Cornyn Announces New Legislation to Fight Human Trafficking in the United States

I'm happy to announce that soon I'll be introducing legislation that reauthorizes several critical provisions to help fight human trafficking and bring us one step closer to ridding our country of this heinous crime. The Abolish Human Trafficking Act is, chiefly, a bill about getting human trafficking victims the help they need by focusing on ways to support them as they rebuild their lives.

This legislation reauthorizes the Justice Department's Domestic Trafficking Victims Fund, which we established when we passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, a bill I authored that was signed into law last Congress.

Last year the fund provided almost $5 million in victim services. By reauthorizing it, it can continue to serve more victims.

Certainly law enforcement needs more training to better equip them to serve victims, too. This bill also does that.

That way, law enforcement at every level of government can learn how to better spot trafficking victims and will have the adequate training to connect victims to the services they need in order to recover.

This will build on legislation passed in the last Senate by a vote of 99-0, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act.

I'm grateful to our friend and the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Grassley, for his focus on doing all we can for victims of human trafficking.

I know he also plans to introduce complementary anti-trafficking legislation, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. I'm hopeful that both bills will be considered soon.