of law agencies. This
standard can be met in a number of ways: by a copy of the
complaint, by an endorsement of the law enforcement agency, by
a transcript, by any other evidence. And it is only a
preponderance of the evidence standard, so it is not the very
high standard imposed in a normal criminal prosecution. So, I
would hope that the INS, in issuing the T-visas--and indeed,
the personnel have been trained in this regard--would be
sympathetic toward the granting of these visas for these
victims.
But if there were a case when the extreme hardship
requirement is met and yet one or the other of the statutory
requirements are not met, then the person would not be eligible
for a T-visa. That does not mean that he or she is not eligible
for continued presence under 107(c) or for humanitarian parole
that the Attorney General can grant upon his personal
discretion such as he granted to Phanupong Khaisri, or Got.
Senator Wellstone. I am not a lawyer, but what you are
saying to me--I mean, we worked with you on the definition of
cooperation. I think we reached a good compromise. But what you
are saying is even given that definition, you have a situation
where she has not cooperated, that the Attorney General can
still provide, if you will, amnesty or whatever. Right?
Mr. Dinh. Yes. Humanitarian parole, yes, sir.
Senator Wellstone. If in fact it is clear that if she now
is deported back to the country of origin, she could be in
harm's way.
Mr. Dinh. Yes. It is a discretionary grant by the Attorney
General.
But let me stress that noncooperation can always be
remedied by continued cooperation or future cooperation. That
is certainly our hope, working with the victim hand in glove,
because I think victims and investigators here are part of the
same team.
Senator Wellstone. I am going to hand it to Senator
Brownback. I am going to have a written question on the Samoa
case that you talked about. OK?
Mr. Dinh. That is a case near and dear to my heart.
Senator Wellstone. Yes, I have a number of other written
questions too.
Senator Brownback.
Senator Brownback. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Congratulations on the work that you are doing. I am glad
to hear about all of this.
Dr. Dobriansky, on the advocacy work that you are doing--
and thank you for raising this in so many various places, and
the countries you cited are certainly some key ones to raise
these issues. I have been to a couple of those myself and
raised the issue, and each time that is raised, I think it
drives further home, OK, the United States is serious about
this. My experience on human rights issues and issues like this
is unless the U.S. raises it, it just does not get raised. So,
I really appreciate your doing that.
One group that I talked with was in Thailand and some of
the regional countries there talking about a regional
conference and working together to combat. Are you working with
them, and what is your sense of that one? Or are there other
regions that are working together to try to combat the issue of
sex trafficking?
Ms. Dobriansky. The regional approach is one which is very
much welcome because, as you well know, this is a transborder
issue. It does not affect just one country or a group of
countries. It is a global problem. Certainly in a number of
regions, it is very much interwoven and interconnected.
The regional approach in this case, also in Africa, has
been invaluable. In fact, let me share some developments with
you. In December of last year, our Ambassador in Nigeria
initiated a conference, which included a number of the
countries surrounding Nigeria and which have been affected by
trafficking flows. They worked toward the goal of trying to
think about how they could collaborate regionally through
preventive action and prosecutions because of trafficking flows
going from one location to another. The sharing of information
in that regard, and then also the protection of victims was
featured. This, I think, has significant potential and is
really a kind of strategy that we should be pursuing more
vigorously and not just in only this region mentioned.
Senator Brownback. Good, because it seems to me the most
likelihood of us being able to have a basis of success where
you get, as I understand, the information, both the sending and
the recipient countries working together and each doing what
they can to try to stop this flow of people moving back and
forth.
Mr. Dinh, we will hear a witness on the third panel about
international sex tourism. There are some laws on the books
already about this, but it involves, as I understand, you have
to establish an intention in the person's mind once they buy
the ticket before they leave the country to do this. And that
makes those cases pretty difficult to prosecute. Have you had
any review of cases like this or any dealings with cases like
that?
Mr. Dinh. Yes, sir. When this problem was brought to our
attention, I asked the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section
to explain the problem to me in light of the prosecution of
these cases and difficulties they encounter. And the problem is
exactly as you stated. That is, a person has to have formed the
intent to engage in sex with a minor abroad before he leaves
the country in order to qualify for prosecution under current
law. And, indeed, even if a person has formed such an intent,
you can imagine the prosecutorial and investigative problems we
encounter in establishing the formation of such intent prior to
getting on the plane and leaving this country. Having sex with
a minor while abroad alone is not enough under current law. One
has to have formed the intent prior to one leaving the country,
and that is the evidentiary problem that we have under current
law.
Senator Brownback. Well, we want to work with you to make
changes in the current law so that those cases can be
prosecuted because one of the things that the Thai officials
raised with me was saying, we are getting people traveling in
here from out of country and conducting and doing really awful
activities. We want to stop the trafficking, but we want to
stop this person from coming in and doing these sorts of
activities. And I thought, well, that is a legitimate request
on their part toward us.
Have you had any conversations like that with other
officials? Or maybe I should ask Dr. Dobriansky as well if you
have.
Mr. Dinh. I certainly have asked our folks to suggest ways
that we can think about, with your leadership, as you
suggested, curing this problem. One way to think about the
problem is to make the simple act of sex with a minor abroad
without the prior intent sufficient to prosecute under the
Federal law. That would require a legislative fix. Likewise,
those who facilitate such actions by the operating of tours for
those purposes should be held liable so that we can get at the
root cause of these, the operators of these tours. But we would
welcome your leadership on the issue, and I look forward to
working with you for the legislative fixes we need.
Senator Brownback. Have you had this raised with you?
Ms. Dobriansky. I would just say that our discussions have
varied. There have been some countries that have been more
forthcoming on information and there have been others that have
not. It depends upon who you are speaking to and the context.
But I have to say that on several occasions this issue has been
raised.
Senator Brownback. Good. Thank you both. Really, please
express our appreciation to your Departments for really
grabbing a hold of this aggressively, early, quickly and
pressing it. We want to work with you to get more done fast.
When you look in the eyes of the children that you are helping,
it is a very gratifying thing, what you are doing. It is an
awful thing that is happening to them, and for us to get what,
I think the chairman has once referred to, as this part of the
dark side of the globalizing economy, getting at that is an
important thing for us and humanity to be dealing with. So,
thanks for what you are doing.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you, both of you. We appreciate
your leadership.
Mr. Dinh. Thank you.
Ms. Dobriansky. Thank you.
Senator Wellstone. We are just going to try to move right
along. The second panel will be Ambassador Ely-Raphel.
Ambassador Ely-Raphel is the new Senior Advisor to the
Secretary on trafficking issues and the Director of what I will
call the Office of Trafficking. And Dr. Van Hanh is the new
Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Ambassador Ely-Raphel.
STATEMENT OF AMB. NANCY H. ELY-RAPHEL, SENIOR ADVISOR, OFFICE
TO MONITOR AND COMBAT TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, DEPARTMENT OF
STATE, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Ely-Raphel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With your
permission, I would like to present my full testimony for the
record and thus abbreviate my statement.
Senator Wellstone. It will be in the record.
Ms. Ely-Raphel. Thank you.
It is an honor for me to appear before the Senate for the
first time in my capacity as the head of the Office to Monitor
and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Trafficking in persons is a criminal commerce in human
lives in which individuals are nothing more than commodities to
be exploited for profit. It is a contemporary form of
enslavement through physical, economic, or psychological
bondage by those who dishonor and corrupt every value and ideal
American society represents. It is a problem that cries out for
redress.
The 2001 Trafficking in Persons report has proven to be an
invaluable tool in raising the profile of trafficking
throughout the world and spurring governments to take action.
The stigma attached and the threat of sanctions is a strong
motivator.
The annual trafficking report is a work in progress. Over
the last several months, we have solicited feedback from NGOs,
congressional officials and staff, and relevant government
agencies. Based on this response, we launched an e-mail address
to enable NGOs and international organizations to send
trafficking information directly to the office. This change, we
believe, will allow more direct engagement by the NGOs, as well
as enhance transparency.
In addition, our embassies and consulates are providing
more detailed information. We have added data-specific
questions on the number of arrests, indictments, plea bargains,
fines, and convictions of traffickers.
During fiscal year 2001, the State Department supported and
implemented over 100 trafficking-related programs and
initiatives in approximately 40 countries. This year we will
focus on assisting eligible countries in tiers 2 and 3. We will
continue to expand our assistance to local NGOs and
international organizations. In addition, we will seek to
expand our government-to-government programs for those
governments that are committed to address trafficking. These
types of programs included legislative assistance, training
programs for government officials to investigate and prosecute
traffickers, and startup equipment for anti-trafficking task
forces or police units. We are encouraging our embassies to
solicit financial or in-kind support from the host governments
for programs implemented by NGOs. We hope this approach will
help to ensure sustainability of the NGO programs, as well as
facilitate government-NGO cooperation.
Next week my office will meet with relevant State
Department bureaus, AID, and the Department of Labor to begin
reviewing the many good proposals we received for possible
funding.
As Under Secretary Dobriansky noted, we have raised
trafficking at every opportunity with foreign governments,
domestic audiences, and within our own government. Last week I
attended the Regional Ministerial Conference on People
Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons, and Related Transnational
Crimes in Indonesia. I was struck by the high level of
commitment in that region to combat trafficking in persons and
organized crime. There was much candid discussion about the
need to improve their efforts to address trafficking in
persons.
Over the last year, members of our new office have traveled
to Japan, West Africa, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, and
Jamaica to speak on trafficking panels at international
conferences and to share information with various foreign
government officials and non-governmental representatives. They
also traveled to different states, ranging from Alaska to
Vermont, to enhance domestic public awareness of the
trafficking issues or participate in training courses and
conferences for U.S. Government officials.
The U.S. Government and Congress' enactment of the Victims
of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 put the
spotlight on this violation of fundamental human rights. As a
result of our leadership, in many cases governments are taking
action, and we will work very, very hard to ensure success in
our program.
I thank you very much for the opportunity to share our
efforts and progress and look forward to continued
collaboration with you.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Ely-Raphel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Amb. Nancy H. Ely-Raphel, Senior Advisor, Office
to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Department of State
It is an honor for me to appear before the Senate for the first
time in my capacity as the head of the Office to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of State. We are all here
today to talk about trafficking in persons, which is the modern-day
form of slavery that plagues our societies in the new millennium.
As Under Secretary Dobriansky indicated in the previous panel, the
Department of State is actively implementing the provisions of the
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. I would
like to take this opportunity to provide details about what the
Trafficking Office is doing at the working level with respect to the
Trafficking in Persons Report, international programs and outreach.
TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT
The 2001 Trafficking in Persons Report has proven to be an
invaluable tool in raising the profile of trafficking throughout the
world and spurring countries to take action. The stigma attached--and
the threat of sanctions--is a strong motivator. Government
representatives from Tier 3 countries such as South Korea, Israel and
Romania, met with us on several occasions for guidance on actions they
could take to improve their record.
The Annual Trafficking in Persons Report is a work in progress.
Over the last several months, we solicited feedback from non-
governmental organizations, congressional officials and their staff,
and relevant U.S. government agencies on how we can improve this
Report.
Based on this feedback we launched an e-mail address to allow non-
governmental and international organizations to send trafficking
information directly to the Office. This change we believe will allow
more direct engagement by the non-governmental organizations as well as
enhance transparency. The response has been very positive. Already, we
are getting information from various NGOs around the world.
In addition, our embassies and consulates around the world are
providing more detailed information for the 2002 Report regarding
corruption and the political will of governments to combat trafficking.
We also added data-specific questions on the number of arrests,
indictments, plea bargains, fines, and convictions of traffickers. This
is in direct response to a concern raised by many of our colleagues in
the non-governmental arena, who noted that a country's commitment can
certainly be measured through their commitment to stamping out
corruption. As of this week, over half of our embassies have submitted
their information for the second annual Trafficking in Persons Report.
I will use this report as a mechanism to expand our bilateral
dialogues with other countries. It is only through this dialogue that
we can educate countries, identify their shortcomings, and assist them
in strengthening their efforts.
Finally, I would also like to note that the Annual Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices, which the Department issued this past
Monday, contained detailed information about the problem of
trafficking, which was compiled by the Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights, and Labor and our many embassies overseas. Members of my office
worked collaboratively with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor on these reports, which contain detailed information on a variety
of subjects related to trafficking, including conditions for victims
and efforts by Governments and non-governmental organizations to combat
trafficking.
INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS
During fiscal year 2001, the State Department supported and
implemented over 100 trafficking-related programs and initiatives in
approximately 40 countries. The estimated value of the State Department
programs is $11.5 million. The types of programs funded included
information campaigns, international visitor programs, law enforcement
training programs, equipment for new anti-trafficking police units,
equipment for forensic interview rooms for child victims, equipment for
new crisis centers, and repatriation and reintegration programs.
This year we will focus on assisting eligible countries in Tiers 2
and 3 to address trafficking in persons. We will continue to expand our
assistance to local non-governmental and international organizations
for services to victims and for trafficking prevention. In addition, we
will seek to expand our government-to-government programs for those
governments that are committed to address trafficking. These types of
programs include legislative assistance, training programs for
government officials to investigate and prosecute traffickers, and
start-up equipment for anti-trafficking taskforces or police units. We
are encouraging our embassies to solicit financial or in-kind support
from the host governments for programs implemented by nongovernmental
organizations. We hope this approach will help to ensure sustainability
of the NGO programs as well as facilitate government-NGO cooperation,
and ultimately end our engagement so we can invest our funds in other
countries that present new opportunities for beginning or strengthening
the battle against trafficking.
Next week, my Office will meet with relevant State Department
bureaus, USAID, and Department of Labor to begin reviewing the many
good proposals we received for possible funding. We will collectively
identify the proposals which merit further consideration, then each
bureau or agency will proceed with its own internal approval and
administrative process to get these proposals funded. We have a
tracking system in place to begin monitoring the amount of funds
obligated for international anti-trafficking programs. This will help
us better allocate our limited resources and promote transparency and
coordination within the U.S. government.
OUTREACH
A key role of my Office is to promote awareness about the
trafficking issue and the U.S. government's antitrafficking efforts
with foreign governments, our own government, non-governmental
organizations and the general public.
As Under Secretary Dobriansky noted, we have raised trafficking at
every opportunity with foreign countries, domestic audiences, and
within our own government. Last week I attended the ``Regional
Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and
Related Transnational Crimes'' in Indonesia. I was struck by the high-
level commitment in the region to combat trafficking in persons and
organized crime. There was much candid discussion about the need to
improve their efforts to address trafficking in persons.
While the Trafficking in Persons Report has helped illuminate the
importance of the issue, we need to continue to educate governments on
the importance of safeguarding the rights of victims, providing them
with protection and prosecuting the traffickers. We also need to
educate governments on the differences between migrant smuggling and
trafficking in persons.
Over the last year, members of our new office traveled to Japan,
West Africa, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, and Jamaica to speak on
trafficking panels at international conferences and share information
with various foreign government officials and non-governmental
representatives. They also traveled to different states, ranging from
Alaska to Vermont to South Carolina, to enhance domestic public
awareness of the trafficking issue and/or participate in training
courses and conferences for U.S. government officials.
We are working to institutionalize anti-trafficking training for
our foreign and civil service officers, ambassadors, and other U.S.
government officials. For example, we recently did a presentation on
the scope and magnitude of trafficking in Vermont as part of a program
for INS personnel who will be adjudicating T Visa applications.
CLOSING
The United States Government, and Congress' enactment of the
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, put the
spotlight on this human rights and criminal problem. As a result of our
leadership, in many cases governments are taking action to eradicate
this crime and to help its victims. The success of our efforts will be
determined by the extent to which the fight against trafficking and
assistance to its victims becomes institutionalized in civil society
and governments all over the world.
I thank you for the opportunity to share our efforts and progress,
and look forward to our continued collaboration.
Thank you.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you very much. You made the yellow
light, broke a record for all of us.
Dr. Hanh.
STATEMENT OF NGUYEN VAN HANH, PH.D., DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF
REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES,
WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Hanh. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the
committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the
progress of the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS],
in implementing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
With your permission, my full testimony has been submitted for
the record.
Senator Wellstone. It will be included in the record.
Dr. Hanh. The following is my brief statement.
As evidenced by this panel, HHS is only one of the many
Federal agencies playing a role in efforts to combat human
trafficking. Given the complexity of participating in such a
multi-agency endeavor, I am pleased at the progress that has
been made and I am committed to continuing our efforts to
implement the law in conjunction with the other key Federal
agencies.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act makes adult victims
of severe forms of trafficking, who have been certified HHS,
eligible for certain benefits and services to the same extent
as refugees. Victims of severe forms of trafficking who are
under 18 years of age also are eligible for these benefits to
the same extent as refugees, but do not need to be certified.
Rather, these young victims receive letters of eligibility for
services.
HHS has developed a systematic approach to the
certification of trafficking victims and the facilitation of
their access to benefits and services. We consult frequently
with the U.S. Department of Justice, the agency that
investigates and prosecutes trafficking cases and refers
appropriate cases to my office for certification. We also
coordinate with the U.S. attorneys' offices around the country
on trafficking cases, as well as other Federal law enforcement
officials from the Department of Labor and Immigration and
Naturalization Service [INS].
Once we receive a referral, in order for us to issue a
letter of certification, we must ensure that the victim has met
all of the criteria required by the act. Adult victims must
either have been granted continued presence or have received a
bona fide T-visa application determination by INS. In addition,
adult trafficking victims must be willing to assist in every
reasonable way in the investigation and prosecution of
traffickers. Finally, individuals must be determined to be
victims of a severe form of trafficking.
If the appropriate criteria are met, then we will provide a
certification letter to adult victims safely and without
breaches of confidentiality. In addition, we contact local
refugee service providers and other benefit-granting agencies
to identify the most appropriate local programs to help the
victims.
We also work with the INS to coordinate access to
employment authorization documents, or EAD's. If a victim has
an EAD, he or she may be eligible to enroll in programs which
emphasize employment. One of these programs, the matching grant
program, is designed to help refugees and now trafficking
victims to obtain self-sufficiency within 4 months.
No group of individuals is more fragile and susceptible
than victims who are under the age of 18, especially when the
minors are unaccompanied by a parent or guardian. We are
developing procedures to provide the best options for these
victims, who not only need to begin their recovery from their
traumatic experiences but also require resolution of their
custody.
In fiscal year 2001, we issued 194 certification letters to
adults and 4 eligibility letters to minors under the age of 18.
Since the beginning of fiscal year 2002, 17 more certification
letters for adults have been sent and 5 additional minors have
received letters of eligibility.
If you will allow me a couple of minutes, I would like to
clarify a couple points here.
In addition to certification and assistance activities, the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act calls for HHS, in
collaboration with other designated Federal agencies, to
establish and carry out programs to increase public awareness
about trafficking in persons. To that end, we have been
actively involved with outreach efforts aimed at immigrant and
refugee communities, non-governmental organizations, voluntary
agencies, state and local social service providers, and other
Federal and state officials.
Clearly, the trafficking program requires a close working
relationship among many departments. HHS Deputy Secretary
Claude Allen recently participated in the inaugural meeting of
the President's Interagency Task Force on Trafficking, chaired
by Secretary of State Colin Powell, reinforcing our commitment
to work together on this critical effort.
In fiscal year 2001, we awarded more than $1.25 million in
discretionary grants to aid organizations throughout the United
States. The grants provide groups the means to assist certified
and/or eligible victims of trafficking in order to enhance
their transition from victimization to self-sufficiency. In
addition, these trafficking grant funds may also be used to
fund other services needed during the time between the date of
HHS certification/eligibility letters and the receipt of public
benefits and support services.
I want to thank the committee for offering me the
opportunity to outline HHS' response to the problem of human
trafficking. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hanh follows:]
Prepared Statement of Nguyen Van Hanh, Ph.D., Director, Office of
Refugee Resettlement, Administration for Children and Families,
Department of Health and Human Services
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you
for the opportunity to testify on the progress of the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) in implementing the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act of 2000. As the Director of the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR), within the Administration for Children and
Families, I am responsible for implementation of several provisions in
the Trafficking program which I will discuss today. I want to assure
you that the Department of Health and Human Services is fully committed
to implementing this important legislation to protect and assist
trafficking victims as part of the fight against the atrocity of human
trafficking.
Since enactment of the law, HHS has acted quickly to implement our
responsibilities under the Act, keeping in mind that behind our paper
processes are vulnerable human beings who have been subjected to severe
physical and emotional cruelty. These trafficking victims are
frequently in desperate need of assistance, and HHS has worked
diligently to see that once someone is determined to be a victim, no
time is wasted in linking them up with necessary benefits and services.
HHS is determined to see that victims are given the opportunity to
regain their dignity--by emphasizing benefit programs geared toward
building self-sufficiency, rather than dependency. It has been our
experience to date that this approach is what most trafficking victims
prefer. When victims are empowered to gain back control of their own
lives, everyone wins.
HHS is only one of many federal agencies playing a role in efforts
to combat human trafficking. Given the complexity of participating in
such a multi-agency endeavor, I am pleased at the progress that has
been made and will commit to continuing our efforts to implement the
law in conjunction with the other key federal agencies. Before speaking
to our progress, however, I would like to provide a brief overview of
the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and our Department's role in its
implementation.
I. BACKGROUND
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 makes adult victims
of severe forms of trafficking, who have been certified by HHS after
consultation with the Attorney General, eligible for certain benefits
and services to the same extent as refugees. Victims of severe forms of
trafficking who are under 18 years of age also are eligible for these
benefits to the same extent as refugees but do not need to be
certified.
``Severe forms of trafficking in persons'' is defined under the Act
to mean: 1) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by
force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform
such act is under 18 years of age; or 2) the recruitment, harboring,
transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or
services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose
of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or
slavery.
I would like to turn now to our efforts to implement the
certification requirements under the trafficking program.
II. CERTIFICATION AND VICTIM ASSISTANCE
HHS has been actively involved in developing policies and
procedures related to certifying individuals who are determined to be
victims of a severe form of trafficking, and making victims eligible to
access federal and certain state benefits and services to the same
extent as refugees.
HHS has developed a systematic approach to the certification of
trafficking victims and the facilitation of their access to benefits
and services. We consult on a daily basis with staff at the U.S.
Department of Justice, the agency that investigates and prosecutes
trafficking cases and refers appropriate cases to my office for
certification. We also coordinate with U.S. Attorneys' Offices around
the country on trafficking cases as well as other federal law
enforcement officials from the Department of Labor and Immigration and
Naturalization Service.
Once a referral is received, we must ensure that the victim has met
all the criteria required by the Act in order to be certified. Adult
victims must either have been granted continued presence or have
received a bonafide T-visa application determination by INS. In
addition, adult trafficking victims must be willing to assist in every
reasonable way in the investigation and prosecution of severe forms of
trafficking in persons. Finally, individuals must be determined to be
victims of a severe form of trafficking. Individuals under the age of
18 only need to be determined to be victims of a severe form of
trafficking in order to be eligible to access federal and certain state
benefits and services to the same extent as refugees.
If the appropriate criteria are met, then a certification letter
will be provided to victims safely and without breaches of
confidentiality. In addition, we contact local refugee service
providers and other benefit-granting agencies to inquire about
appropriate local programs to help the victims. Many victims are in
need of psychological counseling, medical assistance and legal
referrals.
Further, we work with the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) to coordinate access to Employment Authorization Documents
(EADs). I am very pleased that INS recently decided that EADs for
victims whose continued presence is necessary to effectuate the
prosecution of traffickers will be processed and issued centrally. This
decision means that every victim will receive continued presence and
his/her EAD at the same time. The EAD is a critical document because it
permits eligible victims to work, which, in turn, leads towards self-
sufficiency and improved self-esteem. If a victim has an EAD, she/he
may be eligible to enroll in programs, such as ORR's Voluntary Agency
Match Grant Program, which emphasize employment. The increased
stability that employment provides better prepares victims to assist in
the prosecution of the traffickers.
I am also heartened by the recent issuance of the T-visa
regulations by the Department of Justice. Victims whose application for
a T-visa is determined by INS to be bonafide, and who are willing to
cooperate with prosecution efforts, are eligible for HHS certification.
Creating a process by which victims may work towards normalizing their
immigration status while simultaneously making them eligible for
benefits, encourages victims to develop stability in their lives and
gain trust in the American justice system.
No group of individuals is more fragile and susceptible than
victims who are under the age of 18, especially when the minors are
unaccompanied by a parent or guardian. We are developing procedures to
provide the best options for these victims, who not only need to begin
their recovery from their traumatic experiences but also require
resolution of their custody. Our goal is to ensure that all minors who
are victims of a severe form of trafficking come forward and receive
the protection and assistance they need.
Through regular contact with refugee service providers and other
agencies assisting trafficking victims, we continue to learn a great
deal about the certified trafficking population in the United States
today. In FY 2001, ORR issued 194 certification letters to adults and 4
eligibility letters to minors under the age of 18. Since the beginning
of fiscal year 2002, 17 more certification letters for adults have been
sent, and five additional minors have received letters of eligibility.
The majority of victims, 82 percent, are female, while 39 victims,
18 percent, are men. Although the 220 victims have come from a variety
of countries, a disproportionate number are from Vietnam. The
Vietnamese victims were all involved in a single case in which garment
workers, who believed they were coming to work in a U.S. factory, were
held in slavery-like conditions with their freedom of movement
restricted and, in some instances, suffered physical abuse.
Victims have also come from Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, China,
India, Jamaica, Mexico, Micronesia, Russia and Sri Lanka. Some of the
victims were forced into a form of involuntary domestic servitude,
forced to stay in the trafficker's house, suffering physical abuse and
receiving no compensation for their work. Other victims were forced to
work in the sex industry. In many of these cases, traffickers took the
victims' immigration documents, restricted victims' freedom of
movement, physically abused them and did not provide payment for work.
Victims are located throughout the United States. In all,
certification/eligibility letters have been sent to benefit-issuing
offices in 19 states plus the District of Columbia. Despite the
hardships that these victims have suffered, many have been able to
successfully participate in the refugee assistance program called the
Voluntary Agency Match Grant Program. This program is designed to help
refugees, and now trafficking victims, attain self-sufficiency within
four months. The program emphasizes employment, English language
training and cultural orientation.
During FY2001, 34 percent of the victims applied for food stamps,
while 21 percent applied for Refugee Cash Assistance and 35 percent
applied for Refugee Medical Assistance. Less than one percent of
victims applied for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and
Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The low application rates for TANF
and SSI benefits are reflective of the fact that the overwhelming
majority of certified/eligible victims are relatively young, employable
single adults with no children.
III. OUTREACH ACTIVITIES
In addition to certification and assistance activities, the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act calls for HHS, in collaboration with
other designated federal agencies, to establish and carry out programs
to increase public awareness about trafficking in persons. To that end,
we have been actively involved in outreach efforts aimed at immigrant
and refugee communities, non-governmental organizations, voluntary
agencies, state and local social service providers, state and local law
enforcement, the general public, and other federal and state government
officials.
HHS is developing plans to conduct a public awareness campaign
designed to raise awareness about trafficking in persons and to
encourage victims to step forward and seek help. HHS will continue to
work with our federal counterparts to ensure trafficking victims
receive all the benefits they are eligible for through the
certification process. To further that end, we have facilitated
training and given presentations in a variety of organized forums,
reaching out to more than 1,400 individuals and organizations. These
sessions focused on the problem of trafficking, background of the
legislation, the roles and responsibilities of HHS within the law, the
role of benefit-issuing offices within the HHS certification process,
and the benefits and services available to certified/eligible
trafficking victims.
Clearly, the trafficking program requires a close working
relationship among many cabinet departments. HHS Deputy Secretary
Claude Allen recently participated in the inaugural meeting of the
President's Interagency Task Force on Trafficking, chaired by Secretary
of State Colin Powell, reinforcing our commitment to work together on
this critical effort. In addition, we have participated in an
interagency working group that drafted a ``trafficking in persons''
brochure designed for wide dissemination to nongovernmental
organizations. The brochure focuses on the needs of trafficking victims
and what non-governmental organizations can do to assist them.
IV. DISCRETIONARY GRANTS
The last implementation activity I would like to address is ORR
discretionary grants. In FY 2001, we awarded more than $1.25 million in
17-month discretionary grants to eight organizations throughout the
United States. The grants provide these non-governmental groups the
means to assist certified and/or eligible victims of trafficking in
order to enhance their transition from victimization to self-
sufficiency. Grant funds may be used for a wide range of services,
including case management, temporary housing, special mental health
needs (such as trauma counseling), legal assistance referrals, and
cultural orientation. These grant funds also may be used to fund other
services needed during the time between the date of HHS certification/
eligibility letters and the receipt of public benefits and support
services.
We are pleased with the efforts of our grantees to date in finding
ways to address the needs of trafficking victims, reaching out to
community groups, and developing a growing network of service providers
and law enforcement agencies who are committed to providing assistance
to trafficking victims. Because of our successful experience so far
working with these grantees, we plan to issue another grant
announcement in the current fiscal year to provide additional
opportunities and expand efforts to reach out to increasing numbers of
trafficking victims.
V. CONCLUSION
As important as are the steps we have taken so far, we know that
there are still a large number of victims trafficked annually into the
United States. Our experience so far has made it clear how important it
is to provide the right type of assistance to victims. We need to help
victims understand that coming forward will result not in further
victimization, but in their being made safe and provided with help.
We are committed to continuing our close relationships working with
our fellow federal agencies and ensuring that we increase the
communication to trafficking victims that we will protect them and will
provide them with supportive services. If successful, our model will be
important not only for victims in the United States but also for
trafficking victims throughout the world.
I want to thank the committee for offering me the opportunity to
outline HHS' response to the problem of human trafficking. At this time
I'd be glad to address any questions you may have.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you very much, Dr. Hanh, and to
you too, Ambassador Ely-Raphel.
Let me start with Ambassador Ely-Raphel because of the
remarks that I made in my opening statement. One of the
concerns that I have, as you know, in the spirit of ``we can do
better,'' is the importance of your office really bringing the
agencies together and having a clear focus, clear benchmarks.
It appears to me that a lot of your effort has been toward
combating trafficking internationally, which is, of course,
important. I am interested, in my questioning, in what efforts
are underway to fight the trafficking domestically. How many
meetings have you had with staff from DOJ and HHS and Labor? Do
you have a coordinated strategy so the programs do not
duplicate each other? Have you established some benchmarks
whereby we can evaluate the programs?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. Mr. Chairman, I could say I am in almost
constant communication with the Department of Justice, with the
Department of Labor and the Department of HHS. We have had
innumerable meetings, not only the task force meetings, but any
number of meetings. The Justice Department co-chairs meetings
with the Solicitor of Labor on victim exploitation and
trafficking in persons. We have participated in all the
meetings that they have held.
Senator Wellstone. Maybe I am just misinformed. My
impression is that the actual bringing together all of the
different agencies for an interagency meeting, that you have
had just one of these meetings. Am I wrong?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. We had one large meeting just before----
Senator Wellstone. When was that?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. But we have had innumerable meetings with
all the agencies.
Senator Wellstone. No, I understand you talk with different
people, but I am talking about bringing people together, doing
the coordination, doing the focus. You are key to that.
When have you brought everybody together from all the
agencies where you had an interagency meeting, you chair, you
coordinate? Was that this past week?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. We had one this week. We had one the week
before that that the Secretary chaired, and we had one about 2
weeks before that and we have had a number of meetings in
between. So, I think we are doing a lot of coordinating and a
lot of meeting. You talked with my colleagues from the other
departments. I think they may be getting tired of seeing me and
hearing my voice.
Senator Wellstone. I do not want to say that is good.
Have you met regularly with the NGOs and some of the
trafficking victims?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. We have. We had all the NGOs--I met with
all of them when I first began this job in acquiring
information as to what they thought we should do to improve the
report before we send out our cable to all our embassies asking
for information on the reports. I met with them subsequently.
In fact, yesterday I spoke to a whole group of NGOs on
trafficking.
Senator Wellstone. Ambassador Ely-Raphel, so if I met with
the NGOs--our office is close to them--and I say do you feel
like this Office of Trafficking is reaching out, meeting with
you in regular consultation, their answer will be yes?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. I hope so, and if not, we will be very
happy to meet with them more often. My door is always open to
all the NGOs.
Senator Wellstone. That is very responsive and I thank you.
Do you plan to release an interim report on the progress
made? I think you know some of these questions that are coming.
It is just good to get your answer on the record. Tier 1, 2,
and 3, and in particular with the 3 countries, I am interested
in whether or not any of those countries have now made some
positive steps and are now more cooperative in light of the
report.
Ms. Ely-Raphel. Well, I think the country that drew the
most attention of all probably was South Korea that was on tier
3. We have met with the South Korean Government from the
highest levels. They presented us with a great deal of
information. They took their place in the report very, very
seriously and, indeed, are a role model for the way states
should react to the situation. As I indicated to their Minister
whom I met with when I was in Indonesia, I would give them a
tremendous amount of credit as would any other members of the
administration, the State Department, for what they were doing,
but we were very close to issuing the next report, which will
come out in June, and I have been complimenting the South
Koreans on the role that they have taken in doing this.
Senator Wellstone. The next report will be out in June?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. And the next report will be out in June.
So, the information is coming in now.
Senator Wellstone. As to progress made by tier 1, 2, and 3?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. And similarly, there have been other
countries as well that were on tier 3 that have come in and
made major efforts.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you. I will just keep moving
along.
I said this earlier and I was wondering about your
response. I was saying we have got the CIA with an estimate of
50,000 victims that are trafficked in the United States per
year. The administration has identified fewer than 250 victims.
Do you have any data that you can present to us as to what we
are dealing with here, the magnitude of the problem in our own
country? In other words, I am for the global part, but then
when we hear a report of women from Ukraine forced into
prostitution 2 miles from here in Bethesda, I think we better
make sure we get it right here too. Do you have any data as to
the magnitude of the problem we are dealing with here in our
own country?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. I know the figures that we use for the
United States. I am not confident that we have the right
figures. In many respects, when I go around talking to people,
I feel like it is the tip of the iceberg, that it is much more
serious than the figures that we have. I have been in
communication with all the intelligence agencies, and they have
assured us that they are working on this and will provide us
with better information.
Senator Wellstone. Any help I think you could give us in
presenting your best estimate. I am not trying to be snide
between 50,000 and 250,000. So, any help you can give us, given
your key position, giving us some sense of what the magnitude
of the problem is would be much appreciated.
Finally, Dr. Hanh, because I will run out of time, I think
you referred to the $10 million that you received for
trafficking victim services. What are your plans for funding
organizations that provide these victim services and also to
train those organizations? I think you referred to it but I was
rushing you along.
Dr. Hanh. Certainly out of the $10 million authorized we
have spent $1.25 million for eight grants nationwide to help
with providing services, assistance to the victims. We also use
the money for staffing and other services. We intend to engage
in grants to the communities in anticipation of the expanded
needs of services to the victims. We also, in particular, are
planning for increasing awareness or a campaign for public
awareness, if you wish, just to be sure not only nonprofit
organizations and community-based organizations are aware of
the issues, but also to encourage victims and others to come
forward so that we have a better handle on the magnitude of the
problems and how to help the victims.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you.
Senator Brownback.
Senator Brownback. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thank you both
for being here to testify in front of us.
Ambassador, you being the first person to head this office,
you kind of set the template for it, and so we wish you well
and Godspeed on really setting an aggressive agenda.
The first report that came out was excellent. It really lit
a fire under a number of places. I thought it was quite
valuable.
There has been some internal discussion going on about is
the office just about issuing a report or is it about advocacy
and other issues. My clear preference is for it to be a very
aggressive advocacy office for elimination of international
trafficking, this modern form of slavery. As you look at what
your role is at the head of this office, how would you put it
in a couple of words?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. Absolutely. I think it is advocacy. I think
the report gives us a wonderful tool to use, but in my
conversations--and I met with many government officials,
particularly at the meeting in Indonesia. They had 31 Ministers
there. They are all interested in trafficking and they all
seemed to be interested in doing something about it. So, I
think we are getting their attention, but I think we just have
to go back and work out country action plans that will address
the problems and try to go some way to resolve them.
Senator Brownback. I would hope you would be on the road a
lot, not that I want to hurt your family life or anything like
that. But it seems like right now would be a very important
time to be on the road, particularly with the second and third
tier countries and going there and saying, here is what we are
looking for and we would like to get you off of being in the
third tier. We are happy to work with you on this. I hope you
would be out there a great deal.
Ms. Ely-Raphel. That is exactly what I intend to do and
that is exactly what we are hoping we can work out with these
countries to encourage them to work with us, because if they
are not interested, we cannot do anything for them. But if they
are interested in dealing with the problem, it is such a great
opportunity for us.
Senator Brownback. I want to ask you about an aspect of
this that I think is pretty tough to deal with, and I wonder
how you are responding to it. You are a former Ambassador and
have worked overseas a great deal. You know the sensitivity of
what happens to families in that country. For instance, if you
are a girl who has been trafficked from the Ukraine, that
organized crime may have been a part of this, and that your
family that remains in the Ukraine is under a threat. We have
heard about these sort of situations. We had some women who
have been trafficked and reported that their families had been
intimidated in their home country and that they could not speak
out because of that intimidation toward their own families. How
do we address that issue for them? How do you think we go about
making it safe for people to come forward and speak out about
what has happened to them back in their own countries?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. Well, if they are a victim here in the
United States and they are agreeing to cooperate with law
enforcement, they would be eligible for a T-visa which would
enable a woman to bring her husband and family here, or if it
is a child, to bring the parents here.
Senator Brownback. What about the rest of the extended
family?
Ms. Ely-Raphel. It depends on what country we are dealing
with. You mentioned Ukraine. We do have a regional legal
officer, a LEGATT, in the Ukraine. And the Justice Department,
if they were issuing the visa, would be in communication with
our LEGATT in the capital.
I know so much of it depends upon how good the law
enforcement situation is in the country. It would be easy, for
example, for me in Slovenia because I know that when I would
contact the police, they would be responsive immediately, but
in other countries of the world, it really depends on the law
enforcement situation and the relationship that we have with
them. But I know in southeastern Europe and central Europe, we
do have legal attaches in many of those posts, so we have
contacts that we can work with.
Senator Brownback. I think this is going to be a tough
aspect of this problem, and the answers that you develop may
have to be broader-based answers than direct to a child or a
husband. It could be some extended family members that are
being threatened a great deal. And we are going to need to work
with them. I think initially, as we get into this area, we are
going to have to make it safe for people to come out of the
dark, to be able to testify against organizations. I think
particularly if it is a significant organization that is doing
trafficking and we really want to get at them, we are probably
going to have to work pretty broadly to get people to testify
and provide some security for several members within that
family to work with them.
Ms. Ely-Raphel. We have had training programs, and in fact,
I think they had one in the Ukraine on what witness protection
is all about. But I do not think they have the facilities to
implement it, but I think those kinds of training programs will
be useful.
We also have the FBI Academy which is in Budapest that
trains a lot of the law enforcement people in that part of the
world. We have some elsewhere. So that may be also an avenue
because so much of it is cooperation.
Senator Brownback. It is going to be a lot of cooperation.
Thank you very much for your initial efforts in this. We
want you to be very aggressive on this because I think it is
the right moment. Make hay while the sun is out, and I think
really we have got the sun shining in some of this area and it
is time for us to really aggressively move forward. Thanks.
Ms. Ely-Raphel. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Wellstone. Before you all leave--and I thank both
of you, and we will move right on to the next panel--I did want
to say to Ambassador Ely-Raphel--first of all, thanks to both
of you. Senator Brownback was asking about advocacy, and I
wanted to mention to you that this conference that is being set
up on trafficking, I know $1 million is going to this
conference. It is a lot of money and I hope that there will be
a very strong focus on advocacy at the conference. Frankly,
that is my first point.
My second point is I can see a whole lot we need to do
other than getting ready for a conference, and I will just
express that to make that part of the record. I think you hear
me.
Let me thank both of you very much for coming today. Your
work is much appreciated. Thank you.
Ms. Ely-Raphel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Wellstone. We will move on to the third panel. We
are going to go in this order because Senator Brownback is
going to have to excuse himself a little bit before we are
done. Carol Smolenski, who is coordinator of the U.S. branch of
End Child Prostitution and Trafficking, followed by Mrs. Ann
Jordan who is director of the Initiative Against Trafficking at
the International Human Rights Law Group, and then Ms. Hae Jung
Cho, who is project director of the Coalition to Abolish
Slavery & Trafficking.
I wanted to point out for the record that we have a wide
variety of perspectives in panelists here. I am not sure the
panelists all agree with each others' positions on every issue.
I am not sure I agree with the panelists' positions on every
issue. I know I do not agree with him on hardly any issues.
Senator Brownback. You are getting better.
Senator Wellstone. You are getting better.
We thank all of you.
Carol.
STATEMENT OF CAROL SMOLENSKI, COORDINATOR, END CHILD
PROSTITUTION AND TRAFFICKING-USA, NEW YORK, NY
Ms. Smolenski. Thank you Mr. Chairman. My name is Carol
Smolenski. I am the coordinator of ECPAT-USA. ECPAT-USA is the
U.S. branch of ECPAT-International based in Bangkok. ECPAT
stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and
Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.
I am here to tell you something about the problem of child
sex tourism, how it intersects with the larger crime of
trafficking in persons and what can be done to stop it. It is
the demand side of the trafficking problem that still needs to
be addressed.
ECPAT got its start in Asia in 1991 when some churches and
children's rights activists heard the results of a study about
the sale and trafficking of children within Asia. What they
learned was shocking and yet virtually unrecognized by the rest
of the world, that uncounted numbers of children were being
forced into the sex industry in Asia partly to meet the demand
of foreign sex tourists from all over the world.
Initially focused on Thailand, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and the
Philippines, now ECPAT is a global organization focusing on the
commercial sexual exploitation of children in all its forms,
not just in Asia, but around the world, including in the United
States. We define children as people under 18 years old, using
the definition of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the
Child. It is generally accepted that there are at least 2
million sexually exploited children in the world, including
both boys and girls.
One reason, among the many, that people travel abroad is to
experience something of the local cultures, to experience the
exotic, to live, if ever so briefly, outside the confines of
their everyday life. On vacation you can imagine yourself in a
life unlike life at home, an idea the legitimate tourism
industry promotes in its advertisements.
Some of the people who have these fantasies are called sex
tourists. They are people who go on vacation in order to have
repeated sexual contact with the local population. In the same
way that some people go on skiing holidays or on vacation to
experience the local culture through visits to museums or
theaters, sex tourists travel to have sex. They go to a place
where they are unknown and can behave in a way that friends and
neighbors back home would find unacceptable. Child sex tourists
seek out sex with children.
Child sex tourists are not just pedophiles, though
pedophiles do abuse a lot of children. Research on pedophiles
calls them adults with a diagnosable disorder that prevents
them from being able to experience and enjoy sexual intimacy
with other adults. Their sexual interest is exclusively focused
on young children. Pedophiles share information among
themselves about where to find vulnerable children around the
world. The first sex tourist prosecuted in the United States
for traveling abroad to Honduras, in his case to sexually
exploit children, had information on his computer about how to
find children in Nepal as well as other countries.
But there are other sex tourists who are not pedophiles.
These are people--I should say men, because men are by far the
majority of child sex abusers. These are men who wish to
experiment by having children as sexual partners when they are
in a situation where they believe this is acceptable behavior,
for example, in a foreign country with a racial group different
from their own. Or they have sex with children because they
simply do not care whether their sex partner is 12, 18, or 25
as long as the partner meets certain physical requirements that
the man considers attractive. We call them situational child
sex abusers.
Since so many societies and cultures consider an attractive
``woman'' to be one who is slender, fit, youthful, and young
looking, it is very likely that a man will seek out a young
girl for a sex partner. Child sex tourists sexually abuse
children because they are prostitute-users and/or strip and sex
show customers and/or consumers of pornography in a world
which, on the one hand, places sexual value on youth and, on
the other, forces large numbers of children, either through
direct coercion or economic necessity, into working in the sex
industry. Many prostitutes enter the sex market before their
18th birthdays, often well before they turn 18, so anyone
having sex with a prostituted person may well be a child sex
abuser, whether he acknowledges it or not.
Sex tourists have a vast array of sex tours to choose from.
A few years ago, Business Week magazine turned up 25 sex tour
companies in the United States. The Internet is filled with
advertisements for sex tours to a variety of destinations. Last
week I type the words ``sex tours'' into the Google.com search
engine. I got a list of 14,600 entries. Not every one of those,
of course, was a site for a sex tour company. Many were
pornography sites, and some were analyses of sex tourism.
But a review of sex tour sites and sites where men share
information about sex tourism shows that people are trafficked
to sex tour destinations to meet the demand; that mass
marketing to moderate income sex tourists is part of the
appeal; and that men are often indiscriminate about the age of
the prostitutes they seek, although youthfulness and
willingness to do whatever they are asked to do seem to be some
of the most attractive attributes a prostituted person can
offer.
Here are some excerpts from the sites I looked at. There is
a 7-year-old in the room so I will not go too far into detail
here.
``Costa Rica Sex Sizzles,'' is the name of one of them.
``Costa Rica sex is the magnet that pulls men to this tropical
land where prostitutes and prostitution are legal at age 18.''
This is a quote from the site. ``Sensuous senoritas and escorts
from Colombia, Cuba, and other Latin lands come here too. Why
go all the way to Thailand on Asian tours when Latin America is
so close and so hot?''
On Best of Asia.com, there are tours advertised but also a
number of pornography links including some entitled ``Barely
Legal Asian,'' ``Hot Young Teens.'' This is one of the
characteristics of sex tour sites. They might put a disclaimer
on the site--oh, my time is up and I was going to go on and on.
Well, I guess I will leave it at that for now.
Senator Brownback. Do you mind, Mr. Chairman?
Senator Wellstone. Go ahead for a few more minutes.
Ms. Smolenski. Thank you.
They put a disclaimer on the site stating that they do not
provide child sex tours or provide girls under 18, but sex
tourists know and are given to believe on the Websites that
young girls are available when they get to the destination.
I will skip the horrific quotes from the sex tourists about
why they go to these destinations. They do it because they
believe that girls like it there.
The advertised sex tours feed into these stereotypes by
advertising the passivity and youth of the children and women
who the men will meet on these tours.
The sex tour is the nexus between the supply of children's
bodies and the demand by men--again, it is mostly men--with
enough disposable income and equipped with the rationale that
it is culturally acceptable and even legal to exploit the
vulnerable children they come across in poor countries. They
even convince themselves that they are helping the children
because they give them money. Any country with a growing
tourism industry confronts the growth of the demand for
prostituted children in that country.
For example, as Cambodia looks to tourism for economic
development, the potential danger of sex tourism looms for poor
children. And then I have a quote here from a sex tourist who
is sharing information about what he got and how much it cost
in Phnom Penh. ``The poor (literally),'' he wrote, ``little
girls some of them do try, they get a few cents only from
papasan and own little more than a dress or two.'' Cambodia's
Tourism Ministry is trying to do something about this, and they
have a program for that.
Senator Wellstone. We can have the full statement included
in the record.
Ms. Smolenski. I know. It is on the record. I am just going
to read the last few things that tell you what you can do about
it.
Senator Wellstone. We would be very interested in that.
Ms. Smolenski. Deterrence. Advertise the laws against child
sex tourism. This can be done in a number of ways. The European
travel industry has been very involved in fighting child sex
tourism. Unfortunately, the U.S. industry has declined to
become involved. For example, nine European airlines show or
have shown in-flight videos advertising the laws against child
sex tourism as a deterrent to the situational child sex abuser.
Every single U.S. airline, even though requested by the Federal
Department of Transportation, the president of Air France, and
ECPAT-USA, has refused to get involved.
It should be made easier to prosecute American sex tourists
by training law enforcement in other countries about how to
gather evidence for use in U.S. courts and putting more
resources into making cases against American sex tourists and
also changing the law in the way that you had said, Senator
Brownback, about doing away with the intention provision.
There are some regulatory ways that it can be treated. I
can give you a much longer list than is actually in here.
As we speak--let me just finish--children are being forced
into the sex business and American men are eagerly joining the
ranks of those who seek out their bodies. The United States
must stop the contribution that American men make to this
abhorrent practice. The U.S. trafficking bill successfully
focuses on the supply side. This is a market, though. It is
time to stop the demand.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Smolenski follows:]
Prepared Statement of Carol Smolenski, Coordinator, ECPAT-USA
My name is Carol Smolenski. I am the Coordinator of ECPAT-USA.
ECPAT-USA is the U.S. branch of ECPAT-International based in Bangkok.
ECPAT stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and
Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.
I'm here to tell you something about the problem of child sex
tourism, how it intersects with the larger crime of trafficking in
persons, and what can be done to stop it. It is the demand side of the
trafficking problem that stills needs to be addressed.
ECPAT got its start in Asia in 1991, when some churches and
children's rights activists heard the results of a study about the sale
and trafficking of children within Asia. What they learned was shocking
and yet virtually unrecognized by the rest of the world: that uncounted
numbers of children were being forced into the sex industry in Asia,
partly to meet the demand of foreign sex tourists from all over the
world.
Initially focused on Thailand, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and the
Philippines, now ECPAT is a global organization focusing on the
commercial sexual exploitation of children in all its forms, not just
in Asia, but around the world, including in the United States. We
define children as people under 18 years old, using the definition of
the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is generally
accepted that there are at least two million sexually exploited
children in the world, including both boys and girls.
One reason among the many that people travel abroad is to
experience something of the local cultures, to experience the exotic,
to live, if ever so briefly, outside the confines of their every day
life. On vacation you can imagine yourself in a life unlike life at
home, an idea the legitimate tourism industry promotes in its
advertisements.
Some of the people who have these fantasies are called sex
tourists. They are people who go on vacation in order to have repeated
sexual contact with the local population. In the same way that some
people go on skiing holidays, or go on vacation to experience the local
culture through visits to museums or theaters sex tourists travel to
have sex. They go to a place where they are unknown and can behave in a
way that friends and neighbors back home would find unacceptable. Child
sex tourists seek out sex with children.
Child sex tourists are not just pedophiles, though pedophiles do
abuse a lot of children. Research on pedophiles calls them adults with
a diagnosable disorder that prevents them from being able to experience
and enjoy sexual intimacy with other adults. Their sexual interest is
exclusively focused on young children. Pedophiles share information
among themselves about where to find vulnerable children around the
world. The first sex tourist prosecuted in the United States for
traveling abroad (to Honduras in his case) to sexually exploit children
had information on his computer about how to find children in Nepal as
well as other countries.
But there are other sex tourists who are not pedophiles. These are
people, I should say men, because men are by far the majority of child
sex abusers, these are men who wish to experiment by having children as
sexual partners when they are in a situation where they believe this is
acceptable behavior, for example, in a foreign country, with a racial
group different from their own. Or, they have sex with children because
they simply do not care whether their sex partner is 12, 18 or 25 as
long as that partner meets certain physical requirements that the man
considers attractive. We call them situational child sex abusers.
Since so many societies and cultures consider an attractive
``woman'' to be one who is slender, fit, youthful and young looking, it
is very likely that a man will seek out a young girl for a sex partner.
Child sex tourists ``sexually abuse children because they are
prostitute-users (and/or strip and sex-show customers, and/or consumers
of pornography) in a world which, on the one hand places sexual value
on youth, and on the other forces large numbers of children (either
through direct coercion or economic necessity) into working in the sex
industry.'' (Julia O'Connell Davidson and Julia Sanchez Taylor, 1996,
``The Sex Exploiter''). Many prostitutes enter the sex market before
their 18th birthdays, often well before they turn 18, so anyone having
sex with a prostituted person may well be a child sex abuser, whether
he acknowledges it or not.
Sex tourists have a vast array of sex tours to choose from. A few
years ago, Business Week magazine turned up 25 sex tour companies in
the United States. The internet is filled with advertisements for sex
tours to a variety of destinations. Last week I typed the words ``sex
tours'' into the Google.com search engine. I got a list of 14,600
entries. Not every one of those was a site for a sex tour company. Many
were pornography sites. Some were analyses of sex tourism by academics
or organizations like mine.
But a review of sex tour sites and sites where men share
information about sex tourism shows that people are trafficked to sex
tour destinations to meet the demand, that mass marketing to moderate
income sex tourists is part of the appeal, and that men are often
indiscriminate about the age of the prostitutes they seek out, although
youthfulness and willingness to do whatever they are asked to do seem
to be some of the most attractive attributes a prostituted person can
offer.
Here are excerpts from some of the sites I looked at:
Costa Rica Sex Sizzles. Cost Rica sex is the magnet that
pulls men to this tropical land where prostitutes and
prostitution are legal at age 18. Sensuous senoritas and
escorts from Colombia, Cuba and other Latin lands come here
too. Why go all the way to Thailand on Asian tours when Latin
America is so close and so hot?
On Best of Asia.com there are tours advertised but also a number of
pornography links including some entitled ``Barely Legal Asian, Hot
Young Teens''. This is one of the characteristics of sex tour sites.
They might put a disclaimer on the site stating that they do not
provide child sex tours or provide girls under 18, but sex tourists
know, and are given to believe on the websites, that young girls are
available when they get to the destination.
On Dexterhorn.com where trips to Asia and Germany are advertised it
reads ``we know all the places to go to have sex with women, 24 hours a
day. . . . Beer bars overflowing with young girls begging you to take
them back to your hotel. . . . Massage parlors where you can get
massaged, - - - - - - and - - - - - - by one or more Thai girls for the
price of filling up your gas tank.''
The infamous online company Love Tours advertises ``every girl in
every club is available. Every girl in every club is affordable''.
Men who travel with sex tours say they believe that it is
culturally acceptable and legal to have sex with children in other
countries. Another man, interviewed sitting in a bar with two girls, 12
and 13 years old by his side, said ``American girls, in America and
places like that you see, they're not so free about sex and their
bodies. . . . They let you do things here an American girl'd never
dream of doing. I can't even say to you what they let you do.'' (Quoted
in Julia O'Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor, 1996,
``Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism: The Dominican Republic.'')
The advertised sex tours feed into these stereotypes by advertising
the passivity and youth of the children or women who the men will meet
on these tours.
The sex tour is the nexus between the supply of children's bodies
and the demand by men, again, it is mostly men, with enough disposable
income and equipped with the rationale that it is culturally acceptable
and even legal to exploit the vulnerable children they come across in
poor countries. They even convince themselves that they are helping the
children because they give them money. Any country with a growing
tourism industry confronts the growth of the demand for prostituted
children in that country.
For example, as Cambodia looks to tourism for economic development,
the potential danger of sex tourism looms for poor children and women
who will come in contact with well-off foreign tourists for the first
time. Here is an excerpt from a website used by sex tourists to share
information about Phnom Penh,: ``Price of girls: short time $3-$5; all-
nite $15-20 . . . I got two girls for $7 once. Don't pay in advance and
don't be bashful about sending her back if she doesn't do as
advertised. . . . Be sure to tip the chick privately for good service.
The poor (literally) little girls some of them do try, they get a few
cents only from papasan and own little more than a dress or two.'' At
least in Cambodia's case, officials are aware of the problem and would
like to mitigate it. In Autumn 2000 Cambodia's Tourism Ministry
announced plans to start a campaign against child sex tourism by
posting signs in hotels, guest houses and nightclubs warning against
sex with children.
As sex tour destinations are opened up and advertised, for a
variety of income groups, the increase in demand increases the need to
traffick more bodies to the brothel areas in the sex tour destinations.
Of course it is not just sex tours that lead to increased trafficking.
For example, we know from our colleagues around the world about
increasing numbers of people being trafficked from Eastern Europe and
Latin America to meet the demand from U.S. military personnel in the
brothel areas near the U.S. military bases in South Korea. The presence
of military personnel from any country in any country is associated
with a growth of prostitution.
But we also know that women and children are trafficked into the
sex tour destinations of Bangkok and Costa Rica. The sex tour focuses
the demand in certain areas facilitating the transaction by
concentrating the business in one place.
ECPAT-USA and our partners around the world call on you to take a
number of steps to stop the demand for trafficking victims.
Deterrence: Advertise the laws against child sex tourism. This can
be done in a number of ways. The European travel industry has been very
involved in fighting child sex tourism. Unfortunately, the U.S.
industry has declined to become involved. For example, nine European
airlines show or have shown inflight videos advertising the laws
against child sex tourism as a deterrent to the situational child sex
abuser. Every single U.S. airline, even though requested by the federal
Department of Transportation, the president of Air France and ECPAT-
USA, has refused to get involved.
Law enforcement: Make it easier to prosecute American sex tourists
by training law enforcement in other countries about gathering evidence
for use in U.S. courts, or policies to encourage other countries to
prosecute and incarcerate American sex tourists. Put more resources
toward making cases against American sex tourists and change the U.S.
extraterritoriality law to make it easier to prosecute American sex
tourists.
Regulation: Require sex tour companies to keep records of the
people going on sex tours such as name, address, social security number
and passport number and similar information about the names of the
children or women to whom they are introduced in the foreign country.
As we speak, children are being forced into the sex business and
American men are eagerly joining the ranks of those who seek out their
bodies. The U.S. must stop the contribution that American men make to
this abhorrent practice. The U.S. trafficking bill successfully focuses
on the supply side. This is a market in children bodies. It is time to
stop the demand.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you.
Senator Brownback. Mr. Chairman, because I am going to have
to leave, can I make a comment quickly? This is the point that
I raised in my opening statement and it is what I have seen as
I have traveled too. And you put it very well. We have been
focusing on the supply side, and we need to get at the demand
side. When I was in Thailand up on the border, they showed me a
notebook that was full of pictures, and this was at a hotel.
Somebody would go into the hotel that was on some sort of sex
tour and was interested in that and they could get at this
notebook that just showed pictures of young girls for them to
point out and say, well, OK, I like this one and this one. And
then a courier goes and gets this young girl who could be very
young.
This is, unfortunately, a regular organized business. We
are trying to get at the supply side, but the Thai Government
was frustrated. Why are these people coming here from Europe,
from the United States? You need to get at it on that end of
it. it is just an awful, sick thing that is going on.
So, I am hopeful that we can put forward some legislation
in a bipartisan way to address this and that the Congress will
act on it to get at this intent issue because that is just so
tough to prove, that yes, I got on the plane to do this, not
that I did it, but I got on the plane meaning to do it, so that
we could prosecute. If that person actually did conduct that
activity, base it on that.
Senator Wellstone. Well, I would just thank you too. I said
to Sam this has the makings of another counterintuitive
Brownback-Wellstone alliance. I think we will definitely work
together. This will not be the end of this. We are really going
to work on it.
Senator Brownback. Thank you.
Ms. Smolenski. Thank you. I would welcome that so much.
Senator Wellstone. Ms. Jordan. Thank you for coming, Ms.
Jordan.
STATEMENT OF ANN JORDAN, DIRECTOR, INITIATIVE AGAINST
TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW GROUP,
WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Jordan. Thank you. I would like to present my full
testimony for the record and provide some comments.
Senator Wellstone. It will be included in the record.
Ms. Jordan. I wish to begin by thanking Senators Wellstone
and Brownback, as well as Representative Chris Smith and former
Representative Gejdenson, for ensuring that the United States
has one of the strongest pieces of trafficking legislation in
the world. I would also like to thank the subcommittee members
for providing me with this opportunity to speak.
The International Human Rights Law Group's trafficking
initiative has organized a freedom network for service
providers and advocates. It has worked with its Cambodia legal
aid program to create a Center Against Trafficking to provide
legal services to trafficked persons and is working with its
offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Nigeria to create a
network of service providers and lawyers. It was also actively
involved in the development of this wonderful new law and the
U.N. Trafficking Protocol.
It is encouraging to note, as we have heard today, in a
little over a year since the trafficking law was enacted,
tremendous progress has been made. I am sure that even greater
progress can be expected over the next year, given the
administration's commitment to combating trafficking.
The next speaker, Hae Jung Cho, will talk about many of the
gaps in the legislation, and I will just address three that
have been noted by members of our network.
The first is that it appears that investigations and
prosecutions are slowing down. It is unclear whether this is
due to the shift in focus to terrorism or to the threefold
increase in the number of cases being investigated, or both. We
hope that the Justice Department has the resources to be able
to investigate these cases more rapidly.
Second, the INS has yet to designate an office or a person
responsible for coordinating INS activities and liaising with
service providers. The INS started this week to process T-visa
applications, and so the advocacy community's need for a point
person or an office is immediate.
Third, the Office for Victims of Crime in the Department of
Justice, which has $10 million to provide services for NGOs,
has yet to develop a comprehensive plan for funding those
services. The need for trained and funded service providers is
increasing rapidly, so that we hope that the Office for Victims
of Crime will be able to start issuing requests for proposals
quickly so that the organizations will be ready to take on the
clients that come to them with all of these increased
investigations.
I will now turn to trafficking abroad. The U.S. commitment
to supporting and contributing to peacekeeping and civilian
police forces is essential to the development of stability and
democracy around the world. At the same time, well-documented
reports concerning the relationship between such international
forces and trafficking into forced prostitution cannot be
ignored. For example, a recent Washington Post article reported
on problems in investigating numerous allegations of
International Police Task Force involvement in trafficking in
Bosnia.
In my recent trip to Bosnia, I heard heartbreaking stories
of women and girls who are being brought into the country under
false pretexts. In Bosnia and in many other countries around
the world, women and girls are held by traffickers who sell the
right to have sex with them or, more accurately, to rape them.
While some women do sell sex voluntarily in Bosnia in brothels
and clubs, local groups have told me that they believe that the
overwhelming majority, perhaps 70 to 90 percent, of the women
are being held against their will or under psychological
coercion.
Governments contributing forces should investigate and
prosecute police and military personnel who commit crimes while
on peacekeeping missions and should waive diplomatic immunity
which blocks such prosecutions. While the U.S. Military
Extraterroritorial Jurisdiction Act provides that our
Government has the authority over U.S. military personnel who
commit crimes abroad, no similar law exists for the
international police personnel who consequently have immunity
from prosecution in the United States. This should be changed.
Additionally, arm's length relationships between the U.S.
Government and private contractors who hire and recruit and
employ staff within peacekeeping missions is a problem. In
Bosnia, the U.S. police contingent is hired by a private
company called DynCorp. This system of contractual
relationships is said to limit the accountability of the United
States and to make it more difficult to address any
unprofessional, corrupt, or criminal behavior by U.S.
International Police Task Force personnel.
Immunity is also a problem with respect to trafficking and
abuse by foreign diplomats and officials of international
organizations in the United States. Despite growing evidence of
such abuse, I am not aware of any case in which a diplomat or
international organization official has suffered the
consequence of being sent home or denied the right to bring in
additional domestic workers.
Additionally, I have been contacted by NGO partners abroad
who have asked for information about any U.S. law that would
permit domestic workers in their countries who are employed by
U.S. diplomats to sue their U.S. employers. I am unaware of any
such law or any such case that has ever been allowed to be
brought against a U.S. diplomat to address this harm.
I wish to thank you again for offering me this opportunity
to speak, and I want to assure you that my organization and
members of the network are looking forward to working with the
relevant departments and agencies and with Members of Congress
to ensure that traffickers are punished and that the rights of
victims are protected. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jordan follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ann Jordan, Director, Initiative Against
Trafficking in Persons at the International Human Rights Law Group
I wish to begin by thanking Senators Wellstone and Brownback (as
well as Representative Chris Smith and former Representative Gejdenson)
for ensuring that the United States has one of the strongest pieces of
anti-trafficking legislation in the world. I would also like to thank
the Subcommittee members for providing me with this opportunity to
present some views from the service provider and advocacy community.
The Initiative Against Trafficking in Persons at the International
Human Rights Law Group works towards development of a human rights
framework in state responses to trafficking in persons worldwide. It
has organized U.S. service providers and advocates into the Freedom
Network (USA), has worked with its Cambodia legal aid program to create
a Center Against Trafficking to provide legal representation for
trafficked persons and is working with its offices in Bosnia and
Herzegovina and Nigeria to create a network of service providers and
lawyers. It was also actively involved in the development of the new
U.S. trafficking law and the UN Trafficking Protocol.
It is encouraging to note that, in the little over a year since the
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act was enacted,
tremendous progress has been made. The State Department and USAID are
moving forward in creating development and assistance programs abroad
as part of a prevention strategy. The State Department's Office to
Monitor and Combat Trafficking has opened. The Department of Justice
has tripled its number of investigations and the INS has issued
regulations for the new T visa. This is indeed tremendous progress and
even greater progress can be expected by this time next year given the
Administration's commitment to combatting trafficking.
I would like to share with the Committee some thoughts on a range
of issues that could be, or should be, addressed over the coming year:
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING AND VIOLENCE PROTECTION
ACT
I will first share with you some of the concerns of members of the
Freedom Network (USA) to Empower Trafficked and Enslaved Persons. The
Freedom Network (USA) is composed of direct service and advocacy
organizations that have been involved in some of the most important
trafficking cases to date in this country. More information is
available about the Freedom Network at www.freedomnetworkusa.org and in
the handout distributed today.
The Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, a Freedom Network
member, has already described some of the gaps in implementation and I
will address some additional areas of concern:
1. Investigations and prosecutions appear to have slowed
down. It is unclear whether this is due to the shift of focus
to terrorism or to the threefold increase in the number of
cases being investigated, or both. We hope the Justice
Department has the resources to be able to investigate cases
more rapidly.
2. Processing time for continued presence or other status and
work authorizations for trafficking victims is often extremely
slow. Some requests to the INS take months, which then delays
the issuance of work authorizations and benefits. We appreciate
the difficulties in setting up a new program, but we hope the
INS will solve this problem quickly.
3. The INS has yet to designate an office or a person
responsible for coordinating INS activities and liaising with
the service providers. The INS started this week to process
applications for T visas, and so the advocacy community's need
for a point person or office is immediate.
4. Training for INS and FBI agents and Assistant U.S.
Attorneys should proceed more rapidly. Many agents and
attorneys are unaware of the law or the difference between
trafficking and smuggling. Furthermore, they may not
immediately contact the Civil Rights Division trafficking team
for assistance, which can result in cases being labeled
incorrectly as smuggling or other offenses.
5. The Office for Victims of Crime in the Department of
Justice has yet to develop a comprehensive plan for funding
service providers and trainers. The OVC has received $10
million for these purposes. Very few service providers are
funded to provide services even though more trained and funded
service providers will be necessary soon to handle the
increased number of cases resulting from the increased number
of investigations now underway. We hope OVC will be able to
start issuing RFPs quickly.
INTERNATIONAL POLICE, MILITARY FORCES AND TRAFFICKING
I will now turn to trafficking abroad. The U.S. commitment to
supporting and contributing to peacekeeping and civilian police forces
is essential to the development of stability and democracy around the
world. At the same time, well-documented reports concerning the
relationship between such international forces and trafficking into
forced prostitution cannot be ignored. For example, a recent Washington
Post article reported on problems in investigating numerous allegations
of international police task force involvement in trafficking in
Bosnia.
In focusing on the relationship between international forces and
trafficking into forced prostitution, however, we should not forget
that the international customers are not the main problem. For example,
a UN representative in Bosnia estimates that about 30% of brothel
customers are internationals; the majority of the men then are locals.
Yet, it is essential that the international community set a higher
standard of conduct and that the apparently symbiotic relationship
between the international forces and trafficking be addressed.
In working with the Law Group's staff and local organizations in
Bosnia, I have heard heartbreaking stories of women and girls who are
being brought into the country under false pretexts. In Bosnia, and in
many other countries around the world, women and girls are held by
traffickers who sell the right to have sex with them, or more
accurately, to rape them. While some women sell sex voluntarily in
Bosnian brothels and clubs, local groups believe that the overwhelming
majority (maybe 70-90%) of the women are being held against their will
or under psychological coercion.
The groups in Bosnia are also convinced that the reaction by the
international community is inadequate. Few traffickers are ever
prosecuted and even fewer ever spend any time in prison. The
international community could provide support to the judiciary in
Bosnia and elsewhere to improve the chances of successful prosecutions.
It could also provide more training for, and more accountability by,
the international community, particularly the military and
international police in order to set a high standard of conduct in
their missions.
In particular, governments contributing forces should commit
themselves to investigating and prosecuting police and military
personnel who commit crimes while on peacekeeping missions and to
waiving diplomatic immunity, which blocks such prosecutions. While the
U.S. Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act provides our government
with authority over U.S. military personnel who commit crimes abroad,
no similar law exists for the international police personnel who,
consequently, have immunity from prosecution in the U.S. This should be
changed.
A further problem raised by UN officials and organizations in my
recent trip to Bosnia is the arms-length relationship that is created
when the U.S. hires private companies to recruit and employ staff
within peacekeeping missions. In Bosnia, the U.S. IPTF contingent is
hired by a private contractor, DynCorp, and not by the U.S. government.
This situation is said to limit accountability of the U.S. and to make
it more difficult to address any unprofessional, corrupt or criminal
behavior by U.S. IPTF personnel.
The presence of international military and police forces is
essential for countries recovering from international conflicts and
internal strife. However, the international community needs to address
the problem created by the presence of so many unaccompanied men in
impoverished countries. It should set an example by taking strong
measures to prosecute all traffickers at home and assisting other
countries to strengthen their law enforcement responses. Ideally, the
U.S. could play a leadership role in raising this issue internationally
by developing the necessary legal and policy framework in the U.S.
DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY
Immunity is also a problem with respect to trafficking and abuse by
foreign diplomats and officials of international organizations in the
United States. Despite growing evidence of abuse of domestic workers
that, in many instances, amounts to trafficking for forced labor, as
far as I am aware, not one abusive or trafficking diplomat or
international organization official has suffered the consequence of
being sent home or denied the right to bring in additional domestic
workers.
Similarly, I have been contacted by NGO partners abroad who have
asked for information about any U.S. law that would permit workers to
sue their U.S. diplomat employers. I am unaware of any case in which an
U.S. diplomat has been prosecuted in the U.S. for such abuse.
In closing, I want to ensure you that my organization and other
members of the Freedom Network (USA) look forward to working with the
relevant departments and agencies and members of Congress in order to
ensure that traffickers are punished and the rights of trafficked
persons are protected.
Thank you again for offering me this opportunity to speak. I would
be glad to address any questions you might have.
Senator Wellstone. I tell you, your testimony--the
collective ``you''--is riveting, and I want to come back with
some questions.
Hae Jung Cho is project director of the Coalition to
Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, and since you are last, I want
to give just a little bit more of an introduction because CAST
is based in Los Angeles and you have been a real pioneer when
it comes to helping trafficking victims. The organization that
Hae Jung Cho represents is the first and only organization in
the United States exclusively dedicated to serving victims of
trafficking in a domestic context, and we thank you for your
work.
STATEMENT OF HAE JUNG CHO, PROJECT DIRECTOR, COALITION TO
ABOLISH SLAVERY & TRAFFICKING, LOS ANGELES, CA
Ms. Cho. Thank you, Senator. I would like to thank both
Senators Wellstone and Brownback, also Representative Chris
Smith and former Representative Gejdenson, for their leadership
in championing the rights of trafficking victims, for seeking
the input of non-governmental organizations, and for
understanding that this is a global problem that also must be
fought here at home.
As the first and only organization exclusively dedicated to
assisting victims of trafficking in the domestic context, the
Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, CAST, has served
over 100 victims since 1998. Through CAST's program victims
receive access to food and shelter, health and mental health
services, ESL, job readiness, legal and immigration assistance,
life skills training, and human rights education.
Although the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection
Act is a great leap forward, there are many victims who remain
in desperate situations. I hope that the following real stories
of victims will illustrate the challenges ahead.
One of our clients is a Bangladeshi woman who finally
managed to escape from her traffickers after more than 5 years
of continuous physical assaults. Her unwavering desire for
justice made possible the conviction of her traffickers.
However, before the trial, the traffickers tried to intimidate
her by sending thugs to beat her brother, burn down their
house, and threaten her family. Her family members continue to
be harassed today.
If a victim is asked to help convict these criminals here
in the United States, is she not owed some assurance that her
family back home will be safe from reprisals? In this case, the
other convicted trafficker will be released from prison soon
and deported. What will prevent deported traffickers from
searching out the victim's family members and taking revenge?
How can our government work with other governments to ensure
the safety of victims' families? If their safety cannot be
ensured, could a provision be made to reunite them with the
victims here in the United States?
Another one of our victims is an Indonesian woman who had
been enslaved as a domestic worker for over half of her life.
With a strong desire for justice, she reported her story to the
authorities. She was interviewed several times and was even
asked to help gather more evidence. However, 6 months have
passed and she is still waiting for the FBI to call her again.
Opportunities to gather critical evidence are disappearing.
The next story is about an Indian woman whose case never
went to trial. Although from the beginning this woman wanted to
return home, the agents and prosecutors insisted on keeping her
here to assist in the investigation. After more than 1 year of
living in homeless shelters where no one spoke her language,
the victim was anguished to find out that no one was to be
indicted. She never received any of the wages owed to her, and
she returned to India with essentially nothing. There was no
government provision to assist even in her repatriation.
The problems in these cases stem from, one, a lack of
training for agents and Assistant U.S. attorneys; two, a lack
of sensitivity to victim issues and an emphasis on a law
enforcement goal rather than a prioritization of the victim's
welfare; and three, a lack of interagency coordination. For
example, why was the Department of Labor not called in to
obtain back wages for these victims? What is needed is more
manpower, training that emphasizes responsiveness to victims'
needs, and a willingness on the part of investigators,
prosecutors and their supervisors to conduct cases in a timely
manner.
Even in a successful case where restitution for victims is
ordered, it is unclear whether victims will ever receive any
money because restitution is not paid until after the
traffickers get out of prison. As sentences increase under the
new law, it becomes even less likely that they will ever see
any of their back wages. This is another area where
coordination between the Department of Justice and the
Department of Labor could ensure meaningful outcomes for
victims.
Many of the victims CAST has been assisting have had to
wait for months to receive a status or work authorization from
the INS even after they have testified in a successful
involuntary servitude case. Victims are usually not notified of
their status, not given any documents, and not told where they
are in the process. Even INS agents themselves tell us they do
not know why one victim was able to receive a work permit while
another waits in limbo. In the new certification process,
victims should be given an explanation about the entire process
and what their status is when they receive it. Communication
about their legal situation is an important way for victims to
feel a sense of participation and control over their lives.
This lack of consistency is especially extreme for victims
in so-called retroactive cases, those cases that came to light
before the law was passed. Several of CAST's clients, who had
previously been given work authorization, are now in limbo
again because their case was successfully prosecuted but their
work authorization expired before the T-visa regulations were
released. In one case, a victim lost her job when this happened
and she is now again in crisis. For a formerly enslaved person,
lack of certification and work authorization means a return to
the vulnerable state of only being able to work in exploitative
and underground employment. Victims are often just as
vulnerable to exploitation after they escape from slavery as
before.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Cho follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hae Jung Cho, Coalition to Abolish Slavery &
Trafficking (CAST)
First I would like to thank Senators Wellstone and Brownback (and
Representative Chris Smith and former Representative Gejdenson) for
their leadership in championing the rights of victims of trafficking,
for seeking the input of nongovernmental organizations and for
understanding that this is a global problem that also must be fought
here at home. I am also heartened that the new Administration,
especially Attorney General Ashcroft, has also shown an interest in
moving forward on this important human rights issue.
As the first and only organization exclusively dedicated to serving
victims of trafficking in the domestic context, the Coalition to
Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST) has served over 100 victims since
1998 through intensive and comprehensive case management, information
and assistance and information and referral. Through CAST's program,
victims receive access to food and shelter, health and mental health
services, ESL and job training and referral, legal and immigration
assistance, life skills training, human rights education and individual
advocacy as they participate as a witness in a federal criminal
investigation. It is this direct experience, working to assist
trafficked persons on a daily basis with their struggle to gain
independence and freedom that informs my testimony today.
Although the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act is
a great leap forward for victim protections, there are many victims who
remain in desperate situations. I hope that the following real stories
of victims will illustrate the challenges ahead as we seek to evaluate
our progress in implementing the Act.
PROTECTION FOR THE FAMILIES OF VICTIMS
The first young woman I will speak of is from Bangladesh, who
finally managed to escape from her employers after more than five years
of continuous physical assaults and abuse. Her courageous and
unwavering desire for justice made possible the conviction of her
traffickers, one with an eleven-year sentence. Before the trial, the
traffickers tried to intimidate her by sending thugs to beat her
brother, burn down their house and threaten her family. The house was
saved, but family members continue to be harassed to this day and live
in fear of the associates of the traffickers. The victim has been
ostracized from the Bangladeshi community here in the U.S. and has been
maligned by the traffickers in the press of her home country and in the
ethnic press here.
If a victim in the United States is asked to help convict criminal
traffickers in the name of justice, isn't she owed some assurance that
her family back in her home country will be safe from reprisals? In
this case, the other convicted trafficker will be released from prison
soon and then deported. What will prevent deported traffickers from
searching out the victim's family members and exacting revenge,
especially in places where the traffickers have influence and power and
the victims likely none? How can our government work with other
governments to ensure the safety of victim's families? And if their
safety cannot be ensured in their home country, could a provision be
made to reunite them with the victims here in the United States?
NEED FOR RESOURCES, MANPOWER AND TRAINING FOR INVESTIGATORS AND
PROSECUTORS
The next stories I will tell point to the lack of resources,
manpower and training to move forward the investigation and prosecution
of these cases. One of our clients is a woman from Indonesia who had
been enslaved for over half of her life and was never paid for her
labor. She also came to CAST with a strong desire for justice. We
helped her to report her story to the authorities. At first, the FBI
interviewed the victim thoroughly and asked her to help them gather
more evidence. However, six months have passed, and she is still
waiting for the FBI to call her to set up the consensual monitoring.
Opportunities to gather evidence continue to disappear. This victim had
also reported that this family had another domestic worker in another
house. We do not know whether that woman is still in that situation.
The next story is about a woman from India whose case never went to
trial. Although, from the beginning, this woman wanted to return home
to her daughter and grandchildren, the agents and prosecutors insisted
on keeping her here to assist in the investigation. They were even
opposed to moving her to a shelter in another city where the staff
spoke her language and shared her culture because it might have
interfered with the investigation. This victim was initially
interviewed several times. Then there were no developments for many
months. After more than one year, a year of living in homeless shelters
where no one spoke her language, the prosecutors decided that they
would not pursue a prosecution. No one was ever indicted, even on
harboring or smuggling charges. She never received any of the wages
owed to her, and she returned to India with essentially nothing. There
was no government provision to assist in her repatriation.
The problems in this case stem from (1) a lack of training for
agents and assistant U.S. attorneys on how to investigate and prosecute
trafficking cases, (2) a lack of sensitivity to victim issues and an
emphasis on the law enforcement goal rather than a prioritization of
the victim's welfare and (3) a lack of interagency coordination. For
example, why wasn't the Department of Labor called in to at least file
a wage claim for the victim? What is needed is more manpower, training
that emphasizes responsiveness to victim's needs, a willingness on the
part of investigators and prosecutors to prioritize these cases so that
they will be conducted in a timely manner and, finally,
institutionalization of expertise. We have too many times seen good
agents and prosecutors promoted or moved just as they were becoming
experts in this highly specialized area. Their replacements come with
no training, background or experience and must learn by doing.
LACK OF CONSISTENCY IN IMPLEMENTING VICTIM BENEFITS
Many of the victims CAST has been assisting have had to wait for
months to receive a status or a work permit from the INS, even after
they have testified in a successful involuntary servitude case. Victims
are usually not notified of their status, not given documents and not
told where they are in the process. There is no transparency and no
accountability. Even INS agents themselves tell us they don't know why
one victim was able to receive a work permit while another waits in
limbo. In the new ``certification'' process created by the Victims of
Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, there should be a formal
notification process so that victims can understand what the process
is, when they move from one stage to another and what their exact
status is when they receive it. Communication about their legal
situation is an important way for victims to feel a sense of
participation and control over their lives.
This lack of consistency is especially extreme for victims in so-
called ``retroactive'' cases--those cases that came to light before the
law was passed in October 2000. Several of CAST's clients, who had
previously been given work authorization, are now in limbo again
because their case was successfully prosecuted but their work permits
expired before the T visa regulations were released. In one case, a
victim lost her job when this happened, and she is now again in crisis.
These victims are falling through the cracks because the new
``continued presence'' process does not apply to those whose cases have
already been prosecuted, and it seems that they must wait several
months while their T visa applications get prepared, filed and
processed. For a victim of slavery with no savings, the lack of valid
work authorization means a return to the vulnerable state of only being
able to work in exploitative and underground employment.
One final note about victim benefits. The Office for Refugee
Resettlement must be commended for its organizational will to provide
services to a completely new population. However, refugee programs are
limited in the ways that they can help trafficking victims because they
were created for a different population. Refugees have cut ties to
their homeland and arrive in the U.S. eager to start new lives. They
often join relatives or a larger community. Trafficking victims, just
released from the isolation of a slavery-like situation, are bewildered
and face an uncertain present and future. Victims need time to adjust
to their new situation and time to participate in an ongoing
investigation and prosecution. Usually their housing situation is
unstable as they move from Good Samaritan to emergency shelter to
transitional shelter to perhaps other housing situations. The ORR
matching grant program that aims to place victims in a job within four
months will not be successful for the majority of trafficking victims
who lack basic English and other competitive job skills. Victims will
often fall into jobs that are again in informal industries that do not
pay minimum wage.
The most disturbing case in point is the situation of the victims
from the American Samoa garment factory or Daewoosa case. Although the
roughly 200 victims were certified and mostly did receive the refugee
cash assistance, food stamps and medi-care coverage they were entitled
to, there have been reports that many of these victims are in a
precarious state. Some victims have been handing over their food stamps
and cash assistance as payment for room and board. In addition, some
have accepted below minimum wage garment factory jobs in order to make
money to pay back their sponsors for the plane fare from American
Samoa. This scenario is much too reminiscent of their situation at the
Daewoosa factory. This is the unfortunate result when victims are
forced to fend for themselves before they have been given the resources
to be able to build an independent life.
Victims are often just as vulnerable to exploitation after they
escape from slavery as before.
Senator Wellstone. Well, I want to thank all of you.
I want to also point out that Ambassador Ely-Raphel stayed
to listen to your testimony, and I want to thank Ambassador
Ely-Raphel for doing so. I think sometimes people come in,
testify pro forma, and leave, and I would like to thank you for
that, Ambassador Ely-Raphel.
Let me not do this in any particular order. Hae Jung Cho,
let me ask you this. The examples that you were giving--you
know, I was talking about agency coordination, but I was
talking about like in Washington bringing everyone together. It
sounds like what you are saying is that on the ground where
this is happening, that is where you are not getting the agency
coordination. At least from the examples you gave, clearly INS,
Labor, Justice just are not in sync. Is that correct?
Ms. Cho. We would have to say that on the ground, the
agents that we are working with are usually very dedicated.
Sometimes they have a lack of training. At the bottom and also,
of course, here at the top, there is an emphasis on
coordination, but somewhere in the middle it seems to have
gotten lost, the supervisors of the ground-level agents, the
district directors----
Senator Wellstone. This is an important distinction that
you are making. You have got people who are so dedicated that
you are working with, but then when it comes to actually the
agencies being able to follow through with what needs to be
done to make sure a woman is not without work, somehow in the
middle it does not happen. Is that what you are saying?
Ms. Cho. Yes. We have had cases where INS agents made
reauthorization requests for trafficking victims for work
permits and those requests were not approved.
Senator Wellstone. I can also in my own way talk to
Commissioner Ziegler about this.
Your testimony just proves again the importance of the
NGOs, and the work that you all do is, I think, so critical to
informing all of us.
I do not know if you mentioned this or not. Are the
incidents of trafficking in the Los Angeles area increasing or
decreasing, or do you have any sense of that? And why to
however you answer it.
Ms. Cho. We feel that trafficking is a huge problem in the
Los Angeles area. We have no way to know whether the overall
incidence is increasing or decreasing. What I can say that in
2001, we seemed to, in the spring of the year, see an increase
in cases that were referred to us and then, as Ann Jordan
mentioned, there was a decrease in referrals from law
enforcement agencies. Recently we have started to see an
increase of referrals once again, but actually through the
local community. I think our outreach efforts have resulted in
Good Samaritans and other community organizations bringing
victims to us after they have escaped.
Senator Wellstone. And then with the law and with justice,
it may be a question of the whole question of homeland defense
and war on terrorism.
Ms. Cho. Yes.
Senator Wellstone. See, that is one of the questions we
also want to get to. I think ultimately I would want to know,
and I think Senator Brownback would too, from everyone whether
or not--if ultimately we need to look at more resources and
more women and manpower to do the job, then we ought to step
forward with that request and push it as hard as we can. That
may be part of what we are talking about. Unfortunately, this
is no small issue. No small issue at all.
Ms. Jordan, can I ask you? On the whole issue of private
contractors and involved in trafficking or what you described
as rape, I think is the way you put it, what is the record of
DynCorp?
Ms. Jordan. I know that there has been a lot of criticism
of DynCorp, and I will just say as for peacekeeping, I have a
binder here full of cases on problems with peacekeeping. And
DynCorp is involved in Bosnia with hiring the Americans who
serve there on the International Police Task Force. I met the
head of the U.N. mission there, Jacque Klein, and I met also
with the head of the IPTF, the commissioner, and the woman who
runs the stop team. This is a team that goes out and raids the
clubs. They have told me that DynCorp for them is a real
problem, or this whole system is a real problem for them
because they give the example of the French. They will send
their national gendarmerie over there, and they are in a
command position. They are controlled. They are under a
military structure and they suffer consequences if they
misbehave or get involved in anything criminal.
Whereas, DynCorp has no such system. These men are hired.
Many of them are retired. They go over there. They get paid
$100,000 a year. Jacque Klein told me they only give them 3
days' training when they get there. All he tells them is that
we know that you think you are going to have fun over here, but
if you get caught going to clubs, you are going to get sent
home. But that is the only consequence that is paid. At that
point, they send a report back to the U.N. The U.N.--for the
United States--then would send it back to the State Department
and the State Department would decide whether to send it to
Justice. So, basically they just get sent home. And I could not
find out from him of anyone who had ever been prosecuted in any
country for this kind of problem, but it is much worse when you
have a company like DynCorp because there is no control.
Senator Wellstone. I think we have heard some of the
reports from Colombia as well. It might be worth taking some
time for me and others to meet directly with DynCorp and ask
them, in light of this, what they do intend to do.
Ms. Smolenski, we really in a way already focused in on a
lot of what you said. We had a hearing this morning where we
were talking about two protocols, one on child soldiers and the
other was on the sale of children, child prostitution, and
child pornography, which certainly ties into what this hearing
has been about. I think that the Senate has not yet ratified
the protocols. I think we are going to. It looks very good. I
thought it was a good day because I think we are all in
agreement and I think it is coming out of the Foreign Relations
Committee. Do you think the protocol will be at all helpful?
Ms. Smolenski. Yes, it will definitely be helpful, and
especially since it calls attention to the U.N. Convention on
the Rights of the Child in general, which is a very powerful
human rights convention. But the optional protocol does go much
further than the original convention on detailing how children
can be protected, and we absolutely support ratification of it.
Senator, may I followup on something that Ann Jordan said
about DynCorp?
Senator Wellstone. If I say no, what would you then do?
Ms. Smolenski. I will obediently close my mouth.
Senator Wellstone. I do not believe that for a moment.
I would never say no.
Ms. Smolenski. I am not kidding, but I would come up to you
afterwards.
Senator Wellstone. If I did say no, I would hope you would
ignore that. Yes.
Ms. Smolenski. I just wanted to say that ECPAT-USA has
formed a coalition of groups to try to deal with the U.S.
military problem of child prostitution because it is known that
wherever there is a U.S. military facility and it is not just
U.S. military, but since we are at ECPAT-USA, we work on U.S.
military facilities. There is an increase in child prostitution
in that area. There are lots of things that the U.S. Defense
Department could do, and we met with them and said they could
do these things. Basically, they said, well, we are not going
to do those and that was that. So, I just wanted to call your
attention to the problem and that we have suggestions for what
they could do, and I am wondering if you might help us move
them to another level.
Senator Wellstone. You are just suggesting another easy
issue for us to get involved with.
Ms. Smolenski. It should not cost that much money, though.
Senator Wellstone. I would be very interested in your
giving us your best ideas.
I probably should not say this in a formal hearing, but
especially some of what you were saying, Ms. Smolenski, I was
thinking--no self-righteousness intended. I was trying to
figure out what the problem is with men. I should not say this
as part of the hearing.
I am very serious about this. I just cannot quite
understand this. I do not think we are going to have a hearing
about the state of men.
Some of you traveled a long way, and I think we are going
to stay in very close touch. I am hoping sometime to come to
Los Angeles and maybe do some work with you there. I think we
made a good start a year ago, and I think everybody who
testified today, across the board, is committed to really doing
our level best. I think my job is to be pushy and to really
keep pushing hard, and I think Senator Brownback feels the same
way. I think this was a very, very important hearing. I would
like to thank everyone for coming. Thank you for your interest.
Thank you for your commitment. Thank you for your work.
And the subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:49 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
----------
Additional Statements Submitted for the Record
Prepared Statement of Theresa Loar, President, Vital Voices Global
Partnership
I want to thank the Senators for the opportunity to provide
testimony about the implementation of the legislation to combat
trafficking and protect trafficking victims that would not have been
possible without your strong leadership. I wish to acknowledge Senators
Wellstone's and Brownback's continued commitment to ensure that this
issue does not get lost among the many important issues facing our
country at this time.
We have moved into a new and critical time for the United States
anti-trafficking work. It is a time of expectations heightened by the
promise of the world's most comprehensive and potentially powerful law
against trafficking. In the previous period--the one leading up to the
passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000--I had the
honor of being the Director of the President's Interagency Council on
Women, the office that for many years led the coordination of the
Executive Branch's efforts to combat trafficking in persons. We worked
closely with Congress, with the Departments of State, Justice, Labor,
and Health and Human Services, with nongovernmental and international
organizations in the U.S. and in many regions of the world. I am proud
of our shared accomplishments during that period to get trafficking on
the U.S. and world agenda.
Due to the leadership of Senators Brownback and Wellstone, and
Representative Chris Smith in the House, the United States has a law to
protect trafficking victims and to prosecute trafficking. This now
presents both opportunity and responsibility.
Our responsibility will be met by prosecuting traffickers in
numbers significant enough not only to punish but to deter, finding and
assisting enslaved victims in numbers that are defensible compared to
the estimated thousands of new trafficking victims in the U.S. each
year, and preventing mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters and
sons around the world from being trafficked in the first instance.
After almost a year and a half, some aspects of legislative
implementation are progressing. Secretary Colin Powell recently
convened the first meeting of the Cabinet-level Task Force. We look
forward to working closely with the Secretary and Ambassador Nancy Ely-
Raphel, the head of the Office to Combat and Monitor Trafficking, to
make real progress in the fight against this tragic human rights abuse,
growing health threat, and global criminal activity.
In several cities, such as Chicago and New York, service providers
are beginning to assess what local capacity exists to provide services
to victims of trafficking. However, we are aware of no Department of
Justice funding to service providers resulting from the legislation as
contemplated by section 107(B)(2). This does not portend well for the
prospects of trafficking victims in our country (as well as the
prospects of identifying witnesses for prosecution). This also is hard
to understand given the real commitment to this issue exhibited so far
by the Attorney General.
I am hopeful that the T-visa will become a cornerstone permitting
the humane treatment of trafficking victims and increasing the
likelihood that victims will help prosecute their traffickers. I am
concerned however that the new regulations may be unworkable in the
real world context. Does the process make sense for a teenager, for
example, who has endured years of treatment tantamount to torture and
recently escaped enslavement by her captors. Did the Senators intend
that such a victim endure a complex application process and be charged
application fees (which purport to be waivable). Is it possible that
the process has been made sufficiently difficult for these victims of
crime that they will not reach out for help?
We are confident that if provided adequate resources the
Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force, co-chaired
by the Departments of Justice and Labor, will continue to lead the
United States' commitment to prosecuting cases while not further
victimizing those who have escaped the traffickers. There is great
motivation and commitment among the prosecutors in the Civil Rights
Division to expand their skilled prosecution of traffickers. But more
prosecutors dedicated to trafficking cases are needed.
On their face, these may appear to be domestic elements of the
global fight against trafficking. However with trafficking the domestic
and international are intertwined. For example, when U.S. officials go
to a country of origin to participate in anti-trafficking training or
to speak at a conference, one of the first questions that arise
concerns whether we have prosecuted any traffickers in the U.S. from
that country. As long as this is answered in the negative, we have less
chance of convincing other countries of our seriousness in confronting
this problem.
Let me propose a straightforward, but I believe critical, way to
gauge meaningful progress of implementation of the legislation.
Congressional hearings in the future on this subject should ask for the
status of the following: 1) how many traffickers have been prosecuted
and jailed for terms commensurate with the heinousness of the crime; 2)
how many victims have been identified, rescued and assisted; and 3)
what are the measurable results of prevention projects in countries of
origin. These are the core questions that must frame the discussion in
the future.
We have rough baselines to start from today. The Department of
Justice, for example, knows the number of investigations underway and
prosecutions of traffickers undertaken. It knows how many victims it is
working with and the Department of Health and Human Services knows how
many victims have been certified. NGOs around the country should be
encouraged to tabulate the victims and document their stories that they
assist (even if those victims for whatever reasons choose not to seek
help from the justice system).
The effectiveness of the international programs sponsored by the
U.S. government should be measured in much the same way. Taking account
of the specific circumstances we find in each country we engage, we
should ask how specifically do our trainings, cooperative arrangements,
conferences, and meetings result in advancing these objectives in
measurable ways. Nearly every country of the world has in one way or
another, by signing the U.N. Protocol or through other means, expressed
an official position that trafficking is an intolerable human rights
violation and crime. The projects that our government undertakes must
now assist these countries achieve the practical results that reflect
that view.
We have a long way to go. We know this because there is another
baseline that these numbers should be compared against: Up to 50,000
new victims are enslaved in the United States by trafficking every
year; more than one million around the world. We must not lose the
momentum in the fight against this heinous crime. We are making
progress, but it is too early to tell whether our commitment to
practical results that prosecute traffickers and assist victims will
match the promise of the powerful tools contained in this legislation.
Vital Voices is working to fulfill the promise of this new law in
two important ways, by raising awareness of the issue in the United
States and around the world and by training and empowering women in
countries stricken by trafficking to fight this human rights abuse in
their own country.
To raise awareness, we are launching public service announcements
developed by the Office of United Nations Drug Control and Crime
Prevention for use in the U.S. Vital Voices is currently working to tag
these award-winning public service announcements with a call to action
to abolish this modern-day slavery here in the U.S. and globally.
Additionally, we are publishing a regular newsletter via e-mail and on
line to over 2000 representatives of governments, nongovernmental
organizations and international institutions. Our goal is to promote
effective partnerships between government officials and NGOs across the
nation and around the world to fight trafficking in persons.
In collaboration with Georgetown University, the Vital Voices
Global Leadership Institute is training emerging women leaders to fight
trafficking on the ground in source, destination and transit countries
in the areas of prevention, protection and prosecution.
______
Prepared Statment of Eugene Scalia, Solicitor of Labor, U.S. Department
of Labor
I am submitting this statement on behalf of the Department of Labor
in connection with the Subcommittee's March 7 hearing on the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA).
The Department of Labor has a strong commitment to the objectives
of the Act, and I am pleased to describe the measures we have taken,
and plan to take, to combat trafficking in persons. Secretary Chao
considers effective implementation of the TVPA to be an important
departmental objective.
It should be stated at the outset that Congress is to be applauded
for passing this groundbreaking legislation with overwhelming
bipartisan support in 2000. This is the first comprehensive law in the
United States designed to stop trafficking in persons. Congress adopted
a three-prong approach--prevention; protection and assistance; and
prosecution--because it recognized that trafficking is a multi-
dimensional problem. We will not be fully effective if we increase our
prosecution effort here in the United States without attempting to stop
trafficking where it originates--often overseas--and without
endeavoring to protect and assist the victims.
As Congress recognized in its findings, trafficking in persons is
not limited to prostitution. Rather, ``[t]his growing transnational
crime also includes forced labor and involves significant violations of
labor, public health, and human rights standards worldwide.'' Thus,
from the Department of Labor's perspective, trafficking is not only a
moral and human rights problem, it is also a serious workplace issue.
Far too many trafficking victims are working in the fields and
factories of this country, suffering under exploitative labor
practices. Too often, these victims are forced to work against their
will through violence, threats of violence, and other forms of
coercion. Typically, they work very long hours without receiving lawful
pay, and often work, live and are transported in unsafe conditions.
These practices not only harm the victimized workers, but also permit
the abusive employers to gain an unfair competitive advantage over the
vast majority of law-abiding employers. Regardless how simple or how
sophisticated trafficking enterprises may be, they all deny the
essential humanity of their victims.
Department of Labor agencies have important roles to play in
implementing each of the three prongs of the TVPA's anti-trafficking
strategy. The agencies receive direction, and support, from the highest
levels of the Department. Just three weeks ago Secretary Chao met with
the Secretary of State, Attorney General, National Security Advisor,
and other senior administrators to discuss implementation of the Act.
Two days ago, I attended a meeting of a senior interagency policy group
that has been charged with developing a comprehensive plan to address
trafficking in persons. We intend to use the authority and resources
that we have at the Labor Department to deter domestic and
international trafficking and bring its perpetrators to justice, while
also providing available departmental services to the victims so that
they may work productively, and with dignity, in the future.
With regard to the prevention prong of the Act, the Department's
Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) has initiated a number of
projects to combat trafficking in persons in the countries of origin,
and in transit. These projects enhance international compliance, help
countries avoid sanctions under the TWA, and are intended not only to
help trafficking victims, but more importantly, to prevent women and
children from being trafficked in the first place. In short, through
ILAB's efforts overseas, we aim to help stop this problem at its
source.
ILAB has negotiated a $1.2 million cooperative agreement with the
International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), a non-governmental
organization, to conduct a two-year anti-trafficking project in Eastern
Europe. Started in November 2001, this program aims to prevent the
trafficking of women by creating viable economic alternatives for at-
risk women in seven major cities. IREX will develop training and
empowerment centers with existing women's organizations to train 13,500
women and provide support services to 5,800 women annually.
Specifically, this program's activities will include providing
marketable job skills to at-risk women and girls, providing job
placement services to those who have been trained, conducting outreach
activities to raise awareness among women and girls, identifying legal
aid and psychological support services, and promoting entrepreneurship.
ILAB also supports projects to combat trafficking in children for
exploitative labor through the International Labor Organization's
International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO-IPEC).
ILAB has supported projects to address child trafficking in 17
countries in West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia and
South America. These projects rescue children from trafficking and
exploitative work situations, and provide them with rehabilitation
services and educational opportunities, as well as undertaking efforts
to prevent children from being trafficked in the first place. ILAB
currently is supporting programs through IPEC to combat trafficking of
children in South Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka), and in West
and Central Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Cote
d'Ivoire, Mali, Nigeria and Togo). In addition, ILAB is supporting
comprehensive, national ``Timebound Programs,'' through IPEC, to
eliminate the worst forms of child labor in Nepal, Tanzania and El
Salvador. ILO Convention 182 identifies trafficking of children as one
of the worst forms of child labor, and as such, children who are
victims of trafficking will receive priority attention in each of these
three countries.
While the Department is extensively involved in preventing
trafficking overseas, we recognize that we have a special obligation to
help trafficking victims within our own borders. Thus, with regard to
the protection and assistance prong of the TVPA, the Department's
Employment and Training Administration (ETA) takes very seriously its
obligation when providing services to treat victims of severe forms of
trafficking as refugees, without regard to their immigration status. We
expect the services provided at One-Stop Career Centers, such as job
search assistance, career counseling and occupational skills training,
to benefit trafficked individuals. The Job Corps program also may
provide useful job training opportunities for victims.
We also intend to work alongside other federal agencies to make
victims aware of the services available to them. To this end, the
Department's Women's Bureau prepared a publication entitled
``Trafficking in Persons: A Guide for Nongovernmental Organizations,''
in collaboration with the Department's Wage and Hour Division, the
Employment and Training Administration, and components of the
Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and State. The
publication is intended to provide NGOs with information about federal
laws that prohibit trafficking in persons and the services and benefits
that victims may receive.
Finally, to carry out the prosecution prong of the TVPA, we have
redoubled our efforts to root out abusive labor practices in this
country. The Department's Wage and Hour Division, supported by the
Solicitor's Office, has increased its emphasis on compliance with labor
standards laws, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the
Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA), in low-
wage industries such as garment manufacturing and agriculture. These
industries often include a substantial concentration of undocumented,
and sometimes trafficked, workers.
Wage and Hour investigators are in workplaces everyday, and often
are the first government authorities to witness exploitative conditions
and talk to victims. Through the Trafficking in Persons and Worker
Exploitation Task Force, which I co-chair with Assistant Attorney
General Boyd, and under the TVPA, Wage and Hour closely coordinates
investigations of egregious workplace conditions with the Department of
Justice. Most relevant for today's hearing, Wage and Hour and the
Solicitor's Office have assisted the Department of Justice's ongoing
prosecution of the owner of a garment sweatshop in American Samoa, the
first criminal prosecution under the TVPA. At the Department, our
Office of the Inspector General has participated in several
investigations with the Task Force, and we also have taken recent steps
to enlist OSHA inspectors in identifying workplace exploitation of
trafficking victims.
As the Solicitor of Labor, I intend to build on our notable
successes in prosecuting trafficking and worker abuse cases. The
following are examples of recent cases in which the Labor Department
played a significant role, balancing the special needs of trafficking
victims with swift punishment for traffickers:
In 1999, three defendants were convicted of slavery and
immigration violations arising from their use of threats of
force to enslave Mexican farm workers in the agricultural
fields of southern Florida. The lead defendant received a
three-year prison term. The victims received legal status and
are working in Florida, where they participate in a farm worker
advocacy group.
In 2000, the federal government obtained convictions against
four garment shop owners in Manhattan's Chinatown for lying to
Wage and Hour investigators. The Department's Inspector
General's Office also played an important role in this matter.
The garment manufacturers, who engaged in widespread wage
violations and kept several sets of records to deceive
investigators, were assessed criminal fines, ordered to pay
back wages as restitution, and given probation.
In 2000, two garment companies based in the Commonwealth of
the Northern Mariana Islands were ordered to each pay a fine of
$100,000 and to serve five years probation after pleading
guilty to criminal contempt charges for violating a consent
judgment that ordered them to pay legally-required wages to
their employees. A Wage and Hour investigation had discovered
that the companies had underpaid 336 workers by almost $1
million, after previously underpaying their workers by
$560,000.
In the last several years, four notorious farm labor
contractors in the Southeastern United States who exploited
farm workers were convicted under various criminal provisions.
Most recently, in 2001, a Florida farm labor contractor was
sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to
charges that he used insurmountable debts for cocaine, beer and
cigarettes, as well as threats and violence, to enslave field
workers.
In conclusion, we at the Department of Labor thank the Members of
Congress for providing us the tools we need to combat the scourge of
trafficking in persons, and commit the Labor Department to working with
our sister agencies to eradicate this problem.
______
Prepared Statement of Equality Now, New York, NY
Equality Now is an international human rights organization based in
New York dedicated to the protection of the rights of girls and women.
It currently has over 20,000 members in its Women's Action Network from
more than 100 countries. Equality Now would like to express its thanks
to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the opportunity to
present a statement on sex tourism to this hearing.
Among issues of concern to Equality Now are the trafficking of
girls and women and the practice of sex tourism. Of particular interest
to us is the connection between these two activities, which are
responsible for the death, disease and deprivation of tens of thousands
of girls and women every year. Sex tourism from the United States is a
thriving business. Big Apple Oriental Tours of Bellerose, New York, for
example transports men to the Philippines and Thailand and once there
guides them to bars and brothels where sex can be purchased from local
girls and women. Although Big Apple and other sex tour operators
officially deny that they arrange for sex between their customers and
underage girls, interviews by their operatives with various journalists
have revealed a different story. In a 1993 broadcast report, the
television news program Inside Edition recorded Big Apple tour guide
Louis Schonberger promising an undercover reporter that sex with 15 and
16 year-old girls could be arranged for Big Apple customers. In a March
1998 interview with the Associated Press, Norman Barabash, an owner of
Big Apple Oriental Tours, responded to a question concerning the age of
the girls that his company arranged for his customers by stating
``There is no way of knowing for certain. Short of giving them lie
detector tests who can tell?''
Despite more than five years of campaigning for the prosecution of
Big Apple Oriental Tours by Equality Now and other human rights
organizations in the United States and abroad, that company still
brazenly conducts its tours without fear of criminal sanction. Equality
Now's efforts in seeking the prosecution of Big Apple Oriental Tours
and other sex tour companies have met with the same response from
numerous federal, state and local prosecutors. While agreeing that sex
tourism is abhorrent, the prosecutors felt generally that current
legislation is inadequate to pursue a successful prosecution. Although
Equality Now believes that certain state legislation could be used to
prosecute sex tourism, strong unequivocal federal legislation
criminalizing sex tourism would both send a hard-hitting message to sex
tour operators that sex tourism from the United States is unacceptable,
and would also provide an invaluable tool against those who persist in
promoting the practice. We urge you therefore to amend the current
statutes to provide prosecutors with the laws that they need to stop
the activities of sex tour operators.
Comprehensive legislation will need to consider the following facts
about sex tourism: A large number of the women who work in the bars and
brothels in sex tour destinations are actually 14, 15 or 16 years of
age. However these girls are able to obtain necessary identifications
indicating that they are of legal age through the connivance of corrupt
local officials, politicians, pimps, police officers and traffickers.
These false identifications enable Big Apple Oriental Tours and other
sex tour operators to plausibly deny that their customers have sex with
underage girls. Tackling corruption in the hugely profitable
trafficking industry overnight is a mammoth task. One simple way of
protecting underage girls from abuse and exploitation irrespective of
any identity cards they might hold would be to amend the laws in the
United States, to make liable to prosecution any individual who commits
an act that would constitute a sex crime in the United States. Only in
this manner can those individuals having sex with underage girls with
false identifications be sure of falling within the prohibition of the
legislation.
It must also be taken into account that sex tour operators attempt
to hide their illicit activities behind otherwise legitimate
activities. The brochure and web site of Big Apple Oriental Tours
promises its customers access to a range of activities including
military history tours, golf, barbecues and even museums. Sex tour
operators also hide behind the same excuse offered by escort services
and pimps everywhere: that they only make introductions and that
anything that follows is not their responsibility. Thus, they are able
to deny actual ``knowledge'' of precisely what their customers do. To
avoid the difficulty in proving actual knowledge by sex tour operators
of what their customers do, statutes should be amended to provide a
more reasonable standard. We recommend and urge that any statutory
amendment directed to the practice of sex tourism only require that sex
tour operators ``knew or should have known'' of the conduct of their
customers. For example, Big Apple Oriental Tours engages in a range of
activities that could be used to establish that they should have known
what their customers were doing. These activities include reports made
to them by previous customers of use of prostitutes, introduction by
Big Apple tour guides to bars that permit the purchase of sex from the
girls working there, and actual negotiation of the price and nature of
the sex act by Big Apple's tour guide with the girl's mamasan (the
woman who acts as a pimp for the girls).
We strongly encourage you to make any new or amended legislation
very broad in scope. Practices that would be untenable in this country
are woefully unregulated by the United States when perpetrated by its
citizens abroad. Done mostly via the internet, hundreds of companies
offer to take men to a variety of countries for the purpose of
introducing them to prospective wives. These companies are not required
to compile or maintain any information about their customers or the
prospective brides. Therefore, introductions can be made to individuals
with criminal records, histories of violence or any type of sexually
transmittable disease and such information would be unavailable to the
other party to the introduction. A 1999 investigation by Equality Now
contacted more than 70 companies offering introductions for the purpose
of marriage on the internet. Our investigator, posing as a potential
customer, claimed to have a history of domestic violence and large
child support and alimony payments and asked if these facts would
disqualify him from using the companies' services. Only three of the
responding companies said that it would. One respondent described the
lack of regulation of this industry by stating ``The (United States)
government doesn't care if you're Jack the Ripper.''
Sex tour operators officially deny that they are such. By requiring
all business entities (whether incorporated or not) or other
associations that enable the introduction of United States citizens or
residents to foreign nationals, in the foreign national's home country,
to keep adequate records of the people using the services offered
(which would be open to legitimate inspection by the appropriate
regulating authorities), properly targeted United States legislation
would discourage all but genuine introduction agencies as well as going
some way to afford protection to those using the service. An added
benefit to such a record-keeping requirement would be to provide a
degree of needed regulation to the quickly growing ``mail order bride''
business.
We urge your immediate attention to these inadequacies in current
U.S. law. The conduct of sex tourists serves to diminish the respect
and affection of foreigners for the United States. Sex tourism presents
the worst of the United States. The conduct of relatively wealthy
Americans engaging in conduct they would not dare do at home creates an
image of Americans as predatory and parasitic. In Costa Rica alone for
example, according to ECPAT, Americans account for 80% of arrests
involving child sex tourism. The passage of effective laws to address
such conduct would not only serve to protect thousands of girls and
women who are victimized by sex tour operators and their customers, it
would also demonstrate the best of the United States: the protection of
the weak and vulnerable and ensuring that they will receive the
protection and justice that they deserve. Thank you.
----------
Responses to Additional Questions for the Record
Responses of Hon. Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Global
Affairs, to Additional Questions for the Record Submitted by Senator
Wellstone
Question 1. When do you plan to submit to the Senate for
ratification the Trafficking Protocol to the UN Crime Convention
against Transnational Organized Crime that the U.S. signed in December
2000?
Answer. The Administration is in the final stage of preparing the
transmittal package to request the Senate's advice and consent to
ratification of the Transnational Organized Crime Convention and its
supplementary protocols on trafficking in persons and smuggling of
migrants.
We will update you as the process moves forward.
Question 2. What role do you play in facilitating with other
governments the repatriation of trafficking victims to their countries
of origin and in providing funding to send victims home? How do you
ensure victims who are repatriated receive adequate attention?
Answer. Encouraging other countries to strengthen their capacity to
receive and reintegrate victims is a cornerstone of our bilateral
engagement. We are working closely with the Departments of Justice and
HHS to strengthen our ties between our efforts to identify and assist
victims in the U.S. and our international engagement to ensure safe
return. We recently provided to the Department of Justice a list of NGO
service providers in various countries that have received U.S.
Government antitrafficking assistance and that may be able to assist
these victims who are returned from the United States. We provide
assistance to a number of groups that assist with repatriation in
various countries, so that they can provide victims with assistance in
returning home, as well as any medical or psychological care that they
may need.
Question 3. What have you done to address HIV/AIDS and other
sexually transmitted diseases in relation to trafficking? Does the
Department of State plan to request more funding than the current 2003
budget proposal of $200 million for the Global Fund?
Answer. The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
recently co-chaired an intra-Departmental meeting with the State
Department's Office of International Health Affairs. Representatives of
the Office of the Under Secretary of Global Affairs, the Bureaus of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and Population, Refugees and
Migration also participated. The group is working to identify possible
areas of collaboration to address the linkage between HIV/AIDS and
other infectious diseases and trafficking. In addition to providing
greater emphasis on trafficking and HIV/AIDS issues in programming, the
Department also intends to expand successful efforts with other USG
agencies, NGOs, and international organizations to promote action on
HIV/AIDS and trafficking.
The President's budget proposal of $200 million in FY 2003 for the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria brings the total
U.S. pledge to the Fund to $500 million. In his March 14, 2002, remarks
on global development at the Inter-American Development Bank, the
President stated that as the Global Fund finalizes its organization,
develops a strategy, and shows success, he would work with Congress to
increase the U.S. commitment to the Fund. The United States remains the
global leader in the fight against
Question 4. In regard to the list of countries not reaching the
minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking--the 3rd Tier
countries--in the Trafficking in Persons Report, which countries have
contacted you since the release of the report in July 2001? How many
have asked for assistance to help fight trafficking?
Answer. The Trafficking in Persons Report has prompted increased
awareness--and, in some cases, action--by a large number of foreign
governments on the issue of trafficking in persons. Several countries
on the Tier 3 list of the 2001 Trafficking in Persons Report have taken
steps towards recognizing or addressing this problem since the report
was issued. These countries include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Gabon, Greece, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Romania, Russia, South
Korea, Turkey, and Yugoslavia.
South Korea, for example, has undertaken an intensive effort to
remedy the concerns cited in the TIP report. The South Korean
government submitted an extensive report (``Current Status of Efforts
to Eliminate Trafficking in Persons'') in early October detailing
various anti-trafficking initiatives in the areas of prosecution,
protection, and prevention initiatives. Since October, key Republic of
Korea Foreign Ministry officials have met several times with high-level
Department principals to seek USG views and to convey their
government's determination to improve its record on this issue.
The Romanian Foreign Minister met with U.S. officials in April 2002
to review the Romanian anti-trafficking progress report submitted
earlier to the Department of State. Romania has been active in trying
to overcome shortcomings noted in the 2001 TIP Report, adopting a law
to prevent and combat trafficking in persons, and establishing a
National Action Plan against Trafficking. The Romanians also reported
that the U.S. trafficking statute served as a source of inspiration for
their new law. They also have taken a number of additional steps,
including contacting the Romanian Orthodox Church to ask for its help
in destigmatizing victims.
Several countries in southeastern Europe have increased or started
to take measures aimed at the problem, despite significant resource
constraints in some cases.
The Government of Albania, for example, in close
coordination with our embassy, created and passed on December
7, a comprehensive National Action Plan, which charts their
course for combating trafficking.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is forming a strike force to improve
coordination and successful prosecution of those who organize
and direct human trafficking.HIV/AIDS, dedicating approximately
one-third of all international spending against the disease.
The President's FY 2003 budget request of $1.1 billion for the
fight against HIV/AIDS is a 53.9% increase over FY 2001.
In Yugoslavia, the government staffs working groups that
specifically address prevention, protection, and prosecution.
Greece established an Inter-Ministerial Committee to address
trafficking in women. In May and June 2001 the Government
passed new immigration and organized crime laws that increased
protection for women who press charges against their
traffickers by allowing them to remain in the country legally
and setting aside any previous convictions. Specific anti-
trafficking legislation has been drafted. Meanwhile, police and
border guards are being trained on detection of trafficked
women.
Russia has also cooperated with the U.S. on an Alaska trafficking
case involving Russian women. Additionally, the MVD has formed an
internal taskforce to determine how best to integrate the trafficking
and migration issues into its portfolio.
Indonesia co-sponsored, with Australia, the Regional Ministerial
Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related
Transnational Crime in Bali in February, at which the United States
participated as an observer.
Israel has significantly increased investigations of traffickers
and also has improved protection for victims. Israel recently signed
the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, Especially Women and Children. Senior representatives from the
Israeli embassy and the government met with State Department officials
on several occasions to discuss their anti-trafficking efforts and ways
to improve their record.
In August 2001, the Turkish National Police sent a circular to
provincial police chiefs strongly urging them to use a tough 1999
organized crime law to investigate cases of trafficking. Last month,
the Minister of Justice presented a bill to the Council of Ministers
making trafficking a crime, with heavier penalties for organized
criminal involvement. Previous laws had targeted prostitutes.
In August 2001, the Gabonese Council of Ministers proposed
legislation to establish penalties for the trafficking of persons.
Malaysia has increased efforts to stop the flow of mala fide
travelers including trafficking victims across its borders since the
TIP report was issued. Three interagency groups have been formed to
address organized crime, illegal migration and border control, all of
which address trafficking in persons. The Malaysian government has
consulted with U.S. officials in Washington and Kuala Lumpur about
efforts to improve its performance in this area.
Question 5. How often will the President's Inter-Agency Task Force
on Trafficking meet? Have you developed a comprehensive strategy for
fighting trafficking? Have you set benchmarks?
Answer. We expect that the President's Inter-Agency Task Force on
Trafficking in Persons will meet approximately twice a year. The Senior
Policy Advisory Group, which I chair, will meet on a regular basis to
provide policy oversight of the USG efforts on trafficking in persons,
including the implementation of the Act. We are in the process of
developing a three-year plan with goals and objectives for the TIP
office, as well as an operational plan, timeline, and benchmarks for
progress. In terms of a comprehensive strategy at the diplomatic level,
we are raising the trafficking issue at senior levels with foreign
governments, especially those in Tier 3 of the 2001 Trafficking in
Persons Report. At the programmatic level, we are in the process of
developing a strategy for targeted countries that have a significant
problem of trafficking, have the political will and are eligible for
U.S. foreign assistance.
Question 6. What is the State Department doing to investigate
allegations that some international military and police force personnel
have been involved in trafficking and forced prostitution, either as
customers, facilitators or principals? Has the State Department ever
recommended the prosecution of any military or International Police
Task Force members for such involvement? If so, has the Department of
Justice prosecuted any of the cases?
Answer. We cooperate and work closely with the Department of
Defense on alleged incidences of criminal wrongdoing. We refer you to
the Department of Defense for specific information on their policies.
The Department of State has referred the alleged wrongdoing by U.S.
civilian police force personnel to the Department of Justice Criminal
Division for review. The Department of Justice should be contacted for
information on the status of these cases.
Question 7. What is being done to provide training and establish
accountability for any U.S. military or police who are implicated in
trafficking or forced prostitution?
Answer. The State Department gives all U.S. civilian police
(CIVPOL) officers a detailed pre-deployment briefing on trafficking.
The briefing stresses that the State Department has a ``no tolerance
policy'' with respect to involvement in trafficking and/or
prostitution. Specifically, an officer will be removed from his/her
position if any allegations of such activity are substantiated, as will
any U.S. officers who knew of the involvement of others and failed to
report it. They also will be ineligible for employment in future
missions, must pay their own airfare home, forfeit their mission
completion bonus, and may be subject to prosecution, either in the
mission area or in the United States. All officers sign a letter of
agreement before deployment acknowledging that they have been briefed
on the issue of trafficking of persons, understand our policy, and are
aware of the ramifications for failing to adhere by it.
The State Department has, in a small number of cases in which such
problems have arisen, taken action consistent with our policy,
including making a referral to the Department of Justice Criminal
Division for possible prosecution. We have also repeatedly stressed to
the UN in New York and to individual CIVPOL field missions our
expectation that the UN will investigate fully even the most minor
infractions by any CIVPOL officer and take appropriate disciplinary
action.
Question 8. Has the State Department conducted any investigations
into the alleged involvement in trafficking of the U.S. contingent of
international police forces which have been recruited and hired by
private contractors rather than the U.S. government directly? If so,
what are the results of the investigation?
Answer. The State Department has informed the United Nations--both
headquarters and field missions--that we want full and complete
investigations done on any and all U.S. CIVPOL personnel alleged to
have been involved in trafficking and/or prostitution. We obtain a copy
of the UN internal affairs investigative report on these activities and
provide this report, any independent findings we have, and a
description of the disciplinary action we have taken to the Department
of State Office of the Inspector General Office (OIG) for review, and
to the Department of Justice Criminal Division for possible
prosecution.
The OIG has reviewed several cases in which U.S. officers were
dismissed from duty, but only to determine whether the U.S. response
was appropriate and to assess whether additional action was called for.
The OIG also conducted an audit related to U.S. support to the UN
International Police Task Force (IPTF) in Bosnia. The audit was
conducted at the request of the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on
National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations,
Committee on Government reform, based on a May 2001 Washington Post
article on reported misconduct and corruption by U.S. police in the
program. The audit deals with the adequacy of suitability standards
used to screen and select task force officers sent to Bosnia, the
number of task force officers sent home for cause or misconduct, and
the procurement process used to select a contractor (DynCorp) to
provide the police officers. The final report has not been released.
The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking leads an interagency
working group on this issue to develop and implement our policy on
international multinational forces and trafficking in persons.
Question 9. Are there presently any plans for the U.S. government
to assume responsibility for hiring, training and supervising the U.S.
international police contingents?
Answer. The are no plans at this time for such functions to be
carried out directly by the U.S. government. For practical reasons, the
Department of State retains a contractor to provide these services and
functions, which are carried out with guidance from, and direct
oversight of, the State Department (Bureau for International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement Affairs). The Department is considering the
possibility of hiring an internal affairs expert to conduct independent
investigations of U.S. CIVPOL misconduct.
The State Department determines U.S. CIVPOL hiring standards and
requirements for pre-mission training/preparation, as well as standards
for conduct. Each U.S. CIVPOL contingent has a State Department-
approved command structure, which along with State Department personnel
in the field, monitors the activities of U.S. CIVPOL while deployed in
missions. U.S. contingent disciplinary decisions are made based on
guidance from the State Department. As personnel are seconded to the
UN, the UN also retains operational supervisory authority over all
CIVPOL officers deployed in a mission, and may independently discipline
officers within the mission for breach of its codes of conduct.
The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking has designated a key
officer to track and oversee this issue.
______
Responses of Viet D. Dinh, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal
Policy, Department of Justice, to Additional Questions for the Record
Submitted by Senator Wellstone
Question 1. Which office in the Department of Justice (DOJ), the
Office of Victims of Crime (OVC) or the Violence Against Women Office
(VAWO), is responsible for moving the money to help trafficking victims
in 2002?
Answer. OVC is responsible for administering the $10 million grant
program for victims of trafficking established by the Victims of
Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (VTVPA). OVC has
convened an interagency trafficking task force to develop the program,
and VAWO has dedicated three staff members to serve on the three
subcommittees that make up this task force. The subcommittees address
victim needs, training needs, and the coordination of training,
resources and research/evaluation.
Question 2. What is the time frame for non-governmental
organizations seeking bids on projects to fund direct services to
trafficking victims?
Answer. OVC anticipates publication of its solicitation for grant
applications to assist victims of trafficking within 90 days.
Question 3. Do you have any plans to coordinate a funding strategy
with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which has also received
an appropriation to fund direct services, so that programs are not
duplicative?
Answer. OVC is actively coordinating with the key federal agencies
involved in human trafficking issues. The most tangible, but by no
means the sole, manifestation of such coordination is the establishment
of the Interagency Trafficking Task Force on Program Development. The
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) are included in the Task Force. Additionally,
specific subcommittees have been created that focus on (1) Victim
Needs; (2) Training Needs; and (3) Coordination of Resources and
Research and Evaluation. From these discussions, OVC hears first-hand
of the other proposed or actual efforts and programs directed at
victims of trafficking.
Question 4. What plans does the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) have for meeting the statutory requirement to provide
facilities that are appropriate and safe for trafficked persons in
cases in wbich no private shelter is available so that victims are not
held in INS detention centers or other inappropriate facilities?
Answer. As a matter of general policy, INS does not detain
trafficking victims unless individual circumstances or the law require
detention. The need to continue custody in order to protect the victim
and the victim's desire to remain in custody for protection purposes
are taken into consideration when making custody determinations.
However, in general, victims of severe forms of trafficking in persons
are not required to remain in custody for the sole purpose of
protection.
Meeting the housing needs of trafficking victims is one of the
greatest challenges faced by the government agencies involved in
investigating trafficking cases and providing services to trafficking
victims. INS is partnering with other government agencies, such as HHS,
and with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in an effort to meet
this need. INS uses a combination of mechanisms to ensure that victims
of a severe form of trafficking are not detained in facilities
inappropriate to their status as crime victims. Those mechanisms
include placement with an NGO, placement through the HHS ORR, and
housing victims in private hotels for a short period of time. The
decision as to which mechanism is appropiate in any given case depends
on the circumstances of the case and the resources available.
In working with other government agencies and NGOs to make housing
arrangements for trafficking victims, it has become apparent that there
is a critical need for developing resources for immediate non-custodial
emergency housing. As a case is developing, it is often unclear whether
trafficking is involved, and even after an individual has been
identified as a trafficking victim there is a short period of time
between identification and HHS certification. It is during that time
that INS resources face the greatest challenges. INS would welcome the
opportunity to work with Congress to identify emergency housing
resources.
Question 5. Are there plans to expand the Worker Exploitation and
Trafficking hotline to 24-hours, 7-days a week instead of just during
business hours? What plans does DOJ have to investigate and prosecute
in a timely matter the enormous increase in cases that have come as a
result of the hotline?
Answer. The Department believes that the Trafficking in Persons and
Worker Exploitation Task Force complaint line is an important tool in
our efforts to combat this problem. The Department notes however, that
while complaint line activity has increased in recent months, we
believe current coverage is adequate. We will continue to monitor the
use of the complaint line and review the hours if there is an
demonstrated need to do so. In the meantime, the Department is
directing its current resources to ensure adequate attorney staffing in
the Civil Rights Division's Criminal Section to handle the increasing
caseload.
The Department has seen a significant increase in cases arising not
only from calls received through the complaint line but also from other
outreach and training efforts. All available resources are being used
to investigate and prosecute the new matters expeditiously. The Civil
Rights Division is in the process of hiring new attorneys with the FY02
appropriation in order to help handle the growing number of trafficking
cases. We will pursue these cases as vigorously as our resources
permit.
Question 6. What is the INS doing to ensure uniform and consistent
implementation of the new T-visa regulations around the country?
INS has centralized processing of all T-visa applications by
sending them to the Vermont Service Center (VSC) for adjudication. INS
conducted training on the VTVPA, with a special focus on the T
nonimmigrant visa, at the VSC in January 2002. This training included
presenters from various offices within INS and other key agencies such
as the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the State
Department. This training was provided to all INS adjudicators, who
will be processing those applications received by INS, as well as to
key management at the VSC and essential contract employees.
As part of the training, individuals from the government agencies
presented a very comprehensive overview of human trafficking. The
training covered all elements that comprise the legislation involving
human trafficking, most notably INA 107(c) and 8 C.F.R. Sec. 214.11.
The training also included non-governmental involvement with presenters
from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST), the
Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, a noted psychologist with experience
in treating symptoms and disorders associated with human trafficking,
and a noted sociology professor with expertise in explaining culthral
dynamics.
The INS has also produced a training video for all INS officer
corps employees. The video explains the VTVPA, instructs employees how
to identify potential victims, and outlines benefits available to
victims. This video aired on INS TV during March 2002, and copies have
also been provided to all INS offices. Additionally, an interactive
computer-based training program is being developed by INS, with an
overview course for all INS employees and specific modules tailored for
individual officers and activities. This training is also being
incorporated into the basic and advanced courses conducted at INS
officer training academies. All of these training initiatives will
eventually be available for INS employees in a variety of media formats
and delivery methods, and all will allow for tracking and verification
that employees have attended the training.
Question 7. What is the DOJ strategy to improve resources to
investigate trafficking cases at the local level? Do you plan to fund
INS victims coordinators at the local level so that agents do not have
to coordinate victims services as a collateral duty on top of their
investigative work?
Answer. The Department is focusing existing resources to improve
coordination among federal, state, and local law enforcement as well as
among victim service and advocacy groups. Training and outreach are
important aspects of this effort and complement our work with our
federal partners in the field. This work is modeled on the national
Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force, chaired by
the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the Labor
Department's Solicitor's Office. This coordinated approach has provided
a forum for interagency information sharing in potential cases and
coordination of efforts in outreach, training, and public awareness
raising. Nascent efforts to promote similar interagency collaboration
and information sharing at the local level are already taking root
through regional task forces.
The Department is dedicated to providing increased training for
prosecutors and agents on trafficking in persons. The Criminal Section
of the Civil Rights Division has made presentations at several training
sessions held at Quantico for FBI agents, and at a training of INS
staff at the VSC, where T visa applications will be adjudicated.
Division personnel have planned, coordinated, and presented training
sessions for federal prosecutors, agents, and victim-witness
coordinators from around the country at the Department's National
Advocacy Center in Columbia S.C. Another such training is planned for
October, 2002 and will consist of two two-day sessions primarily for
federal prosecutors, but also for FBI and INS agents. We have provided
training to local law enforcement at the FBI's National Academy, and
are writing an article to be placed in the magazine of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), which reaches
local police chiefs across the country. We hope to participate in the
annual IACP conference this fall in order to focus more attention on
the problem of trafficking, the new law, the Department's work in
investigating and prosecuting cases, and the resources available to
victims.
With respect to INS victim-witness coordinators, INS employs such
coordinators in all districts and sectors; however, their victim-
witness duties are collateral to their primary responsibilities as
investigators and deportation officers. These coordinators are also
responsible for victim notification and sex offender registrations in
their districts and sectors, and they have only recently seen an
increase in trafficking cases requiring the provision of direct
services to victims. With an increasing number of trafficking cases,
the victim-witness coordinators are being called upon with more
frequency to provide direct services, which are very time and resource
intensive. While funding full-time victim coordinators in some of the
larger INS offices makes sense, the workload does not yet justify full-
time coordinators in all INS field offices. In addition, there are good
reasons for having agents involved in providing victim services to
victims of trafficking.
Question 8. What role do you play in facilitating with other U.S.
agencies and foreign governments the repatriation of trafficked victims
to their countries of origin and for providing funding to send victims
bome? Are you working with the State Department to ensure these victims
get adequate protection once they get home?
Answer. Some trafficking victims prefer to return home rather than
seek the protections of Section 107 of the VTVPA. Financial assistance
to pay the transportation costs of victim repatriation has been an
obstacle. We are not aware of any federal funds currently available to
assist victims to return to their home countries. In one instance in
which the victim wished to be repatriated, the home country provided
the airfare; in another, the International Organization for Migration
(IOM) paid the travel expenses. In addition to funding, the Department
has encountered delays in facilitating a victim's repatriation because
the home country government needed to reissue identity and travel
documents to replace those confiscated by the traffickers. In one such
case, the Civil Rights Division's Criminal Section worked both with the
community-based organization providing services to the victim and with
officials from the embassy of the victim's home country to facilitate
the issuance of travel documents. In these cases, the victims felt that
their safety and well-being would be best assured by returning home.
While the Department has not yet worked with the State Department on
repatriation issues in specific cases, the State Department has
provided us with a list of NGOs in various countries that have received
funding from the State Department and the Agency for International
Development to assist trafficking victims, thus enabling us to inform
victims about programs that may be able to offer them assistance upon
their return.
Question 9. Are you doing follow-up on the American Samoa case in
which DOJ uncovered a large-scale slavery operation involving more than
200 Vietnamese victims? What are you doing to remedy the situation
where victims, having been freed from slavery and debt bondage, are in
a position of indebtedness and of having to take terrible sweatshop-
like jobs in order to pay off this debt and become independent?
Answer. The Civil Rights Division's Criminal Section is currently
prosecuting this case, United States v. Kil Soo Lee. Two defendants
have already pled guilty to felony charges, and trial is set for the
remaining defendants for October 22, 2002. Experienced slavery
prosecutors are leading the prosecution team. They recently
successfully defended the VTVPA's victim protection provisions from a
constitutional challenge in which the defendant alleged that Section
107 of the Act created a due process violation by making the victims
too dependent on government services.
Victim-witness coordinators from the Civil Rights Division, the
U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Hawaii, the FBI, and the INS
have worked with the victims consistent with the VTVPA and the relevant
Department policy guidance on victims and witnesses. The United States
does not have jurisdiction over debts that the victims may have
incurred in Vietnam or China, or in the United States. The victims'
continued presence is being ensured under Section 107(c) of the Act so
that they will be available for trial if subpoenaed by the government
or the defense. The Act provides them with employment authorization,
which allows them to work while they are in the United States. HHS has
certified the victims pursuant to Section 107(b) of the Act, which
allows them to apply for assistance programs, including job training.
The sponsors and hosts who are housing or employing the former Daewoosa
workers were not provided by the Government, but were obtained through
relatives, church groups, and other volunteer organizations. Daewoosa
workers are represented by private counsel who can provide legal advice
on a variety of matters beyond the jurisdiction of the Department of
Justice. A number of social service providers have been working with
the attorneys in this case. Since raising concerns about re-
victimization, the service provider CAST has again been in contact with
those attorneys so that they can assist in the ongoing efforts to
ensure that the workers are safe and gainfully employed.
Question 10. Is there a problem prosecuting under the new criminal
statutes established by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act given
that of the 89 investigations pending related to trafficking, only one
of the current prosecutions involves one of the criminal statutes? Can
you explain in detail why a prosecutor would choose to prosecute under
the old involuntary servitude statute as opposed to the new forced
labor one? Do we need to amend the bill to deal with this issue?
Answer. The 103 open matters are ongoing investigations. It is
premature to know with certainty how many will ripen into prosecutions
and what specific charges would be brought.
As for cases indicted since the passage of the new statute, VTVPA
crimes have been charged in several cases, often in conjunction with
the pre-existing servitude and Mann Act statutes: United States v. Kil
Soo Lee (Samoa, Vietnamese sweatshop: 18 U.S.C Sec. Sec. 241, 1584 and
1594); United States v. Virchenko (Alaska, Russian nude dancing: 18
U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 2421 and 1589); United States v. Ng (New York,
Indonesian prostitution: 18 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 371/1584, 1589, 1584,
1591, and 2422); United States v. Jimenez (New Jersey, Mexican child
prostitution: 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1591); and the first conviction was
recently obtained under the VTVPA in United States v. Gasanov (El Paso,
Uzbek nude dancing: 18 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 371, 1592, 1546).
The majority of our current active cases predate the enactment of
the VTVPA and therefore we cannot constitutionally bring charges under
the new Act in those cases; however, victims in those cases can and are
being helped through the victim protection provisions of the Act. The
number of post-VTVPA investigations, however, is increasing,
particularly in response to focused outreach efforts by the Civil
Rights Division's Criminal Section. While we cannot comment on the
details of cases under investigation, we are, as always, considering
the full range of charges available to us as we proceed in these
matters. It is typical practice in the federal system to charge several
federal criminal statutes as appropriate to capture the various facets
of the defendant's scheme. The exact scope of the new forced labor
statute and the other criminal provisions of Section 112 of the Act
will be defined in case law as cases are litigated. The well-
established involuntary servitude statutes, which have consistently
been held to be constitutional and have well-developed bodies of
interpretive case law, can be effective in prosecuting trafficking
situations involving force and threats of force, especially when
augmented with the victim protection provisions of the VTVPA. Their
continued use in appropriate situations should not be interpreted in
any way as a comment on the efficacy of the new statutory tools
provided by the Act.
______
Responses of Amb. Nancy H. Ely-Raphel, Senior Advisor, Office to
Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Department of State, to
Additional Questions for the Record Submitted by Senator Wellstone
Question 1. What are you doing to assist the President's Inter-
Agency Task Force on Trafficking in regard to facilitating cooperation
among countries of origin, transit and destination (and not just
between the United States and those countries), and to strengthen their
local and regional capacities to fight trafficking?
Answer. Regional cooperation and transnational cooperation is
imperative to combating trafficking.
During meetings with foreign government officials we encourage
destination countries to work more collaboratively with source and
transit countries. As we begin preparations for a world summit on
trafficking, we will be looking at models of bilateral, regional and
international collaboration.
The West Africa Trafficking in Persons Regional Conference in
Nigeria last December developed an action plan, still in draft, for our
posts to aid West African states build regional and bilateral
cooperation. We are supporting regional cooperation in East Asia and
the Pacific with the development of a website for governments and NGQs
to use as a reference for cooperation on human anti-trafficking issues,
including the sharing of best practices. We are in the process of
issuing a request for proposals for a trafficking conference for Asia-
Pacific nations to prepare for the World Summit on Trafficking in
Persons. In addition, we intend to raise with regional organizations
the importance of developing their capacity to track and fight this
issue within their respective regions in order to strengthen regional
efforts.
We are pleased that the OSCE has decided to make trafficking in
persons, weapons and drugs the focus of the 2003 Economic Forum. This
will present an ideal opportunity to raise with many Western European
destination states the importance of coordination and cooperation with
partners in Eastern Europe and beyond. We are looking at ways to
encourage and strengthen other regional organizations' efforts against
trafficking.
No national anti-trafficking effort will be effective without
transnational cooperation.
Question 2. What are you doing to assist the Task Force in
examining the role of the ``sex tourism'' industry in trafficking?
Answer. A senior official from the Office to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) was part of the official U.S.
delegation to the recent Second World Congress Against Commercial
Sexual Exploitation of Children, which had as a primary goal the
elimination of sex tourism. The World Congress works with the tourism
and travel industry, NGOs, international organizations, and government
officials in a variety of capacities to address sex tourism. We will
continue to work closely with other governments and within the USG to
follow-up on the initiatives of the World Congress.
The TIP Office also co-hosted, with the Child Exploitation and
Obscenity division of the U.S. Department of Justice, a follow-up
briefing on trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation of children,
and sex tourism. Over 35 U.S. Government agencies and bureaus attended.
Further activities and programs are planned, including an internal
State Department briefing on sex tourism and trafficking later this
month. The goal of the meetings and briefings is to incorporate a plan
of action for sex tourism into our comprehensive strategy on
trafficking. We will also include this issue in our bilateral
discussions with countries linked to this phenomenon.
______
Responses of Nguyen Van Hanh, Ph.D., Director, Office of Refugee
Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services, to Additional
Questions for the Record Submitted by Senator Wellstone
Question 1. How much money will Health and Human Services (HHS)
grant to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for victim servies and
how much of this money will come out of the $10 million appropriated
for this year? If HHS does not plan to use any of the $10 million
appropriation for funding victim services, please explain the rationale
for this decision.
Answer. HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is currently
developing an expansion of our grant program to increase outreach and
services to victims and solicit expertise for a national outreach
campaign designed to educate people about the existence of trafficking
and the protections and benefits available for victims. We intend to
issue a significant number of grants and contracts for a total of
approximately $6 million. ORR plans to fund all of the awarded
trafficking grants and contracts out of the HHS authorization.
Question 2. Does HHS plan to tailor its programs to fit the special
needs of trafficking victims, since although trafficking victims have
similar needs of refugees, their needs are not identical?
Answer. Our experience to date confirms that the needs of
trafficking victims and refugees may differ significantly. Where
appropriate, we are encouraging benefit and service providers to
address the needs of trafficking victims through programmatic
adjustments and to increase their capacity to provide culturally and
linguistically appropriate assistance to trafficking victims within
both existing programs and newly evolving programs. We are working to
educate refugee service organizations, non-profit groups, law
enforcement agencies, and others as to trafficking victims' needs, how
they are manifested among victim populations, and how cooperation among
service providers will ensure that the benefits and services are
effectively provided to victims.
Question 3. Does HHS plan to use funding to establish shelters for
trafficked persons in the future? What can HHS do to help trafficking
victims access existing shelter services until there is more funding or
new types of shelter available?
Answer. Providing appropriate shelter for trafficking victims is an
area of high interest for HHS, however we are statutorily prohibited
from establishing or constructing shelters vis-a-vis bricks-and-mortar
buildings. There is a severe lack of shelter services, in great part
due to a lack of funding in both the private and public sectors,
specifically designed to meet the unique needs of trafficking victims.
With our state and local partners, non-governmental organizations, and
other federal agencies we are continuing to search for ways to provide
resources and encourage shelter programs to increase their capacity to
accommodate trafficking victims without sacrificing services to other
populations being currently served.