Ted Poe: “I thank the gentleman from Texas for his several important comments that he made about facilities to take the victims…”

“I thank the gentleman from Texas for his several important comments that he made about facilities to take the victims once they are rescued by law enforcement or by nonprofit organizations. Mr. Speaker, there is no place to put them. Sometimes that is why the police arrest these young girls and put them in juvenile detention, is because there is no facility to take them. I am not blaming the police. They have no other place for them to go. There have been some studies done on how many beds are available for trafficking victims. The latest comes out of the State of Illinois. They did some research, and there are about 600 to 700 beds nationwide for trafficking victims--600 to 700 beds; that is it--in a country of 350 million people. Compare that to animal shelters. I love animal shelters. I have got three Dalmatians. I call them the weapons of mass destruction. I got one of them from a Dalmatian rescue in Dallas. But there are 5,000 animal shelters in the United States, and that is good. We need every one of them. Six hundred to seven hundred beds for trafficking victims is not near enough. That is one thing this legislation does. It provides resources so we can have places to take these crime victims, and that is what they are. They are victims of crime. They are not criminals. They are hard to deal with. They are not easy to help. They have had their whole lives destroyed in front of them. So it takes time, it takes facilities, and it takes resources.…”