Justice Department officials have yet to implement all the provisions of an anti-human trafficking bill that delayed the confirmation of Attorney General Loretta Lynch last year.
“While we are grateful for the work of the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention and the stalwart anti-trafficking leaders within the department, some provisions of the [Justice for Victims of Human Trafficking Act] have yet to be implemented,” Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., wrote in a Tuesday letter to Lynch that was co-signed by a bipartisan group of 36 other lawmakers.
“Our efforts to end human trafficking will be rendered useless until the department implements the entirety of the law.”
The warm tone of the letter belies the controversy over the passage of the bill, which marked an unexpectedly contentious beginning to the 114th Congress. Senate Democrats voted unanimously for the bill when it cleared the Judiciary Committee, only to demand that Republicans rewrite it to allow fines collected from sex traffickers to be used to pay for abortions.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., responded to the unexpected filibuster by refusing to allow a vote on Lynch’s nomination until after the legislation passed.
Senate lawmakers eventually struck a compromise over the funding provisions, but those sections of the law have yet to be implemented. “Why has the department not assessed all convicted offenders under covered crimes?” Wagner and the other lawmakers ask in the letter.
“Has the $5 million provided in section 101 for healthcare and services to victims been transferred to the Trafficking Victims’ Fund from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?”
The lawmakers also reminded Lynch that the legislation gives the agency more tools to prosecute people who purchase sex and asked if her team has used that new authority at all in the past year.
“There is much more work ahead of us, and it is not acceptable for us as advocates to pass this law and walk away,” they told her. “We will employ concerted due diligence until every child, woman and man is safe from modern day slavery.”
