Trafficking Survivors Relief Act

Floor Speech

I thank the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina for his leadership on this issue.

I am pleased that we are considering the bipartisan Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, which will provide relief to victims and survivors of human trafficking who have been unjustly criminalized as a result of their trafficking.

Victims and survivors of human trafficking have been waiting nearly a decade for us to make this relief available to them at the Federal level. The heroic survivors of the global Epstein trafficking conspiracy have raised the conscience of our Nation about the nightmarish consequences of human trafficking for the victims of it, and they strongly support this legislation, which is part of the long, overdue reckoning that America must have with all of the double standards and coverups that have affected women and girls who have been entered into the trafficking criminal underworld.

While we have found far too less opportunities to work together in this broken session of Congress, I am glad that the majority has finally chosen to bring this much-needed consensus reform forward to the floor to protect trafficking victims and survivors, and I look forward to its swift passage.

Mr. Speaker, human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry that overtakes the will and the freedom of nearly 25 million people around the world every year. Traffickers exploit their victims by forcing them to provide labor, services, and commercial sex through violence, fear, coercion, and manipulation. While awful, their exploitation doesn't stop there. Traffickers often force their victims to commit other crimes, including prostitution, money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, robbery, and theft.

This leads trafficking victims to be arrested and prosecuted without consideration of their status as victims themselves. They are often then made to serve prison sentences and left with criminal records that can stop them from finding employment, suitable housing, or qualifying to receive the treatment that they need to recover from trauma and rebuild their lives.

When they are unable to start fresh or move on because of the obstacles that they face as a consequence of the crimes that they were forced to commit, victims and survivors often return to their traffickers or fall victim to new predators. We cannot allow this cycle of trauma, criminal exploitation, and victimization to continue in the lives of so many untold victims.

While all but three States now allow trafficking survivors some form of criminal record relief, there is still no Federal pathway to clear criminal convictions or records in this situation. H.R. 4323 would correct this inequity by allowing human trafficking victims to petition to have their convictions vacated for certain offenses and to expunge their arrest records for other offenses if the offenses were committed only as a consequence of their trafficking.

This bill would also provide an avenue of relief for victims and survivors facing prosecution for certain Federal offenses relating to their victimization by establishing a human trafficking defense. The defense will also be available as a post-conviction remedy. To ensure that survivors have access to all of the remedies provided, this bill makes clear that a grantee may use grant funds from the Office of Justice Programs and Office on Violence Against Women for legal representation for post-conviction relief.

For far too long, we have closed our eyes to the true horrors of human trafficking and allowed victimization to fester simply by allowing survivors of human trafficking to be classified and treated as criminals. I am pleased to support this essential and thoughtful bipartisan bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I pick up on the words of the distinguished gentlewoman from Georgia, who is the ranking member of the Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Subcommittee on Committee on the Judiciary. To be forced into a human-trafficking network, like the Epstein network, is to suffer a double trauma. There is the original trauma of the exploitation and the abuse, and then there is the added trauma of being stigmatized yourself as being a criminal: a prostitute and someone forced to engage in other criminal activity by the trafficking network.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that, on a bipartisan basis today, we are able to move forward to address this problem and to give some relief to the victims and the survivors of a human-trafficking network.

Again, I recognize the survivors from the Epstein global international child sex-trafficking conspiracy who have raised the conscience of the country and changed America's mind about the fundamental importance of our addressing this.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for working with us on bringing this legislation forward, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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