President Donald Trump said he is committed to “deliver justice to all who contribute to the cruelty of human trafficking and will tenaciously pursue the promise of freedom for all victims of this terrible crime.”
Accordingly, President Trump recently released his Administration’s National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking – a plan aimed at ending the exploitation of both adults and children, whether for forced labor or sex trafficking, within the United States. It is built around the three pillars of prevention, protection, and prosecution. Through a whole-of-government approach, the United States will use every tool at its disposal to combat human trafficking.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents have arrested more than 5,000 human traffickers over the last three years. “We are dismantling criminal organizations, as we disrupt the financial infrastructure of these networks,” said President Trump in the introduction to the National Action Plan. “U.S. law enforcement collaborates with Mexican law enforcement officials to annihilate human trafficking networks operating across the Southern border.”
The U.S. is also calling on all nations, businesses, and consumers to demand global supply chains that are free from forced labor. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the State Department “will continue to strongly condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s egregious practice of forced labor, among other human rights abuses, as part of its campaign of repression against Uighurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in the Xinjiang, and throughout China.”
As a consequence, the United States has leveled visa restrictions on People’s Republic of China and Chinese Communist Party officials believed to be responsible for horrific human rights abuses, built international coalitions at the United Nations, and issued the Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory.
“As long as the CCP continues to perpetrate such abuses,” said Secretary Pompeo, “we will continue to work with industry, labor advocates, and other governments to call attention to the issue and pressure the government to immediately halt its unacceptable policy of forced labor.”
The United States is resolute in its commitment to ending all forms of human trafficking at home and abroad. “This horrific crime cannot continue to threaten the safety of communities and individuals,” said Secretary Pompeo. “We will push forward in defeating it.”
