Human Trafficking: New Fight Against an Old Evil

Cornyn: Human Trafficking: New Fight Against an Old Evil

Editorial by John Cornyn

As President Bush and the U.S. government continue their fight to protect the American way of life in the war against terrorism, they have also been fighting another battle to protect American ideals and principles - a battle against human trafficking and slavery. Most Americans would be shocked to learn that the institution of slavery - an institution that hundreds of thousands of Americans shed precious blood to destroy - continues to persist today - not just around the world, but hidden in communities across America. This is a new fight against an old evil.

To combat this scourge in the state of Texas, I joined senior Justice Department officials last week to announce the creation of a new anti-trafficking task force in Houston, to coordinate the efforts of federal, state, and local government and non-governmental organizations. Additional task forces are being planned for other regions of Texas next month.

It has been nearly two centuries since the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and well over a century since the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery itself. Yet to this day, men, women and children continue to be trafficked into the United States and coerced into lives of forced labor and sexual slavery. The stories they tell are shocking, tragic, and heart-rending. The acts they endure are not just unconstitutional and criminal - they are profoundly evil. Their experiences amount to a form of modern-day slavery. This daily assault on human dignity, occurring within our very own borders, is an outrage, and it demands a response.

The Justice Department, led by its Civil Rights Division, has engineered a remarkable campaign to combat human trafficking and slavery in our midst. The Department has prosecuted numerous cases involving forced labor and sex slavery across the country - from California to Maryland, Hawaii to New Jersey, Georgia to New Hampshire - as well as right here in Texas. The Department has dramatically strengthened its efforts to combat human trafficking - tripling its prosecution and conviction rate over the past three years as compared to the preceding three years, circulating awareness-raising
materials to law enforcement officials across America, and reaching out to victims by installing a toll-free hotline.

Yet federal efforts alone are not enough. Slavery, as practiced in modern-day America, is carefully hidden and difficult to uncover by federal officials alone.

As we learned at a Senate subcommittee hearing I chaired last month, we need the active participation of state and local officials, who know their communities inside and out, and who can work closely with federal officials to identify and rescue victims. To ensure proper coordination between federal, state and local officials, we need state laws criminalizing trafficking and slavery, to provide state and local officials with all of the incentives and tools that they need to investigate and prosecute human trafficking cases at the state and local level, as well as the establishment of regional task forces to coordinate the efforts of federal, state, and local officials.

We are already taking both steps in the state of Texas. First, Texas is one of the few states (along with Florida, Washington, and Missouri) that has already enacted comprehensive laws to prohibit human trafficking. More states should join the effort. Accordingly, the Justice Department recently announced a model for new state anti-trafficking laws to encourage other states to consider enacting such laws, and the Senate recently approved a bipartisan resolution I authored urging states to do so. Second, the Houston anti-trafficking task force announced last week is the first since the Justice Department's historic national anti-trafficking conference convened last month. It joins similar efforts already in place in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, Northern Virginia, and Tampa, and more are planned.

This is an important effort. Eliminating the scourge of human trafficking and slavery from our midst remains the most fundamental civil rights issue of our time.

Human traffickers peddle in human misery. They smuggle human beings into this country and condemn them to lives of forced labor or sex slavery. For countless victims, the American dream quickly turns into an American nightmare. Such tales of human suffering should not exist anywhere in the world - and especially not in the United States of America.

Yet according to government estimates, approximately 800,000 human beings are trafficked across the world's borders each year - including at least 15,000 human beings trafficked into lives of slavery in the United States each year.

The American commitment to eradicating human trafficking and slavery is a solemn vow - reflecting the highest traditions of our Founding Fathers and the drafters of the Thirteenth Amendment. It is a commitment to the principles of freedom and liberty that Americans have fought and died to protect. And it is a profoundly moral commitment, not just to punish violators of our criminal laws, but to repel an assault on our nation's core beliefs about the fundamental worth and dignity of every human being.

The author is a U.S. Senator from Texas and chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights. He chaired a hearing last month to examine U.S. efforts to combat human trafficking and slavery. He is a former state supreme court justice and state attorney general.