Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as we all know, there is a big game this weekend, and I wouldn't be surprised if our friends from Washington and from the New England area find themselves a little bit distracted beyond the ``snowpocalypse,'' I guess they call it, all the big snowstorms.

In anticipation of the big game, I am told that 100 million Americans will actually tune in to the Super Bowl this weekend. And here is a shocking statistic. Some 1.25 billion chicken wings will be consumed--1.25 billion chicken wings--and, of course, millions of pizzas, celebrating what has, of course, become in many ways an unofficial American holiday. I am still stuck on the 1.25 billion chicken wings.

Well, while many of us will tune in to cheer our favorite team in the Super Bowl, unfortunately--and what I am on the floor to talk about--there is the dark underbelly of events such as the Super Bowl that don't get the attention they really deserve. Most of us would, perhaps, prefer to avert our gaze or think about other, more pleasant, positive things, but what I want to talk about briefly is the practice of human trafficking.

When many people hear about human trafficking, they think about something that doesn't happen in America; it happens somewhere else. They might envision brothels in foreign cities or girls being smuggled across other borders. But the sad reality is human trafficking is a problem all across the United States and at all times of the year. But it is especially a problem surrounding big, public events such as the Super Bowl.

Yes, human trafficking is happening in our own backyard, and more than 80 percent of sex trafficking victims in America are U.S. citizens. They are not some person who has been brought to the United States from some foreign country. Eighty percent are U.S. citizens.

As the father of two daughters, one of the most disturbing facts is that the average age of a child who first becomes a victim of sex trafficking is 13 years old.

As I said, recent years have shown an uptick in human trafficking surrounding large events such as the Super Bowl. For example, in Dallas a few years ago, there was a 300-percent increase in sex-for-sale Internet ads. That was in 2011, of course. In 2012, in Indianapolis, police made 68 commercial sex arrests and recovered two human trafficking victims.

One of the worst problems associated with human trafficking is that many of the victims don't actually consider themselves victims yet because they are so young and so vulnerable that they don't actually realize they are being used and their future is literally being destroyed.

In 2013, in New Orleans, police made 85 arrests for suspected human trafficking.

Of course, this year the Super Bowl is in Phoenix, and no doubt law enforcement in Phoenix will have a vigilant eye in an effort to identify and crack down on the perpetrators. But the truth is most of this is happening right under our nose and we don't even see it.

We know the police are doing the best they can, but it won't be enough--it won't be enough--to stop each one of these crimes. Indeed, staggering numbers of these crimes will continue to be committed. The Super Bowl will be done and gone next Sunday, but after the confetti is cleared from the field and the fans catch their flights home, the work to end this heinous crime known as human trafficking will continue.

As a matter of fact, January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Human trafficking is a form of human slavery. We thought that was eliminated from our history following the terrible Civil War that took the lives of 600,000 Americans. If you extrapolate the Civil War to today, in terms of population, that would be 3 million Americans who gave their lives. We had the Civil War in large part because of the bane and the scourge of slavery, but the truth is human slavery still exists in the form of sex trafficking.

Awareness is important. As we are driving around our city streets--particularly people driving around in Phoenix this weekend--we may actually see some underage girls or others who are actually victims of this crime, and so we need to be vigilant. We need to do what we can to be the eyes and ears of law enforcement and to call in suspicious circumstances. We simply need to do everything we can to stop human trafficking by all means necessary.

This is something that strikes close to home, in Texas, where I come from. Sadly, Texas, in part because of our proximity to the U.S.-Mexican border, sees more human trafficking than many other States. One out of 10 tips received by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center in 2013 involved incidents occurring in Texas--1 out of every 10 tips. And Texas reported more than 1,000 suspected human trafficking incidents in 2007.

So this is a big challenge and a big problem, and it is not going away. According to law enforcement authorities, sex trafficking is the fastest growing business of organized crime and the third largest criminal enterprise in the world.

And here is something I really don't understand. When we talk about the criminal organizations--the transnational criminal organizations that smuggle people across the border--most recently in the context of these unaccompanied minor children who came from Central America whose parents paid human smugglers--the cartels, really--let's say $5,000 apiece, these parents have no knowledge of what will happen to their children once they turn them over to these cartel members. Indeed, these criminal organizations are engaged in the money business, anything that will make a buck. They will traffic in children, they will smuggle immigrants, they will smuggle drugs.

With regard to these same criminal organizations, somehow, some way, we tend to compartmentalize our brains and say: Well, sex trafficking is different from illegal immigration and smuggling. But it is not. It has the same corridors funded by the same people and operated by the same transnational criminal organizations.

Now, back to sex trafficking after that parenthetical comment. This is one of those bipartisan subjects where there has been a lot of good work by Members on both sides of the aisle, and one of the things we have needed the most is to have the help of many nongovernmental organizations--these are faith-based organizations, these are local community organizations--that are designed to help victims of human trafficking escape, with the aid of law enforcement, and then somehow helping victims to rebuild their lives.

Earlier this month, I partnered with the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota, and Senator Kirk of Illinois to introduce a bill we call the Justice For Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015. I have talked to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Grassley, and have urged him to give this bill an early markup in the Judiciary Committee so it will be eligible to come to the floor as soon as we can get it here, because I am going to be asking the majority leader to schedule floor action so we can have a debate and a vote on this important legislation.

What does the legislation do? It provides additional funds for human trafficking support victims, with tens of millions of dollars of additional funds each year, and it would be financed entirely by criminal fines and fees. This wouldn't be tax dollars, this would be taking basically the fines and the fees paid by people who plead or are convicted of other crimes and putting those funds into a crime victims fund that could be used to help these organizations--these human-trafficking victims support programs.

Again, this legislation would be financed entirely by fines on predators convicted of child pornography, human trafficking, child exploitation, and commercial human smuggling.

This legislation would also assure that victims would have greater access to restitution by requiring the Department of Justice to use criminally forfeited assets to compensate them through a process known as victim restoration.

It is no secret the victims of this terrible crime end up with a lot of psychological baggage and other challenges. We need to help them get on with their lives and to address the terrible things they have experienced.

This legislation would also enhance law enforcement tools to target both sophisticated criminal networks that engage in human trafficking and the predators who increase demand for sex slavery by purchasing innocent children.

This bill now has 20 bipartisan cosponsors. So don't believe the cynics who say that nothing happens up here on a bipartisan basis. It is just not true. There are some things--and this is one of them, and perhaps one of the most important things--that happen on a bipartisan basis.

The good news is the House of Representatives is voting on companion legislation today, so this legislation should be ready for Senate action, I hope, soon. I hope we can work with our House colleagues and get it to the President as soon as we possibly can.

The bottom line is we need to take a stand against this modern-day slavery and lift up the victims of these crimes whoever and wherever they may be. Again, this is obviously not a political issue. This is something we have the power to address and we must take action to combat this human trafficking all around the world, and the place to start is in our own back yard.

I yield the floor.

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