Nora is a second-year student at Grinnell College. She’s majoring in Biology and is also a pub master at Grinnell’s Pub Quiz club. Originally from Bethesda, Maryland, she is currently taking a gap year to work as an anti-trafficking intern at the International Rescue Committee. She hopes to use the power of the media to inform others and inspire them to help change the world for the better.
Congress passed the United States’ 13th Amendment on January 31st, 1865. The 13th Amendment states that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude […] shall exist within the United States.” With this amendment, the U.S. officially abolished slavery. However, this does not mean that modern day slavery (also known as human trafficking) has ceased.
In 2000, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) to combat modern slavery. This act targeted foreign national survivors of trafficking and made them eligible for government assistance and provided them with non-immigrant status to remain in the United States legally. TVPA also authorizes the U.S. to support foreign countries in hindering trafficking. Over the next 13 years, four reauthorization acts (TVPRA 2003, TVPRA 2005, TVPRA 2008, and TVPRA 2013) contributed to the ending of domestic and international trafficking while supporting other countries with similar policies.
The United States has taken a strong stance against human trafficking, but its specific policies change from administration to administration. This article examines the major differences between the Trump and Biden administrations in terms of human trafficking prevention.
Trump:
President Donald Trump made human trafficking prevention a key part of his time in the Oval Office. His daughter and advisor, Ivanka, helped organize the White House Summit on Human Trafficking in 2020, which featured survivors, leaders of anti-trafficking organizations, and government officials.
During his four years in office, President Trump signed eight pieces of anti-human trafficking legislation. These included:
- Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017
- Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017
- Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2017
- Department of Homeland Security Blue Campaign Authorization Act
- SOAR to Health and Wellness Act of 2018
- Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act
- No Human Trafficking on Our Roads Act
- Abolish Human Trafficking Act of 2017
As a body, these acts all served to establish or exacerbate the penalties for various forms of human trafficking. Trump and his family have also spoken out against human trafficking, and unequivocally condemned the practice. Additionally, Trump announced a $35 million grant to organizations that provide housing to human trafficking survivors.
However, despite calls from various advocates and organizations supporting victims of trafficking, Trump’s Department held fewer federal investigations and charged fewer defendants with human trafficking than his predecessor, President Obama. Additionally, he created a hurdle for non-citizen victims of trafficking to seek legal assistance for fear of being deported or prosecuted as an illegal alien.
For example, “the administration’s highly controversial “public charge” memo, which suggests further penalizing noncitizens for using government services […] had a reported impact on trafficking victims attempting to adjust their status [and is] a sharp tool for traffickers.” Foreign national survivors of trafficking may receive T-visas to remain in the U.S. and help prosecute their traffickers, but T-visa application processing time increased to three years over the course of the Trump administration. Additionally, “in late 2018 the Trump administration announced that noncitizens who are denied a visa may be issued a notice to appear in immigration court and put into deportation proceedings.” This makes it harder to investigate traffickers and makes victims reluctant to seek help. The lowest number of T-visas were approved in 2019 since 2010.
Biden:
President Joe Biden has only been president since January 20th, 2021, and his bills thus far have focused primarily on COVID-19 relief, oil and gas, clean energy deployment, and economic equality. Biden did, however, send the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 to Congress on his first day of office. This act would help manage immigration while supporting asylum seekers and foreign national victims of trafficking. It would also provide funding to curtail backlogs for asylum applications, eliminate the deadline for individuals to file claims for asylum, and increase the United States’ limit on U visas to 30,000 a year. The act would also increase the protections provided by U-visas and T-visas.
Another early action the Biden administration took regarding human trafficking and immigration was to suspend the Migrant Protection Protocols in early January. Review for these protocols is pending indefinitely. These protocols were originally enacted in 2018 by the Trump administration with the intent to prevent undocumented immigrants from remaining in the United States during legal proceedings regarding their immigration status.
In response to Biden’s suspension of the Migrant Protection Protocols, Missouri Attorney General Eric Shmitt claims, “The blame for the current crisis at the Southern border should be laid squarely at the feet of President Biden and his administration, […] President Biden’s failure to control the massive influx of migrants – an influx invited by his lax policies – has opened the floodgates to human trafficking that will have lasting effects on Missouri and the United States and puts our nationally-recognized efforts to fight human trafficking in jeopardy.”
Schmitt prioritizes anti-trafficking in Missouri, specifically through his Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force. He has been successful in rescuing victims, arresting traffickers, and finding and stopping illicit massage businesses. Eric Schmitt and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration with the goal of reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols. The lawsuit cites drug gangs taking advantage of the Biden Administration’s reforms to increase human trafficking.
Both presidents have taken very different approaches to end human trafficking thus far. While President Trump made ending human trafficking a key theme of his presidency, President Biden is still very new to the presidency and has understandably spent much of his time dealing with COVID-19 and its effects. Fortunately, both presidents and their respective political parties agree on the importance of combatting human trafficking. Only time will tell which president’s policies will be the most effective.
https://www.state.gov/humantrafficking-about-human-trafficking/
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiii
https://time.com/5905437/human-trafficking-trump-administration/
