The Alliance to End Human Trafficking (AEHT) (formerly U.S. Catholic Sisters Against Human Trafficking) and the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd (NAC), continue our work this congressional session to end human trafficking, keeping the needs of those vulnerable to being trafficked and those who have survived at the forefront of our work.
Earlier this year, one of the three bills we featured in the 2025 conference and worked to enact – the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act – was signed into law!
Thank you to all who prayed, called, wrote, emailed, posted on social media and met with staffers and Members of Congress!
Now this session (year two of this elected Congress) our other two bills remain active and we intend to see them across the finish line too!
AEHT and NAC continue our efforts to pass –
Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2025 (TVPRA) (H.R. 1144)
Kids Online Safety Act (S. 1748)
These meaningful, bipartisan bills build on the foundation of human trafficking policy, raise up the pillars of support for survivors, and strengthen the protective layers against online predators.
In particular, TVPRA is universally supported and even passed the House of Representatives in 2024 by a vote of 414-11. It is nonsensical that this seminal reauthorization bill is not already law. We will not be deterred. This bill must pass.
Human trafficking is a $276 billion world market that impacts an estimated 50 million people worldwide. This affront to human dignity happens through force, fraud, or coercion. Victims of human trafficking are hidden in our neighborhoods. They are being recruited from our schools. They are growing our food, working in our nail salons, and they are there when we go on vacation and stay in hotels. They are hidden in plain sight.
Traffickers thrive where vulnerability is high; where people are desperate and their options are limited or nonexistent, traffickers are present and waiting to take advantage.
People on the move and recent immigrants are at particular risk of exploitation by traffickers because of their precarious social and economic circumstances.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that the number of international migrants is at least 281 million. They are refugees, asylum seekers, labor migrants, and those displaced by conflict or natural disasters. They are fleeing floods, famine, war, violence, endemic poverty, organized crime, political corruption, and the effects of climate change. They are both desperate and resilient. The adverse circumstances that force people to flee their homes can lead migrants to be deceived in exploitative recruitment abroad. Migration routes too often lead migrants into the hands of organized trafficking networks, exploitative employment, or situations of extortion.
However, immigrants are not the only ones who are forced into a life of servitude. It’s happening to our youth in our communities.
Human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. It is the second most lucrative and is soon expected to surpass the illegal drug trade.
Drugs can be sold once, but people can be sold multiple times, with many victims being sold 15 to 30 times a day.
Child online sexual exploitation is rampant. Furthermore, it’s hard to detect, threatens lives, especially of the most vulnerable, and if unaddressed, has daunting and irreversible impacts on families and society.
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