Amy Klobuchar: “I want to thank Senator McCain for his work. I started to work on some of these backpage issues in conjunction with…”

“I want to thank Senator McCain for his work. I started to work on some of these backpage issues in conjunction with Senator McCain's wife Cindy McCain, as well as with Senator Heitkamp. We took a trip to Mexico focusing on the trafficking going on across the border with that country. I want to thank Senators Portman and McCaskill for leadership on this really important resolution. Just last year, five St. Paul residents were charged with running a multistate sex trafficking ring. One of the alleged victims was 16. Those underage girls were being advertised on backpage, and the ads were placed in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Illinois. In Southwest Minnesota, an operation involving backpage resulted in charges against 48 men around the towns of New Ulm and Mankato, the town my husband grew up in. These cases prove that sex trafficking isn't just happening in some faraway place. It is happening right now in the United States of America. It is happening in our own neighborhoods. It is happening in oil patches in North Dakota. It is happening in Cleveland, and it is happening in St. Paul. These are real stories with real people. In 2014 I spoke to the trafficking advocacy group Polaris when they released their State-by-State rankings of efforts to fight human trafficking.…”