Human trafficking robs victims of their basic human rights, and it occurs right under our noses. Many efforts have been focused in other regions of the world, but this is a major problem here at home.
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We tend to think of human trafficking as a foreign issue, not something that could happen here in our own back yards. But it's a fast-growing problem in the United States, in every area, with no real defined demographic.
Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery. It is a scourge for humanity, and America must project its values and protect vulnerable persons.
Imagine having all of your freedoms taken away, being forced to work against your will, and constantly living under the threat of violence - in short, being forced to live as a slave. Sadly, this situation is a reality for millions of children, women, and men each year as part of the global human trafficking industry.
Around the world, human traffickers trick many people into slavery by false promises of good jobs or good education, only to find themselves forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence.
Under many current state laws, minors who have been victims of trafficking are charged as criminals and go to juvenile detention as offenders.
Under current law, there is no additional penalty for someone who enters the United States illegally and then commits either a crime of violence or a drug trafficking offense. They simply come under the same penalty as we have in current law.
These activists who support immigrants inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling network.
Making improvements to our background check system and cracking down on illegal gun trafficking are common-sense ways to prevent violence without punishing law abiding gun owners. We owe it to the American people to take real action to reduce gun violence in our communities.
It has become much more difficult to smuggle dangerous substances across our borders over the past three years, and this is creating real problems for drug traffickers.
The core of human rights work is naming and shaming those who commit abuses, and pressuring governments to put the screws to abusing states. As a result, human rights conventions are unique among international law instruments in depending for their enforcement mostly on the activism of a global civil society movement.
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