Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act of 2007

Floor Speech

TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - October 01, 2008)

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, few issues in the world today raise as many human rights implications as the insidious practice of human trafficking. According to International Labor Organization estimates, there are over 12 million people in forced or bonded labor, forced child labor, or sexual servitude at any given time around the globe. Human trafficking truly represents commerce in human misery.

The U.S. Government has been increasingly vigilant in addressing this global scourge. In 2000, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which gave our government important new tools to better protect trafficking victims, prosecute traffickers, and prevent future trafficking crimes in this country and abroad. In 2003 and again in 2005, Congress reauthorized the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and I am proud to cosponsor the latest reauthorization bill--the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008--which Senators Biden and Brownback introduced in May.

I chair the Senate Judiciary Committee's new Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, created at the beginning of the 110th Congress. Our subcommittee's second hearing, in March 2007, considered legal options to stop human trafficking.

The hearing shed light on a legal loophole in current law. The U.S. government is allowed to prosecute human traffickers who commit crimes in the United States, but it is not permitted to prosecute traffickers who commit crimes abroad and then come to our shores.

In June 2007, Senator Coburn and I introduced a bill to close this loophole. The Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act would permit the U.S. Government to go after human traffickers who are present in the United States, regardless of whether their heinous acts took place in this country or elsewhere. Our bill says to the traffickers: You cannot come to the United States and use us as a zone of impunity and as a safe haven for your ill-gotten gains. Closing this loophole would serve as another tool in the global fight against human trafficking.

The Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act follows on other human rights legislation I have introduced with Senator Coburn, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law. We introduced similar legislation to allow the U.S. Government to prosecute individuals found in the United States who have recruited children for combat or deployed child soldiers in another country. Congress recently approved this bill, and it awaits the President's signature.

And last year, Congress approved a bill to permit the U.S. Government to prosecute those present in the United States who have committed the human rights atrocity of genocide anywhere in the world.

The Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act is supported by the International Justice Mission, the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, the Break the Chain Campaign, the Urban Justice Center, Mosaic Family Services, Global Rights, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

We cannot discuss the issue of human trafficking without acknowledging the visionary leadership of the late Senator Paul Wellstone, who called the trafficking of human beings ``one of the most horrendous human rights violations of our time.''

On the day Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act on October 11, 2000, Senator Wellstone went to the Senate floor and said the following: ``I believe with passage of this legislation ..... we are lighting a candle. We are lighting a candle for these women and girls and sometimes men forced into forced labor. ..... This is the beginning of an international effort to go after this trafficking, to go after this major, god-awful human rights abuse.''

Senator Wellstone's commitment to combating human trafficking and other human rights abuses stands as one of his most enduring legacies. The candle Senator Wellstone lit nearly 8 years ago is burning bright, and we will rekindle it today with the passage of this legislation.

I urge my Senate colleagues to pass the Trafficking in Persons Accountability Act, and I hope the House of Representatives will soon follow suit, so this important bill can be sent to the President and signed into law.

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