International Megan's Law to Prevent Demand for Child Sex Trafficking

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4573, the International Megan's Law to Prevent Child Sex Trafficking. This bill, along with the others under consideration this week, will dramatically improve our efforts to diminish the tragic effects of human trafficking and child exploitation.

I am especially pleased to speak in support of this particular legislation, which would curb child sexual exploitation. Recently I chaired a field hearing in Houston on the unconscionable issue of human trafficking and child exploitation in our major cities. In Houston, and in many other cities across the United States, women and children, some not even in their teens, are held against their will and forced into prostitution rings.

At our hearing, one of the witnesses spoke about entering the world of sex trafficking at age 12. Now, decades later, she is working to rescue girls in the same situation. As a father of five children, I cannot imagine what she went through.

As Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, I am pleased to highlight some of the great work done by the Department of Homeland Security in this area.

One of the provisions of H.R. 4573 I helped work on and am pleased to highlight is a provision to authorize the Angel Watch Center. The Center is led by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), in a joint effort with Customs and Border Protection to proactively identify registered sex offenders with an offense against a child, who are travelling abroad from the United States.

The Angel Watch program currently provides publicly available child sex offender information to notify and alert foreign law enforcement partners when a child sex offender may be travelling to engage in sex tourism with a minor.

Through the Angel Watch program, HSI has provided more than 1,700 leads to 100 countries as a preemptive notification in the fight against child sex tourism.

However, despite the great work done by DHS to alert foreign law enforcement partners, currently, only one country, Australia, sends reciprocal information to the United States. That is why I am pleased that the bill before us today includes language that will strengthen reciprocal efforts for the United States to also receive information from other foreign governments, so that our law enforcement officials' are alerted when a child-sex offender may travel to the United States.

I want to thank Chairman SMITH, the sponsor of this bill, for his work on this important legislation, and I appreciate the opportunity to highlight the important role that the Department of Homeland Security plays in fighting sex trafficking.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source