Lois Frankel: “I thank Mr. Connolly and, of course, the chair of our committee for his fine work and our ranking member. Mr. Speaker…”

“I thank Mr. Connolly and, of course, the chair of our committee for his fine work and our ranking member. Mr. Speaker, as we have heard already, human trafficking is a global crisis of epic proportions. An estimated 12 to 20 million men and women around the world are being subjected to slavery of some sort. In fact, it is the number two criminal enterprise on Earth. I have seen the effects of this human trafficking up close. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about a couple visits I made. When I went to Peru, I went to a couple shelters there, which were now the homes of young girls who had been trafficked. The first one I went to, there were girls in their mid-teens who had been raised in families that were very, very poor. Their families were approached by these traffickers, who told them they would take their children, take their daughters to ``the promised land.'' They were going to take them to an area in Peru where they would be educated, well fed, and well nourished. What they really ended up doing was taking these young girls and basically enslaving them. They found themselves in people's homes where they would be locked up, literally, for years. From the time the Sun came up to the time the Sun went down, these children told their stories of having to, for example, peel potatoes, peel potatoes day and night. No education, no mingling with their peers, just deprived of the joy of childhood.…”