Commentary: U.S. Law and Policy
Obama Administration Policies on Trafficking (June 2009) Dr. Melissa Ditmore, in The Guardian states that “The new TIP report suggests that the Obama administration is taking a more effective approach. Instead of adopting the Bush administration’s myopic focus on sex trafficking, the Obama administration has expanded the definition of trafficking to include a wider variety of examples of labour abuses than ever before.”
December 2008- The Passage and History of of HR7311: William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act Human rights activist object to the house version of the TVPRA (HR3887), in concert with the US Department of Justice. The final TVPRA, passed in December 2008, addressed some concerns of human rights activists, however some issues remain. The earlier House version of HR 3887 had placed all commercial sex under the jurisdiction of the Federal government.
Urgent Item: Department of Justice, ICE, Targets Trafficking Victims for Exposing Their Plight also see New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice “…When defense subcontractor Signal trafficked them to labor camps in the Gulf Coast and held them in forced labor, these workers fought back. They escaped indentured servitude, triggering a major DOJ investigation into criminal trafficking. They walked from New Orleans to Washington, DC in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi, to show Congress the brutal realities of the US guestworker program. And they launched a 29 day-long hunger strike, to pressure the DOJ to prosecute Signal on charges of criminal trafficking. As a result of speaking out publically, a group of these men were targeted in an ICE raid. On October 28, 2024 - days before the presidential election - ICE arrested over 20 of these workers in a terrifying immigration raid in Fargo, North Dakota.
Campaign: Proposed California Anti-Trafficking Legislation
Campaign to Challenge California’s Prop 35, the CASE Act, in 2012