Nick Lampson: “on Monday, the House passed H.R. 5422, the Child Abduction Prevention Act. As the founder of the Congressional Caucus on…”

“on Monday, the House passed H.R. 5422, the Child Abduction Prevention Act. As the founder of the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, I would like to thank my colleagues for coming together to pass this important piece of legislation. The provisions of a bill that I introduced, the Secret Service Child Protection Act, were included in the bill. Many people do not know this, but the Secret Service does more than protect the President. They help find missing kids. I wanted to make sure that they are able to continue assisting investigators, and I worked hard to have the Secret Service bill included in this overarching bill. The Secret Service is a key player in the effort to reunite families and to protect children. The U.S. Secret Service provides resources, expertise, and other assistance to local law enforcement agencies and to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in cases involving missing and exploited children. However, even though the partnership is strong, there was a clear need to provide explicit statutory jurisdiction to the Secret Service to continue this forensic and investigative support upon request from local law enforcement or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The bill that we passed on Monday will do just that. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for working together so that we may hopefully help prevent further abduction and exploitation of children across America.”