WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate Wednesday unanimously approved legislation increasing penalties and cracking down on human traffickers and taking steps to stop the exploitation of children - an effort in which this region’s two women senators - U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D. - played a major role.
After weeks of debating the bipartisan bill, which got hung up in a fight over anti-abortion language that had been included by Republicans, the Senate voted 99-0 to pass the measure.
The House of Representatives has passed a series of bills aimed at combating human trafficking. It was not yet clear how the two chambers would reconcile their differences.
However, Heitkamp said in a telephone interview after the vote that she’s confident the Senate and House bills match up enough that it will be easily approved in the House and sent to President Barack Obama.
Among the provisions in the bill are tougher financial penalties on traffickers, strengthening law enforcement training programs to improve investigations of human trafficking and a new effort to rescue victims, who often are minors. There are two funds, which could total up to $60 million, that will provide aid - one for medical services and another for the law enforcement and legal steps being taken to fight the problem.
“This is not something that is happening just in faraway lands. It happens in our own backyard. It happens to 12-year-olds in my own state,” Klobuchar said during debate on the bill.
North Dakota, meanwhile, has been a hotspot for trafficking, particularly in the Bakken region, with the high-paid oil industry workers looking for sex.
Nationwide, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline received reports of 3,598 sex trafficking cases, according to the Polaris Project, which operates the call center.
It estimated that one in six runaway minors reported to the center likely were sex trafficking victims.
Heitkamp said two amendments passed that will also have a major impact on the effort and help in clarifying this new national strategy to combat sex trafficking.
One is the Safe Harbor Law, already in force in almost 30 states, that treats human trafficking victims under 18 as victims, not criminals. Under the provision, minors who committed prostitution offenses and other nonviolent crimes related to being trafficked, like theft or forgery, are granted immunity, a provision known as Safe Harbor. In exchange, it’s hoped they will help law enforcement and possibly testify against pimps and other traffickers.
Heitkamp said the bill isn’t a mandate for other states to accept this Safe Harbor strategy but encourages them to adopt the law through incentives.
The other amendment makes sure anyone who transports victims across state lines will not escape swift prosecution and harsh penalties, she said. It would allow a state attorney general to request that a state or local prosecutor help try cases involving traffickers who crossed state lines.
“It will expand our prosecutorial resources,” the senator said.
An amendment that failed by four votes was Heitkamp’s plan to strengthen the runaway and homeless youth program that would provide assistance to those children with family troubles who are kicked out of homes or run away.
Heitkamp said they got 56 votes, including 10 Republicans, but needed 60 for approval.
“The sooner we intervene with these kids, the less likely they will be victims of trafficking,” she said.
Richard Cowan of Reuters contributed to this report.
