Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today also to recognize National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month to raise awareness about this atrocity that plagues our Nation and the world. There are estimated to be more than 40 million victims of trafficking across the planet. It happens in all of our communities here, and because of the geographic location that I represent in California's San Joaquin Valley, my district sees a disproportionately high amount of human trafficking. The fighting of this atrocity requires all of us to be involved, and we must do more. Every year, I work hard to secure additional funding for the Crime Victims Fund and to strengthen our efforts to stop human trafficking. We were successful in getting an additional $2 billion to support investigations and operations to prevent human trafficking and another $2.6 billion to improve services for these victims in the spending bill that passed just last month. This helps organizations like Breaking the Chains in Fresno, which is crucial to survivors. We must understand that these trafficking victims are just that; they are victims of crime. We also need to bolster our efforts to prevent this from continuing to occur, from supporting law enforcement efforts to holding perpetrators accountable to educating our children about the dangers, especially in this day and age, when the internet, sadly, is oftentimes a tool for traffickers.…”