The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is urging Catholics to contact their U.S. Senators asking them to pass the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2022 to prevent human trafficking and assist survivors.
This past July, the bill (H.R. 6552) passed the House of Representatives with a broad, bipartisan majority vote of 401 to 20. Three months have passed, but the Senate has so far failed to act.
This bipartisan bill would reauthorize important programs under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which lapsed back in September 2021, by providing more than $1.1 billion in funding for anti-trafficking measures. The bill would reauthorize the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking and authorize a new program to prevent the re-exploitation of survivors by providing life skills, employment, and education services to help achieve self-sufficiency. It would also support grants to prevent and detect trafficking of school-age children and require that the U.S. Agency for International Development encourage integration of activities to counter human trafficking in programs under its purview.
It is critical that our country continues to combat human trafficking, which Pope Francis has referred to as a "crime against humanity."
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