End Banking for Human Traffickers Act of 2018

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this measure. As an original cosponsor of the End Banking for Human Traffickers Act of 2018, I would like to first thank my coauthors, Chairman Royce, Representative Maloney, and Representative Love. I am proud of our bipartisan work on this important issue.

This issue represents actions that are abhorrent, coercive, actions that constitute modern-day slavery. They also are sustained because they are among the most lucrative criminal activities we have in the world right now.

This is ranked as the third most lucrative international crime in the world. And it is a unique one in the sense that, unlike drugs, where they will market their poison to individuals and they will be ingested and consumed and that ends the transaction, tragically, you see, time and time again, that these young women, many of them children, over and over again are used by these financial purveyors of criminality in their actions to redundantly gain profits at the expense of destroying and taking away years of innocent lives.

This legislation is a testament to how important our bipartisan collaboration is here in the House, as well as among our colleagues in the Senate. When we have the opportunity to work together, we take meaningful action to address real harms being suffered by innocent people here and around the world. And this is, indeed, not only an international issue where we need cooperation, but it is a domestic issue as well.

In 2012, the International Labor Organization estimated that there were 21 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. In the United States alone, over 8,500 human trafficking cases were reported just last year, and those are cases where the investigation was fruitful and the prosecution commenced, an understatement by multiple effects of what the actual incidence of this crime is.

While there are current laws to combat the practice of human trafficking by criminalizing perpetrators and providing support for victims, the End Banking for Human Traffickers Act of 2018 works to dismantle the economic framework that enables it and sustains it. It empowers the Secretary of the Treasury with the ability to assist and directly get involved to a greater extent with all the other agencies involved. I know, from my own experience, that the importance of that coordination will more easily lead to good cases and more effective prosecutions and bringing people to justice.

I come at this issue from many perspectives; one of them being my position, as with Chairman Royce, on the Foreign Affairs Committee, where we look at the international factor that we are trying to work cooperatively throughout the world and here at home to better prosecute, better bring to justice.

I also represent the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence in the Homeland Security Committee, and it is important to note that this criminal enterprise is one of the most prominent ways that terrorists fund themselves.

While we have had effect trying to eliminate the caliphate and the taxing that goes with that, we have seen terrorists lose those opportunities to raise money. However, what we have seen is them move even further into other areas to sustain their terrorist activity; and primary among them is the use of human trafficking and the funding for their terrorist activity through that criminal enterprise.

Another way I have come to view this is as a former District Attorney myself. I worked with the regional task force in the Boston region in Massachusetts to try and work to coordinate activities to seek out, to investigate, and ultimately prosecute human trafficking.

There is one thing I did know through my term as a District Attorney and looking at this issue as well, more specifically: If we are going to be effective, one of the best tools we have in terms of investigating, seeking out this activity, and bringing it to justice, is to follow the money, and that is what this act does. It follows the money. It uses the economic tools we have here, through the Secretary of the Treasury, among many other assets we have in this country, and it seeks out and will find out, from the money laundering standpoint, just who is involved, where this is occurring, and how we can attack it.

Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry. Its perpetrators rely on banking and financial systems to fund and profit their crimes against innocent men, women, and children, and this bill will strengthen our work to target, prosecute, and to bring to justice those who reap financial rewards from this abhorrent criminal practice.

This Congress, the House passed a number of important bills dealing with anti-trafficking measures. This is one of the most important, and it strikes it at its heart, where we can find out where this is occurring, where we can investigate further everyone that is involved in this. It is not just limited to the people that we find in the initial investigations with these reports, we will be better able to bring everyone involved in this activity to justice.

So let's continue this momentum by passing the End Banking for Human Traffickers Act of 2018.

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Mr. KEATING.

Mr. Speaker, first off, I would like to say, as the chairman mentioned in the previous resolution that we discussed, Mr. Royce is leaving us at the end of this term, and I would like to thank him for the real bipartisan effort we have shown--Mr. Smith typifies that as well--on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

This is an important committee that has broad responsibilities, as this bill indicates; and, in a Congress where, too often, there are divides and bitterness, that committee stands out as a committee of members who work together, who accomplish solutions to very complex international problems that affect us here at home. I know, going forward, I believe very strongly, we are going to have an even larger role in issues to come.

Mr. Speaker, modern-day slavery destroys the lives of far too many innocent people. Today, in 2018, this should no longer be a topic of discussion, yet it is becoming increasingly more problematic.

The solutions are within reach, and that requires coordination and cooperation. This bill does both. We have the information; we have the expertise; now we must act decisively to put the best tools in the right hands to end this injustice once and for all. And by focusing on the financial mechanism that enables this and sustains this, we will be best able to combat it, not just in seeking it out and destroying it, but making sure, in a comprehensive way, we deal with all those wrongdoers that are involved, not just a few at the bottom rung of the ladder.

This bill will give the right people around the table the opportunity to better equip themselves to combat human trafficking and break down the financing that supports and enables this heinous crime.

Mr. Speaker, I again thank my coauthors for their efforts, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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