IJM Vice President of Government Relations Holly Burkhalter testifying before a Senate hearing on human trafficking.

Under current anti-trafficking law, any commercial sexual exploitation of a minor is considered trafficking, and any commercial exploitation of adults that includes “force, fraud, or coercion” is also defined as trafficking. Prostitution abolitionists, including a strong Left-Right coalition with representatives from the Salvation Army, NOW, the Feminist Majority and others advocated successfully for this provision and others in H.R.3887 so that federal prosecutors could prosecute a wider range of sexual exploitation and step in where local law enforcement had failed to eradicate it under the auspices of state law.

Interestingly, a different Left-Right political coalition strongly opposes these provisions in the House-passed bill, including most Senators involved in the markup of the Senate’s TVPA reauthorization, S.3061. Virtually all the Senate staff I talked to about TVPA authorization, from the conservative staff of Republican Senator Jeff Sessions to the liberal Democratic Senator Joe Biden, are adamantly opposed to federalizing the crime of prostitution and conflating it with sex trafficking. To make things more confusing, the Bush Administration Justice Department strongly opposed the House-passed provisions, but Ambassador Mark Lagon, Coordinator of the State Department Trafficking in Persons office, quietly supported them.

Growing Controversy

I have friends on both sides of this debate, and I can see the merit of each of their arguments. On the one hand, those in favor of the provision argue that any time a woman or child in prostitution has a pimp they are being trafficked. It should not be necessary to prove “force, fraud, or coercion” when pimping invariably includes all three. On the other side of the argument are those who oppose making state crimes into federal crimes, and warn that doing so will divert scarce federal resources away from tough, ugly crimes that actually do involve force, fraud and coercion and require a federal response.

Delays in the Senate

Perhaps because of the growing controversy and heated tone of advocates – on both sides of the issue -- the key Senators involved in developing the bill held off introduction until May 2008, and the legislation was not taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee until the second week in September – ten months after the House passed its bill.

But September in an election year is not a great time to get to “yes” on controversial issues in Washington. We lost more time when Republican Senators boycotted Judiciary markup of the TVPA to try to force Senate Democrats (who hold a majority in the Senate, and thus chair its Committees) to bring up a number of stalled judicial nominations for a vote. The maneuvering had nothing to do with the merits of the bill, which had been introduced by Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and Sam Brownback (R-KS).

By the time the Wall Street debt disaster hit the Capitol, there were only a few legislative days left in the session. Republican and Democratic staff members on both the House and Senate side met to iron out differences between the two bills (including a possible compromise on the prostitution provisions) and were making good progress, but with Members and Senators anxious to get home to campaign, they simply ran out of time.

They only bright spot these days is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a one-week lame duck session after the Presidential elections to tidy up unfinished business. It’s a long shot, but if enough constituents make their views known about the importance of passing the TVPA before final adjournment, it just might happen.

URGENT ACTION:

Please write, call, or email your Senators and respectfully urge them to contact the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (if Democratic) or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (if Republican) and urge that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (bill S.3061) be finalized and passed so that it can go to conference with the House during the lame duck session.

Talking points:

• Introduce yourself, and identify that you are a constituent from the Senator’s state.
• Express your strong support of United States leadership to combat trafficking and slavery, and your interest in the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
• Respectfully urge your Senator, if a Democrat, to contact Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and, if a Republican, to contact Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to bring the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (S.3061) to the Senate floor so that it can be passed and brought to conference with the House during the lame duck session.

To find your Senators’ contact information, go to: www.senate.gov.