McCaul Discusses Combating the Scourge of Human Trafficking With Task Force Hearing Witnesses

WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) - chairman of the bipartisan Task Force on Enhancing Security for Special Events - questioned witnesses at a hearing entitled "A Scourge Against Humanity: Addressing Human Trafficking at Mass Gatherings."

McCaul discussed the Department of Homeland Security's Blue Campaign, which he authorized into law, with Eliza McCoy, vice president of programs and impact at the American Hotel and Lodging Association Foundation.

He also highlighted the nearly 500,000 unaccompanied alien children who entered the country under the previous administration and remain vulnerable to human trafficking with Jonathan Thompson, the executive director and CEO of the National Sheriffs' Association.

Lastly, he asked human trafficking survivor Courtney Litvak - director of the survivor leader initiatives at No Trafficking Zone - about how criminal trafficking enterprises work and what can be done to stop them.

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Full transcript of McCaul's discussion with witnesses:

Chairman McCaul: You know, when I authorized the Blue Campaign into law, it was designed to work with law enforcement, to partner with them, but also industry stakeholders … to really help combat the scourge of human trafficking. Ms. McCoy, can you give us an update on your relationship with the Blue Campaign, and how well is it working today?

Ms. McCoy: Thank you. Yes, I'm happy to. We are strong partners with the DHS Blue Campaign. We meet regularly to align our tactics and strategies and training and community outreach and awareness-raising. And we certainly think they continue to benefit from our ongoing support, particularly as they are making great strides in integrating survivor perspective and lived experience in the work that they do, and we are happy to stand alongside them in those efforts.

Chairman McCaul: That's excellent. … Over the last four to five years, we've had almost 500,000 unaccompanied children that came into this country - primarily at the hands of drug cartels, sex traffickers. It was one of the largest human trafficking events in the United States, really, of our lifetime.

Of those 500,000 children, more than 90,000 were sent to sponsors who were unvetted, essentially unvetted sponsors, or to homes where no home study was conducted. … And I saw this, where ten children would go to one house [with one] sponsor of the ten children. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what's going on here. It was a perfect storm for child sex trafficking, and now, unfortunately, it is occurring.

Mr. Thompson, I think in your role, you're best equipped to give us sort of a prognosis of this problem. And how do you see their vulnerability going into these FIFA World Cup games and the Olympics, you know, as well, and how can we protect them?

Sheriff Thompson: Mr. Chairman,you've taped [and] bookended the situation very well. We believe it is about 400,000. We don't know. Let's be honest. The records that were developed and usedfrom all indications and all reports and briefings I've received from the government are deeply disturbing, [as is] our inability to find [them] and assure this Congress and the nation's public that these individuals are not dead or being trafficked in one way, shape or form, including sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and others.And the third thing that is deeply, deeply troubling is that the scale of this, if you did simple math, assuming the 400,000 number is accurate, divide it simply by the number of counties in this country, 3,087 or 88, and you come up with a pretty damning number.

What I can tell you that we're looking at with the administration is, how do we get our arms around the data, number one. That's a challenge for them. And number two, then what do you do with the data from a targeting package perspective? Where does it go and how is it followed up on? And those two steps alone are incredibly labor and financially costly, takes time.

I wish I could tell you that the prospect is bright. I think there are some incredibly talented people at DHS. I think there's some incredibly talented people at our state law enforcement agencies and our local agencies that are working this. But the numbers are staggering, absolutely staggering.

Chairman McCaul: They are staggering, and I want to work with you to make sure we get that data to law enforcement. We know we've documented these unaccompanied children. … We don't know where they are - some of them - today, but we do know that they are ripe for being, you know, exploited for trafficking purposes, and it's our obligation to protect them from these traffickers. So I look forward to working with you and law enforcement on this.

Lastly, Ms. Litvak, your organization worked with the same stadium that hosted the Super Bowl back in 2017 [to turn them into] a "no trafficking zone." Houston is going to host the FIFA World Cup next year. Can you tell us a little bit about not only your organization, but how these trafficking organizations operate? I know that 750 individuals were indicted and prosecuted after that Super Bowl game. Can you tell us about how these organizations, these criminal enterprises, work from the lowest level with the pimp and the groomer to the highest-level executive?

Ms. Litvak: Absolutely. Thank you, Chairman McCaul. So I'm so blessed to work alongside the No Trafficking Zone because we are truly a survivor-led and trauma-informed organization, and that's something that NRG Park has taken very seriously as becoming the world's first certified "no trafficking zone," working with their general manager, Hussein, and all of our incredible impact partners. … Really trauma-informed law enforcement is so important because uninformed and quite frankly corrupt players in the anti-trafficking space even are those who pose as doing good work, but they're really a part of the problem. We want to ensure we are encouraging those who are doing the work for the right reasons to continue to collaborate together, especially because traffickers are watching our efforts, and they're calculated.

My traffickers specifically would study the laws, primarily when I was first targeted at my own high school as a minor, as a junior in high school. My traffickers waited because they knew the law in Texas that once you turn 18, there's a lot less that law enforcement can do to intervene. … In Harris County alone, being one of the largest counties in the whole country, there's an average of over 200 runaway minors daily. Law enforcement are already so understaffed and overworked and underpaid, but once we understand the themes, the patterns, we study those patterns by bringing survivor leaders to the forefront.

So my lived experience in NRG Park and in the surrounding hotels and motels, I was trafficked during the 2017 Super Bowl in February, where the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons came to our city. But where did I meet these illicit sex buyers? So on the lower levels here, beginning in street and gang trafficking, what is one of the number one markets that is targeted to procure and to exploit already vulnerable individuals? It's actually hidden in plain sight. It's our sexually oriented businesses, specifically strip clubs.

Houston is actually the strip club capital of the country, which many people may mistake states such as Nevada and California for. …And that's why I think it's so important to have a structure such as a task force to combat this issue, because these organized criminals work in networks. They are educated, they know the laws, they are experts at evading detection, but they're hidden in plain sight. Club owners and strip club general managers operate just the same as sex traffickers and human traffickers. So when you get to the more sophisticated levels of organized crime, … you have MS-13 cartel, all these horrible groups that are very prevalent in Texas, especially being a border state, and we have to be able to fill these gaps, but how do we address those? We talk with survivors, just like those who are on this panel right now, to hear what would have made a difference when we were being trafficked, but then to understand these aren't always just street level criminals.

There are what's known as corporate CEO traffickers. I was trafficked by both men and women. I was sold to both men and women. But these traffickers can be lawyers, as were some of mine, and they're businessmen, businesswomen, who are well spoken, and sadly, a lot of women are aiding these criminal networks. Sometimes we know that people can go from being victimized to being forced to be bottoms, which is people who do recruiting for human traffickers, but there's so many other organized crime networks and criminal enterprises taking place, such as drug trafficking. But when you have corporate America involved, my traffickers were laundering the money that we were making from the strip clubs with corporate America businesses. This is something that we have to find more ways to track this crime, because data and mass under reporting is such a huge issue, but especially when victims like myself are under immense threat and pressure by those who will use violence. But force, fraud and coercion are so important for us to tackle at all levels.

Chairman McCaul:… And in this case, we shouldn't just go after the lowest level of these organizations. We need to go up to the very top, high level. … I know that the FBI is working on several sting operations that we can't discuss today. I wish them the best. I know, when [Backpage.com] was taken down by Congress and you were held captive, that had an immense impact on the traffickers. And as you told me, they were very, very upset about that which is good news.

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