𝙉𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉𝘼𝙇 𝙑𝙄𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙈𝙎 𝙋𝙍𝙊𝙏𝙀𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 𝘼𝘾𝙏𝙎 𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝙍𝙀𝘼𝙐𝙏𝙃𝙊𝙍𝙄𝙕𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉𝙎:

NATIONAL VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT(TVPA, 2000):

The National Victims Protection Act of 2000(TVPA), established methods of prosecuting traffickers, preventing human trafficking, and protecting victims and survivors of trafficking. The Act establishes human trafficking and related offenses as federal crimes. The TVPA is the national framework for the federal response to human trafficking. The has been reauthorized and updated five times. Most recent update was in January 2018 with strong bipartisan approval.

The TVPA established Three objectives to fight human trafficking/child trafficking. Protection, Prevention, Prosecution.

PROTECTION: The TVPA increase protections for trafficking victims in the United States in several Key Ways:

1. Making foreign victims eligible for federally administered health and other benefits and services and by requiring federal agencies to expand the provisions of such benefits and services to victims, regardless of their immigration status.
2. Creating immigration protections for foreign national victims of human trafficking,, including protection from removal for victims of trafficking(T-Visas) and victims of certain crimes(U-Visas) by allowing certain nonimmigration status holders the opportunity to adjust to permanent residents status.

PROSECUTION: The TVPA sharpened and enhanced the capacity of federal prosecutors to bring human traffickers to justice for their crimes. The TVPA addresses the inadequacy of the legal framework by:

1. Adding new criminal provisions prohibiting forced labor, trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor, and sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion.
2. Criminalizing attempts to engage in these activities.
3. Mandating that traffickers pay restitution to their victims, and providing for forfeiture.
4. Strengthening penalties for existing trafficking crimes.

PREVENTION: The TVPA strengthened the U.S. Government’s prevention efforts by providing for international initiatives to be established and carried out to improve economic opportunity for potential victims as a means of deterring trafficking.

The TVPA also created the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons in the State Department, making that office responsible for publishing an annual Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report that describes and ranks the efforts of countries to combat human trafficking. The TIP Report is the U.S. Government’s principal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments on human trafficking. The TVPA also required the President to establish an Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking (PITF) and directed it to carry out activities that included measuring and evaluating the progress of the United States and other countries in preventing human trafficking, protecting its victims, and prosecuting its perpetrators.

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NATIONAL VICTIMS PROTECTON ACT OF 2003: refined federal criminal provisions against trafficking, to include adding human trafficking crimes as a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) predicate, and created a civil remedy enabling trafficking victims to file lawsuits against their traffickers in federal district court.

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NATIONAL VICTIMS PROTECTION ACT OF 2005: provided extraterritorial jurisdiction over trafficking offenses committed overseas by persons employed by or accompanying the federal government.

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THE WILLIAM WILBERFORCE TRAFFCKING VICIMS PROTECTION REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2008: featured new measures to prevent and deter trafficking. The TVPRA 2008 further improved the tools available to hold traffickers accountable by:

1. Creating new crimes that impose appropriately serious penalties on those who obstruct or attempt to obstruct the investigation and prosecution of trafficking crimes.
2. Permitting prosecution of sex traffickers who recklessly disregard the fact that force, fraud, or coercion would be used against the victim.
3. Eliminating the requirement to prove the defendant knew a sex trafficking victim was a minor in cases where the defendant had a reasonable opportunity to observe the minor.
4. Expanding the crime of forced labor by providing that “force” includes the abuse or threatened abuse of legal process.
5. Imposing criminal liability on those who, knowingly and with intent to defraud, recruit workers from outside the United States for employment within the United States by making materially false or fraudulent representations.
6. Increasing the penalty for conspiring to commit trafficking-related crimes.
7. Penalizing those who knowingly benefit financially from participating in a venture that engaged in trafficking crimes.
8. The statute established a grant program for states, Indian tribes, local governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to develop, expand, and strengthen assistance for trafficking victims and directed the Department of Health and Human Services to establish and implement a pilot program to provide benefits and services for juvenile trafficking victims.

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THE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS PROTECTION REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2013: focuses in part on the elimination of human trafficking from the supply chain of goods. The TVPRA 2013 also:

1. Strengthened the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking used by DOS to describe the antitrafficking efforts of U.S. and foreign governments in its annual TIP Report;
2. Amended the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act to include labor contract fraud;
3. Amended the federal criminal code to (1) subject U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens who reside overseas and engage in illicit sexual conduct with a person under 18 years of age to a fine or imprisonment or both; and (2) subject a person who knowingly destroys, conceals, removes, confiscates, or possesses certain immigration documents to a fine or imprisonment or both;
4. Extended the statute of limitations for a person to bring a civil action for an injury received while the person was a minor that was caused by certain sex- or forced labor-related violations of federal criminal law;
5. Added reporting requirements for the Attorney General’s human trafficking report.

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THE JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING ACT OF 2015: gave the Department more tools to address human trafficking, by:

1. Adding “patronizes” and “solicits” to 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a) to facilitate prosecution of customers of sex trafficking victims.
2. Adding “advertises” to the modes of commission of an offense under 18 U.S.C. § 1591 when there is proof that the defendant knew the victim being advertised was a minor or that force, fraud, or coercion would be used.
3. Clarifying that there is no need to prove either that the defendant knew, or that he recklessly disregarded, the fact that a sex trafficking victim was a minor if the defendant had a reasonable opportunity to observe the victim.
4. Amending 18 U.S.C. § 1594 to direct any assets forfeited in a human trafficking case to be used to satisfy a victim restitution order. It further allows forfeiture of, for example, any asset that is involved in, or is traceable to the proceeds of, human trafficking.
5. Adding the production of child pornography to the definition of “illicit sexual conduct” as used in 18 U.S.C. § 2423, which prohibits transportation and travel-conduct involving illegal sexual activity with children.
6. Creating a mandatory $5,000 special assessment that applies to non-indigent defendants for each count of conviction of certain offenses, including offenses set forth in Chapter 77 and Chapter 110. The revenue generated from this special assessment shall be used to support programs to provide services to victims of human trafficking and other offenses.
7. Directing the Attorney General to create and maintain a National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking.