Transcripts For CSPAN Policy 20240704

An eight minute to nine minute break, so we could make this quick. There is still purpose in the back and if you need to use the restrooms but they are on the outside, so thank you. [indiscernible voices] [indiscernible voices] ok. All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming back from break. We have had some great panels is morning and we are happy to be invited to participate this morning as well. I am a victim just as Program Specialist for the office of victims of crime at the department or justice Human Trafficking division and i am join today with heather from the texas advocacy project, and Heidi Alvarez with the university of Maryland Safe Center and actually happens to be one of my grantees, so we have worked closely together for four or five years it has been now. So with that, i think, we actually have a bit of the different presentation. We love powerpoint. We are going to use powerpoint. We actually have a few videos that we will include to set the stage on some of the content presented this morning, specifically around housing and employment for survivors of Human Trafficking, but i have introduced myself. Oops, we are missing a slide. All right, before i go to that, i will have heather and heidi it might be the next slide. We might have it out of order heather . Heather i am the ceo at texas advocacy project. I am sure you are done hearing about texas today in austin specifically but it is 105 today. I needed to be here in your freezing cold weather. The texas advocacy project has been around for 40 years and we provide Free Services for survivors of assault, stalking, child abuse, and Human Trafficking, so what that looks like is being able to provide the court orders that somebody might need in order to have longterm safety, and the safety they have identified that they need, so we walk alongside them in their journey and we just try to make sure that there are resources that are supportive as possible. We have a lot of partners including the Austin Police department to help us reach the survivors and one of the things that makes this a unique is that we are very integrated with all these other organizations, but because we are independent of the government or of the Police Departments, and we are able to help survivors in a slightly different way, especially because of attorneyclient privilege. I am not an attorney. My staff will not allow me to play one on tv, so dont ask me legal questions. I might sound like an hr professional, which i am not. We just try to keep it afloat and keep it sustainable so we can help the many survivors out there. So. Heidi good morning. I am the director of Economic Empowerment at the university of Maryland Safe Center for Human Trafficking survivors. We are a new kid on the block. We have been around since 2015 and were founded by ambassador and our goals are threefold, to provide direct services that includes case management, crisis intervention, Legal Services, counseling, Economic Empowerment and engage in research and policy advocacy. And we wear part of iowa say a coalition of other nonprofits and survivor leaders that helped to pass the first labor trafficking law in the state of maryland and 2019. And that was a very important because unfortunately, there we not any laws before that and wrely wanted to make sure that we wereddssing both sex trafficking and labor trafficking in maryland. And i have been very fortunate to work with others and having met heather and i will turn back to kristin. Kristin thank you. So those of you in the remain up no the office for prevention of crime. I would take a moment to tell you about our work. We are part of the u. S. Department of justice. Basically we are a branch that really focuses on serving all victims of crime. We do happen to have one branch that is exclusive to Human Trafficking, which is what i am part of, and we have a staff of almost 10 now. We have over 3 million, no, it is more than that 300 million i think it is. , Million Dollars . I think, no, even my program for housing is more than that, but specific to housing though, we have 120 award specifically for housing for victims of Human Trafficking, that is a program i oversee, in which heidi has a grant under. So, you can see here that we also support voca, the state Victim Compensation programs, that funding comes from our office, and a lot of ngos have funding through it. We also have funds for tribal communities and we also do mass terrorism response with fbi, turning to technical assistance, partnerships with federal agencies such as hud, office of violence against women also under the department of justice, and then of course we have demonstration project so that is just a little bit about ovc. Ok. Them we had an opposite order. Here we are. And with that. We start tonight with a Human Trafficking concern. After Human Trafficking conducted by Law Enforcement agencies in texas. It is counselee moving to the country, even el paso. Were not talking up just about forced prostitution but forced labor. Human trafficking has no race, no gender. It does not matter where you are from, whether you are an adult or child. I am here to tell you it happens everywhere in the smallest of towns and in the largest of cities. It is not a madisonville thing. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. Human trafficking is the debasement of humanity. It is humanity at its worst. It is happening right next door to you and you this house is located on a culdesac. I called my supervisor and told him, we have a Human Trafficking case. One of the things we discovered during the investigation was that the women were being raped daily, over and over again, at this residence. They pulled in, and another car would pull in, and another car would back out. It was a constant flow of traffic. They just kept coming and coming, and we knew exactly what was happening in there with the women. It was really discarding disheartening, especially with two daughters. We realize these same girls were being transferred into Harris County and being sold in other locations for sex, over and over again, from one to another spot. This led to an even larger investigation that we discovered within new york. We discovered these women were being brought in for these purposes. I know that that was abrupt, apologies for that, and many of you in the room have an idea about what trafficking looks like, but oftentimes we are making these presentations and we tried to do an Awareness Campaign, and it is different from what is being promoted in media and tv, but maybe it looks like a neighborhood that you lived in or somebody you know lives in, so to my point, when you see it in your own community, you cannot unsee it. If at the end of your own video, we are almost trained to automatically think about sex trafficking. But trafficking looks varied. It crosses all boundaries. It is about the exploitation of somebody else for another persons profit. It is power and control, coercion. That might look like your neighborhood and that what might be you are used to seeing, but there is also labor trafficking and that is happening in front of us all the time. We will show you one more short clip from the office of victims of crime. [video clip] for a case of trafficking, what we will be looking for are signs that workers do not have the freedom to move about. They are not getting paid for the work they are performing. Maybe they do not have identifying documents. They are being made to live in substandard living conditions. They may be skilled or unskilled laborers, young or old, male or female. i had never heard them complain. It didnt cross my mind that they were being abused. when you asked them how it was going, none of them ever said that this happened to me or whatever. we had a case and it involved the apparent exploitation of American Workers and they were adults with intellectual disabilities. They were transported from texas to a turkey Processing Plant for approximately 35 years. These adults were working for a company for at least 40 hours per week, but only being paid 65 a month. They worked they were hidden away from much of the world. These men were punished in cruel ways, so after 35 or 40 years of blood, sweat, and tears when these men were finally rescued, they had nothing to show for it. what we find in a case like that, these are involving people with intellectual disabilities, is that the things that make them vulnerable are the very same things you might in a case involving foreign workers. The same time type of forced coercion that a shackle would be would be the same mental anguish they are going through. in order to build any kind of love relationship kind of relationship, you have to go out. I am talking about everything to working with a social service providers, the clinics, the churches, anywhere that labor trafficking victims may go for strength or help. That is where Law Enforcement should be reaching out and proving we are serious about helping. the illinois migrants Legal Assistance project provides Free Legal Services to migrants and farmworkers. Heather to wrap the two videos quickly, we wanted to show them because it is our goal to stop other ring othering. We always think if these people do not like us, coming from some scary made up land that it cannot happen to us, and i get why our brains do that. It is a protective thing, but we have to stop othering survivors of trafficking and pretend like it is not in our communities and the places we shop and and everything we consume. Kristin thank you, heather. Heather mentioned this earlier and one of the things to understand is the traffickers know how to groom their victims. They use manipulation tactics to exploit and to coerce and enforce victims of Human Trafficking into their situations, and they do this by trying to understand what that persons vulnerability is and targeting and fulfilling a need. So that as a way for us to understand this. If someone needs housing, if they need food, medical care, this is where the traffickers come in and are able to provide those needs and sort of gain trust, gain and create a relationship with victims in order to then say later on, now you owe me. It becomes a situation where that person has a relationship, they have a bond, and now, even if they are uncomfortable, maybe they are willing to think that the trafficker is now asking them to do it because they feel that they owe them. So at the center come at the university of Maryland Safe Center, we work with a number of different partners. We have received case referrals from the hotline, we have also worked with Law Enforcement partners, and i agree the first 72 hours are crucial, so that is where our team comes in to provide emergency services, provide emergency housing, food, immediate medical care, if needed, to make sure that the person we are working with, the survivor we are working with, they feel that they can Start Building a relationship with us. We know that takes time, but that is the goal. After that, we work with the survivor to develop a comprehensive Needs Assessment, to understand beyond these 72 hours, what does this person want to do next . It is about providing opportunities for choice and control. Because that was a big part of what the trafficker did, was take away their ability to have choice and control and make decisions on behalf of their own lives. That is part of the work that we do, is to inform, provide opportunities, and walk alongside the survivor so they are able to meet the conditions that are best for themselves and their family. In addition to that, we start working on their legal case. In addition to that, we also work specifically with survivors that need immigration legal relief. As we know, there are survivors that are trafficked into the united states, and there are immigration legal remedies they have access to. Finally, as part of this cycle of care and continuum of care, we provide Counseling Services and Economic Empowerment. Economic security, i would say, is a big determinant, and i would say a positive aspect of being able to help survivors avoid the exploitation, and for them to really be able to be independent and work towards their own selfdetermination. As part of this understanding of where Economic Security is, one of the most important studies i have seen was this National Survivors study by teleres, which surveyed 500 survivors of Human Trafficking, and there were key findings i wanted to share with everyone because i think this is part of the discussion we are having about public and private partnerships. 43 of households earn 2500 25,000 a year or less compared to 26 of households. Roughly 40 of respondents reported some kind of criminal record as a result of their trafficking experience. Over 60 of respondents reported experiencing Financial Abuse, which is a big part of the power and control tactics that traffickers use. And then respondents were twice as likely to be unbaked, which means not having access to bank accounts, unfortunately having poor credit as a result of the Financial Abuse when compared to the rest of the u. S. Population. Kristin so what does justice mean for the survivor . This is the legal means we need to look at, and we want to work with the social weichert social workers to make sure that their needs are being met. Those are basic needs that every human being deserves. We talked about what can be barriers to the restoration process, for somebody to get that job or where you talk about employment and housing. So what would those barriers be . Sometimes it is like what she said, criminal record relief. You might need an expungement, might need to have that off your record, because it goes back to being unbaked. You cannot get a bank account if you have a criminal record. You cannot get an apartment. You cannot get a job if you have if you do not have a bank account or an apartment. So our attorney workers will help you with that, and the social workers will help file for criminal investigations to help you file that home and get that first step. And there are times where it is about assessing housing. You have to fill out the lease documents and everything else. You think about it. The first time you rented an apartment by yourself. It was scary and you had a lot of paperwork to do and a lot of things you had to prove. Imagine if you had a criminal record and that needs to go away. You might need help in having any identification, so we will have to help you obtain your identification because he will not be able to do all of those without it. Oftentimes, you might have been trafficked and you might have had a child with your abuser, so you will need parental rights to terminated. Determined. It is tough if you do not have a seasoned experienced attorney walking alongside you. Those are all important and we are able to provide those for every. I want to touch on something that not everybody thinks about, which is trauma informed trial prep. We were talking to a sergeant of how important it was these survivors to be able to approach the criminal justice process, but imagine how hard that would be if you have lived a large portion of your recent life in trauma or crisis. You have reasons to not believe people, yet you are supposed to go on stand and face your accuser. So we work with survivors so we can help them be better prepared for that. That might mean doing Virtual Tours of the courtroom they are going into, it might mean that our former product formal prosecutors and staff will help you prepare for the types of questions you may be asked, and the types of questions you have a right to choose not to answer, because it is about empowering these survivors. We want to make sure they are participating in the criminal justice process that they feel it is safe and it is not traumatizing. We all want these people like traffickers off the streets, but we cannot do that at the risk of these survivors. So the trauma informed trial prep is something we are excited to provide at the texas advocacy project. We do work with Police Departments bid i invite you to talk to people in your community about making that something that would be available to them. We think about holistically what you need as a human being, and unfortunately, oftentimes that Court Document is access to Legal Services and that has got to be free. That is one of many things that the texas advocacy project is able to provide. Kristin love hearing about the work, heather and heidi. So a survivor, the first 72 hours, it is critical meeting those basic needs. Both of our panels today, you get those basic needs met. You have got food in your tummy, of roof over your head, somewhat stable for the first 72 hours, and the survivor is driving what their journey will look like at that point. So heidi, what do people look at next once they have a roof over their head and food in their bellies . Heidi this is thinking about how to move forward. And i think this is where these public and private partnerships, collaborations are part of the solutions in supporting survivors to their recovery. As i mentioned earlier, Financial Stability is one of the most important aspects. As alecia mentioned in her panel discussions, to be able to feel that they are part of the community and that they are able to take care of themselves and their family. This starts with providing opportunities for the necessary skills building. That may be participating in a Job Readiness Program that provides both soft skills and hard skills. Providing financial education. I would say for some of our survivors we have worked with at the center, a big part of the abuse was Financial Abuse, so that their trafficker controlled access to their money. So being able to understand how they want to manage their own money, what are the resources that they need whether that is a bank account, whether that is understanding credit or even helping to repair their credit. That is a big part of moving forward. Access to apprenticeships and internships, and i will talk later about some of the work we do at the center, but having the ability to have that experiential learning opportunity again as a step forward in being able to build up their resume and their experiences for that next step, which is an employment opportunity. And lastly, looking long career developments. The what does that look like . That looks like being able to support survivors with their educational goals, being able to have access and understand what our different careers available to them depending on their interests . That is part of that continuum of providing Economic Empowerment. Heather it was really fascinating this morning to hear marriott marion mirroring that training and putting the flip through the door on the whole career element. Heather, i will take it back to you and the work you are doing in texas. Heather it is interesting because everything i am about to say is going to repeat what you said. Really, it is so very important to make sure that the people that have been trafficked in the past have an opportunity to have a successful career and to have that professional development. It is wonderful for us to say that, but how do we make that possible within our own communities . It is looking at these publicprivate partnerships, about building collaboration in a coordinated community response. So i invite you all to talk to your own Workforce Commission and see what they are up for. When we started visiting hours, we understood they were having these large job errors and people would start filling out their resumes and applications, and it would get down to, is there a criminal record that would be a barrier for them to be hired with any of the companies that were at this job fair . It turns out, yes there were. So what are you going to tell these survivors at the time . Sorry, you are no longer employable . Or you might not be employable because of that checkbox today, but i know somebody who can help you remove that checkbox and make sure that you can be employable. We are going to create a relationship and partnership where they can do automatic form referrals to us so we can start that criminal record release process. It all goes back to training their employees and staff too. I hate the word red flags, but truthfully, there are things that people can do when they are talking to someone to kind of help them feel safer and that you are more trustworthy, and they are more likely to disclose and he will be more able to help them get through or over some barriers because you are able to provide resources. There are conversations they could have with people at these job fairs, and then there are conversations within their own community they could be happening. Having. So we train the statewide board and being able to integrate our partnerships into the fact that we are at these job fairs now and they are able to refer to us. Within texas, the Workforce Commission does some of these hard skills and job readiness for the readiness resume builders, and we integrate ourselves into all of that so we can be their referral when they are ready for it. You just never know what somebody else is going through, and somebody else said in the earlier panel, when you speak to these people, somebody might desperately need your help. This is another way of broadening the conversations and bringing opportunities to get in there. Kristin one of the other important things to keep in mind, especially for survivors of Human Trafficking, sometimes they enter as a child, so the only thing they know is trafficking. If they are filling out a job application, what is your past employment, what are they going to say . So we will get to this in a case study, but just being aware of that gap, not just the criminal history they may have where the financial limitations or lack of credit they may have, but just the gap in their employment history, and to be able to give opportunities in that moment is a huge thing. I will hand it over to heidi who will take us through a case study. Heidi thank you. I wanted to make a comment earlier about another reason i believe that publicprivate partnerships are important is because there is a natural link between Healthy Communities and healthy businesses. So you want to have people in your community that you are able to hire, you want to have a ready to contribute workforce, and that is one of the reasons this is so important to be able to provide these opportunities. What i want to do is walk you through a case that we have worked with, a survivor that we worked with at the safe center that has worked with our economic environment coordinator who is here today. First, i want to explain more about the housing grants that we received through ovc. Through the housing grant, we partner with the department of human and health services, Montgomery County in maryland. I would say it is our Robust Partnership where we work with them. They are the experts in finding housing for survivors, so we have a Housing First approach where our goal is to relieve survivors as soon as possible within their own apartments or any room rental, whatever would fit the need of that survivor within that time. So we work to identify what those needs are for themselves and their families. For example, thinking about if they need to think about transportation or do they have children so they want to be close to their childrens schools . What are the basic needs they have, and then understanding if there are any safety concerns. For example, do they want to avoid a certain neighborhood because maybe they were trafficked in that neighborhood and it can be triggering . Things like that are important, so we go through the process of completing a Needs Assessment and working with our partners at the dhhs to identify and work with the survivor to understand what would be the best Housing Solution for them. It has been, i would say, a Fruitful Partnership because they are really trauma informed and want to make sure that we are going through this case at the pace of the survivor, if that makes sense. So they are leading this process and if we need to take a step back, and we explore what their Housing Needs are, then we are able to do that. But the ultimate goal is we are able to provide survivors with Housing Assistance. As for this program, we can provide survivors with between 12 and 18 months of Housing Assistance so they are able to stay in their housing, able to then after that be able to find jobs or go back to school, if that is something they want to do. It is really about finding a safe space for them to live. So just think about what that looks like for you. So we go into this process with the same thoughts. And wanting to find something that is stable, safe, and secure for survivors. Through this grant, we are working towards finding housing for survivors in our community, and as part of this process, the other part of this is the education and employment opportunities. With the survivor that we worked with, we were able to also one of her interests was to be able to gain soft skills, so she participated in the marriott future and training curriculum, Hospitality Industry training. We were one of the pilot sites and we were lucky to be able to train 30 survivors to that pilot. The goal with that was to again provide opportunities for skills building and understanding of the different types of careers within the Hospitality Industry so that if this individual wanted to pursue that option, they were able to do so. The survivor also wanted to gain some Technical Skills. So the survivor participated in another program that we have with a company here in the dmv area. The company has i would say a foundation of Community Philanthropic aspect of their work, so they have partnered with us to provide Technical Skills training in i. T. And systems management, and to also provide paid internship opportunities. So the survivor was able to participate in this program for 16 weeks, gain very important skills, and then find employment. The other aspect of that relationship has also been establishing educational scholarships so for survivors that want to pursue Higher Education or vocational certification, we are able to provide them with those funds thing those funds and support. So what is your call to action . Nobody wanted to get up here at 8 00 in the morning and not have a call to action, right . So if you are a Business Owner and have a way to build policy, i would suggest you do that. Does anybody know, other than those who have already been on the panel, if their company has that policy about Human Trafficking . Crickets . My favorite thing. I would invite you to find out whether or not you do have a policy if you are in a position to make a change, because your policy should be many layered. At the very least, it should say absolutely nobody should be using your companys resources to traffic or exploit another human being for their own good. Right . Computers, done, no. Transportation, done, no. If you find that anyone has put your resources to it, goodbye. Make sure you have the policy in place that you can lean on that immediately. I also invite you to look at policies that protect your staff , because what if somebody you find out later had been trafficked in the past . Is that going to make their employment precarious . Is it going to mean that they get bullied by other employees when they find out that there is a past . We have somebody who came to us once and she had been hired and it was for an organization within the movement, and they found out she had been trafficked in the past and that she later in life did adult entertainment, and they said to get that off your record immediate the immediately, even though there was no arrest. And her coworkers would not let it go. She did end up getting let go from that job, but then she came to us, and now she is on the circuit talking nationally about how terrible that company was, the way they treated their employees and treated somebody who was a survivor and had already been victimized. So policies, policies, policies. I invite you to do that. I invite you to look deeply within yourself and ask what i my doing to be a good bystander to hold myself accountable, to teach my Young Children in the home that if we can reduce demand, we can actually make a dead in that dent in that field and what are we doing at a societal level to see that someone who does not have their needs met might need to be groomed just to have a place to sleep . Kristin i have one more, and that is as a federal agency, we require in many of our solicitations partnerships. For instance, one of our direct services for Human Trafficking solicitation has a specialized categorization, and a number of those come for claimant development and workforce development. They will be watching out for private industries to build and provide opportunities for survivors, and that is where you can come in and provide that opportunity. A couple of things three things to leave you with. One is, as you have hopefully learned today, there are a number of barriers but also Legal Options and relief. Expungement, if you are not familiar with that term, is where they wipe your criminal record, but it is a process. [laughter] there are options. The second thing is, as was indicated in our first panel this morning, is that victimization does not define an individual. They are more than their trauma and the crime committed against them. They are looking for opportunity and a chance. And finally, that there is something that everybody can do, whether it is in the identification, whether it is in training, whether it is employment opportunities, legal relief. So if you are interested in looking for instance, this is a plug for our grantees, the office for victims of crime, if you are looking for resources for those who have survived Human Trafficking, you can go to our website. If you go on our website, you can see a list of all of our Human Trafficking agencies, and you can easily reach out to them as a way of partnership. With any closing thoughts from heather or heidi . Heather i wanted to say thank you for being here today because it takes you guys to step into the arena. We are in our own echo chamber, so thank you for jumping in with us. Heidi the same, thank you both. Kristin if you have questions and you cannot reach us during today, here is our email contact information. Thank you. [applause] thank you for that panel discussion. We will call the next panel up to the state. Stage. Ashley and candace. I can tell you that ups has been a longtime leader in this field. I have worked with kristin who is now the chair of the Ups Foundation. She came down south to join us today. I know that ups is an important leader in this field, and candace is the former director who has worked on trafficking precovid and postcovid. She has been active in this field for a long time, and ashley will have an exciting announcement about the u. S. Chamber based in the atlanta region. Always important for our partners to talk about what we are doing, the numbers in the field, and i can self advocate for the chambers impact, but together with ashley, we have worked to widen the impact. Thank you michael, stephan, glenn, and everyone. My name is ashley chapman. I am a human rights lawyer. I have been working in this space now for 22 years and counting. Wearing multiple different hats in that work. And i am really excited about business engagement. I am quite passionate about it because i dont know if you know, but part of the work that we do is to assess at local Community Levels what is going on. Where are our strengths at this moment, what are our gaps, what are the needs, opportunities . Part of the business is partner engagement. What is true at Community Levels is across the u. S. That we have been in for a number of years now, less than 3 of the effort in local jurisdictions to address Human Trafficking is being carried by the business community. That is significant because what i know to be true, and i know that candace does to in the chamber, is that one business joins the table alongside government and community efforts, miracles can happen. Business does not think in the same way that our nonprofit and government actors do. They are not hindered by the same constraints that are nonprofit and community and government sectors are hindered by sometimes. So i get excited about business engagement, i get really excited about publicprivate partnerships, and candace today has a deep wealth of experience wearing many different hats, and michael shared some of those. Candace was the founder and executive director of truckers against trafficking. Hopefully you have heard of that record. Over 102 million truckers trained to recognize and respond to Human Trafficking. She is also now the director of grantmaking strategy at Ups Foundation, a fairly new role for this year, so that is exciting. She has won a president ial award and sat on the Advisory Committee for the department of transportation. Checking all of the boxes here on publicprivate partnerships. Before we dive into what ups is up to these days on these issues, i am going to ask candace out of the gate im a because i hope this session, what we can dive into is the nittygritty of the art and science of building the partnerships themselves. It is one thing to say, publicprivate partnership, lets do it. But how . How do we do it and how do we do it well . How do we do it in a way that maximizes everyones strength in a way that does not require businesses to become Law Enforcement or nonprofits to to become Business Leaders in the community. How does everyone wearing the hats come in . Candace, thank you for your work all these years. It has been wonderful to watch and support. Out of the gate, top three recommendations for how do you build publicprivate partnerships that work . Candace great to be here. I am going to put my business hat on. I am going to say in order to be a good Business Partner in this, start by conducting an audit. That is an audit of your own infrastructure and assets. Think about the Capital Investments you can actually make towards antitrafficking solutions. So think about and i know we do not like to talk about this, but human capital. Your workforce. Could they be trained to recognize and report Human Trafficking . Could they also raise awareness when they are out and about even potentially doing their jobs . Could they volunteer for local antitrafficking organizations . Think about your intellectual capital, your product, services, data. I give a shout out to microsoft, part of something called tech against trafficking, and they are looking to use reported data on victims and survivors of Human Trafficking. How can that data be used to combat the proliferation of Human Trafficking . Think about your net worth capital. Could your Networking Department do a Marketing Campaign to activate your customer and a partnership base in the space . Here, i want to give a shout out to a former partner, the american tract trucking association. It is so hard. I recently left them, so if i go back and forth, you will have to forgive me, but when they started, it was a mantoman campaign. We partnered with American Trucking association, and we asked the best of the best of professional drivers to be a part of that social Marketing Campaign with us. And there were six foot banners out on the freedom drivers product, which is a global exhibit that travels the nation, and it is a campaign through the social media channels, and it shows why deleting leading truckers do not purchase sex and men talking to men about it. Think about the net worth capital investment. What about your reputational capital . So your Public Affairs team. What antitrafficking legislation could your Public Affairs team actually support . How could you use your brand and voice to back some of these laws that are incredibly needed . And of course, financial capital. The antitrafficking movement is woefully underfunded, so we need to think about what are all the support levers financially we can pull from grants to sponsorship dollars, to employee donations, to even onetime donations. One of the things ups does is provide free calls of the antitrafficking Campaign Across the nation, and this is an exhibit that educates audiences on the rally at ash realities of Human Trafficking. So think about those Capital Investments you can make. Step two, you need to get leadership bias. Now you are aware that these are the Business Units that need this leadership to make this happen. You want to get it all the way up to your executive Leadership Team, but sometimes it takes the passion of employees to convince your executive Leadership Team to come in. And then you need to build those partnerships. You need to look for ngos that can have those interventions within your existing infrastructure. You do not have to restructure who you are as a business. You are looking for the right ngo and Public Agency partners. For ups, we partner with the department of Homeland Security to train our pilots, and we use ngos to train our drivers. Ashleigh that is so good. You said a word, audit, and my attorney brain picked up on the gaps. So if your brain turned off after that word for a second, let me say most of the laws that are passed nationally in your industries at the state level are aimed at auditing from a perspective of making sure you are not doing harm in your business practices, in your supply chains. That is important. But here is the deal. What kendis was encouraging you to do was to audit in a different way. About the strengths of your company and where you are working and what you do, and how that can be leveraged to become part of the solutions to end Human Trafficking. So i challenge you as a Business Leader in this room to see yourself not just responsible for not being part of the problem, but coming into your communities where you live and operate and become part of the solution alongside partners. Ups and tat together have pioneered so much of this together. Kudos to everyone who has shared, but tell us a bit about all that you guys were able to accomplish to get it through that publicprivate partnership. Kendis let me give a shout out to Nikki Clifton who is currently the president of the Ups Foundation but was at Public Affairs, and she was my counterpart when i was the executive director at tat, so it is great to be working for her at the foundation. From training over 100,000 of our professional drivers to seeing those drivers volunteer, to actually adopting an antitrafficking policy, with such focus ups has done that, see ups donate over 8 million for counter trafficking efforts, and that is on the employee donations side. So to see those things happen and to recognize we have only just begun. I am excited to see we will be building out an entire circle of champions across ups, antitrafficking champions. It takes us to a whole other level, and now we will be partnering with tat, training our professional drivers that the foundation is empowering against trafficking to create a training video that will be for all of our employees. So we will keep these the driver specific ones, but they are creating a version of the training that will be available for all our employees to recognize and report trafficking where we live, work, and travel. And the core parts of that video can be used to adapt and tweak it for other corporate partners. So i am excited for where we will take this next step. Ashleigh this coming fall, one of the publications we are excited to work with the u. S. Chamber on is deep diving in cities that are shining light examples of businesses coming to the table as part of the solution to end Human Trafficking. Our first city we will be deep diving into his atlanta. How many of you go to atlanta or are from atlanta . Woo. Atlanta has done some Amazing Things they are, and ups has been an early adapter of all of that too. Can you share with us a preview of a company that is deep diving alongside local . Partners to support the Atlanta Community . Kendis absolutely. The city is near and dear to the heart of ups. One of the things we have done is partner with a host of local ngos, from a center that provides legal advocacy and trauma care, to united way, providing trauma informed care, to wellspring living. They are an Amazing Organization that provides restorative care, and their Training Academy is looking to stay on nationwide. We also partner with city of refuge, which does job placement, job training with an 80 sustained success rate. And also, we are part of the firsts commission. We also looked partner with a lot of the community and Business Leaders across atlanta. Again, supporting publicprivate partnerships across atlanta. We are looking to see and support those homegrown atlanta approaches to scale, and that is where wellspring living comes in , specifically supporting their Training Institute in their continuum of care model, which is scaling the success of the restorative model across the nation. This is a new program and we are so happy to see this move forward and are putting our money where our mouth is the hinds that at the Ups Foundation. And of course, cannot say enough about first Lady Marty Kemp will be sharing with us in a few moments about her national coalition. She has been a tireless supporter of antitrafficking movement in the state of georgia. From National Coalitions to spearheading the coalition, hoping to pass antitrafficking legislation. There was a psa at the Atlanta Airport earlier this year where she had the governor, the attorney general, the mayor, the chief of police head to the airport, heads of the industry that were there for that lunch. We are proud to be partnering with her office and applauds that effort. Ashleigh more on that soon. Last question is in our final moments together. Dues and donts dos and donts. We have Business Leaders and partners here with us from across the states. What would you do to build those relationships . Kendis dont think this happens overnight. This just takes time. Going from the ngo side where we are urgent, we need to get this done, to not understanding what it takes at a corporate level, have mercy. So be patient. It does not happen overnight, but hang in there and keep the momentum going. To anybody in the business in this room, if you have passion, it will be up to you. You will be shocked if youre momentum and passion keep going, what you can do. The power of one. I saw essentially my oldest sister be in one video, and that was so crazy. But the power of one person and the difference you can make, it really is tremendous. I would say, do not think this will happen overnight, but keep the momentum moving forward. Two, again, i want to reinforce these businesses. You do not have to restructure, you do not have to go hire someone. This is about assessing your current infrastructure and finding the right partners to adopt and embed counter trafficking solutions within your infrastructure. You have a special bosque employed to fight Human Trafficking. And do believe in the power of the difference you can make. When we started truckers against trafficking, it was my mom and three sisters. We knew nothing about Human Trafficking, nothing about the Trucking Industry whatsoever. Today, i know because of truckers against trafficking, it has led to the recovery of victims. So think about that. You did not know exactly how your work will influence, what impact it will make, but if you can help to lift even one human being out of this horrific crime, it is all worth it. So continue the work you are doing, your passion matters. Ashleigh thank you for all you do. We will take questions during the lunch hour. We will hand it back to you. [applause] michael i am going to call up the next stage, which will be moderated by my colleague, sarah armstrong. Many of you know our charter members are the 50 states, and among other associations. With a different state and local chambers, we are very fortunate. We have one of the chambers here with us today, so i will call everyone up to the stage right now. Good morning and good to see everybody. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, michael. I work very closely with our chambers and associations across the country, so i have the good fortune of seeing the work they do at the state and local level as we coordinate on federal and state issues. Thank tire whats secretary of state for joining us and melissa cox. Iowa has an Important Program you have created, and we are delighted to talk about how you have been successful in creating this publicprivate partnership. We will show a video in a minute, but before we do, secretary, i wanted you to tell us a bit about the history and why you were first inspired by getting involved in this. You were a mayor in sierra rapids. Tell us about that story. For me, it was a passion and a sense of trying to do more for our community, but my staff and i back in our community of cedar rapids, our organization was putting together a presentation about Human Trafficking. This and into these stories, it hit me really hard. Because i was the mayor, and mayors deal with things like making sure we have good neighborhoods and good Police Forces and Economic Development, working closely with all of our citizens on the quality of life. Nowhere did we talk about Human Trafficking, so it definitely was slipping between the crack in a significant way and it struck me impact fully. In the drive back to the capital city of des moines, talking about this, i thought we have got to do more. And as a statewide elected official, i felt that i had significant policy to do something. With a quarter of a million businesses going through our office every year, there was a national steppingstone to be able to take some kind of action to start. For me, that was a motivator to the new process and starting to form our iowa businesses against trafficking. Sara we will watch a video about this coalition and come back to talk about it. [video clip] Human Trafficking is a form of modernday slavery, and it happens when people are forced to perform labor, services, or sexual acts. Human trafficking affects thousands of people across the united states, and it can happen to everyone anyone. You can take action and fight to prevent this crime in iowa. Iowa businesses against trafficking is a recognition and Education Program from the iowa secretary of state that helps local businesses prevent human through education and awareness. As a member of the organization, your company can inform Industry Partners about the impact of Human Trafficking in iowa by empowering others to learn and do something. You can make a difference in our communities. Subscribe to membership on our website, and we will provide you with training and resources to equip you and your employees. As part of the organization, you will receive a window into the places of business and be recognized publicly on our website doing real work to combat trafficking. You can also Access Community outreach campaigns. To your part to prevent Human Trafficking. Learn something, do something. Join iowa businesses against trafficking at ibat. Iowa. Gov. [end video clip] sara tell us about the program. How did you begin this program, and how long did it take to get it up and running . Sec. Pate there was behindthescenes effort to put a structure together that we felt comfortable with. I did not look at our offices in becoming an expert on Human Trafficking. We were more a way to amplify the messaging. So we started with many of the groups that are here today. We started with our own association of businesses industry, our statewide chamber, and other state associations like the hotel motel folks, like the motor truckers, like the Restaurant Association and others. And quickly, about 30 of these businesses and organizations were with us. We also reached out to the large advocate groups in our state, and the ones that have the expertise at the table with us. We launched at the capital over a year ago, and within a short window, we had nearly 700 businesses across the state join us in this endeavor. With that, the concept of learning something and doing something, we quickly identified 350,000 employees within those 700 businesses. So you can see the multiplying factor, and that continues to grow. Chambers of commerce across the state were a big part of that as well, because they have members. You can see the multiplying factor we are building as we put this word out there. We are looking to build an army to combat Human Trafficking. Sara and why in the secretary of States Office . Sec. Pate the fact we have so many businesses going through our organization, that was a natural thing happening through the resources, but also the fact we have a program in our state, something called safe at home, where it is an address Confidentiality Program for victims of domestic violence, stocking, violent crimes. It is a confidential address system so folks do not have to worry about their potential abusers to know where they live. To me, it was significant in that sense because that program alone, we launched it over seven years ago, looking to help these victims be able to come out of the shadows and feel safe in their homes. Some of those folks were victims of Human Trafficking as well, so they were already within our system, we were already touching their lives, and we thought we could do more for them as well. So you put the two together, and very selfserving. Again, statewide elected official bringing multiple partners to the table. We have had partnerships with our attorney general, but it is something i have made a primary focus and it elevates the attention of what we want to get across. Sara so your personal passion helped make it a success and the reason why he wanted to make it more involved. Alyssa, i will tip it over to you. Chambers of commerce are part of the initiative, but you also had a personal story of why you wanted to get engaged. Melissa before i came to the chamber of commerce, i had the opportunity to champion a bill for dorothys house, and this is a home and opportunity within the des moines metro area for victims of Human Trafficking. It is a home where our victims go and learn the life skills to be reinserted back into the community, so whether it is job skills, finding that financial security, going back to the basics of life because those basics of life have been taken from them. I worked with the Homebuilders Association of greater des moines, and we had 90 of the materials donated to go back into these victims versus building a home. So when the staff came and said we want the chamber to be apartness a part of this, it was a nobrainer. It happens in our community. We are naive to think it doesnt. Sometimes it takes a scary moment to really get people to take action. How are the chambers coordinating together, working with the secretary of States Office to branch out . Something we do, our membership or data director has a membership package. E. U. Membership will across all of our new members. Within social media around the program. Then we hosted a threeday festival. We are at over 65,000 people attending over those three days. We show and see something, Say Something video. All of our vendors watch this video so they see something they can Say Something. We have a partnership with the ink any department, our schools, our Community Colleges where we are able to educate our vendors at this festival along with our volunteers, the heads of all the different organizations. Theyll have a sticker is wit which is they see something and then they Say Something. We also work with way solution and they provide a safety camera on our site. These cameras were developed to stop the theft on construction sites. If somebody reported a trafficking incident, they could use this camera to say that joe person had a red shirt on. Instead of watching hours of footage, they have these cameras that show all the times that bed pops up so that the timeline is not wasting hours of footage. We are utilizing that camera at our festival. We have hundreds on our event site. Everybody uses them. Those are just some of the things we are able to do in a growing community to help provide that safety for any victim that happens to be there. Quick so much of it is awareness. And people looking out at what is trafficking. I like your festival and what you have done to try to help explain it to the community. When businesses get engaged in this program, why dont you explain a little bit about what that Partnership Means and how it works. We designed the program to get them introduced in any unique situation. When we asked them to learn something, i encourage all of you here to look at the website. We put together with collaboration with their advocate. We want them to get all the basic information they want to get. We offer them through our newsletters. Ideas of what other people are doing. We have season responses. They put their billboards on their trucks. They have the coasters. They put that information on the one side of the coasters. All of these establishments have that information in front of them. You heard about the stickers and the bathrooms. This is being done very aggressively across our state. They have been helping us get our education outreach. The big part is educating our own employees. 50,000 more people who know something about Human Trafficking in our state. We are doing a little circle here and going back to our chambers and our associations to drill down a little more so you can get all of the witnesses more involved as we go forward. Talk a little bit more about the education. You may have a company that is engaged. The additional reason that you have, tell us about that. That is something you heard about marriott in the video. That is done quite often by businesses. They have their own video. The state of iowa developed a video to be used across our state for other employees. It could be a mom and pop shop or a fortune 500. When i would visit with them, i asked them why did you join and then looked at me and said why wouldnt i . I lived here. This is my community. These are my employees. Why would i not want them to have the safest environment . They take it to heart. We make it as flexible as we can from what their needs are and how they want to approach getting in front of them. I will use my own business as an example. We have a small construction company. We do an annual session i what trafficking is about for them. We also mail out to our client information on Human Trafficking. If theyre going to take money from the vendors, they might as well learn about Human Trafficking. We also encourage the business to tap into the advocate groups in our community for speakers to come in and present information. It is a full point press to get the information in their hands. Back to you in your community. Obviously we talked about how community trafficking can happen anywhere. What has been the response in your members and how are they getting engaged . A similar experience that secretary tate had. Why wouldnt we . We live, work and play in our communities and we house our Small Businesses. That is the return on investment for them. A saver community makes their children safe in school and provides an opportunity for their customers and employees to be one of the partnerships with our school system. We have one of the Largest School systems the second largest in the state. We worked with them, the chamber, the police department. A young girl overheard a friend speaking about this man or this guy she met on social media and she said something to her teacher. She said something didnt feel right and police got involved and they stopped this young girl from being taken. She was set to meet this man and he is now arrested. He came from florida and was ready to bring her back to florida with him. With the strong partnerships we have and the ability to educate young people from kindergarten on up and let them know that if you hear something that doesnt sound right, Say Something, we are here to help and no matter if it is a Small Business in the library, anywhere in our community, we are here to help as a protector community. How do you coordinate with the different partnerships working with you all . There are a lot of different pieces to this. How do you go about coordinating with all those different organizations working with you . There are a lot of people out there trying to help. The big challenges putting them all together so you know where they are at. We have 99 counties in our state. Each Community Takes a little bit of a different approach. A big part of education is to identify them all and help catalog so people can provide that source and go in my county, who do i have . We also work with large statewide organization, the iowa network against trafficking. They are direct advocates on this issue. They are the ones we lean on. That all the about how to spot trafficking and how to help a victim. I am going to bow to them. We do that consistently. I want to really complement the fact that it is really multiplying every day. People want to be a part of it, we just need to figure out how to package it so that it fits everybody. There isnt just one thing that fits every Company School for everything. We really have to have some of the catalog and select something that will fit for them. It does make an impact. It really does. The examples we have seen in the short time weve been involved in this are rewarding and inspiring. I think we need to be able to understand it. I would Largest Convenience station operation put them in their bathrooms. One of the stories they shared with us is they had an incident where a young lady visited the restroom there and they were out pumping gas. She left the bathroom. She said anyhow, i am being trafficked. The store manager hit her away, followed by enforcement and said they called Law Enforcement. I want to point that out. We are not asking you to be that person. They called Law Enforcement, help this woman get out of the situation and arrested this gentleman. That is one story amongst many more things we have seen happen because of some of the average businesses are doing. I want to encourage the fact that there are result out there. Not only did the individual see the sticker but they can be a what to do. They knew how to respond to that education that was so important. Otherwise, they may not have believed this person but through their training and education, they were ready to prepare to do the right thing and called Law Enforcement which was the right response. So lets talk a little bit about the success of the program. What has that meant for Human Trafficking numbers in iowa to mark what has been the impact you have seen since the program started . Like a Neighborhood Watch program. You want your neighborhood. You would alert Law Enforcement. Basically we are trying to encourage people to do that on the trafficking side. Whether it is labor trafficking or sex trafficking. These traffickers have gotten so much more sophisticated. They are not hanging out in the bigger cities. There are Tactical Squad at there looking for them. They are hanging out more in the remote area. They are using social media as a way to connect and hook up. Eyes and ears. People watching and then letting them know what is happening. That is the kind of message we are conveying to our businesses to pass on. You talk a little bit about the impact to businesses in the community. Talk a little bit more about the why. This is not essentially revenue in the pocketbooks of the companies to get involved. But it is the right thing to do. Talk more about the wife for many of your businesses. Like i mentioned, when you put your Small Business into a community, most likely you will live there and worked there. Your kids go to school there. The return is just that Safe Community so you can feel comfortable sending your child to school, you can feel comfortable to let them walk into a store and have the safety they need that there will come on that evening. Another return would be on the workforce. We talked about those skills there are lots of organizations are providing these victims. We are all looking for workforce. Small businesses have not returned after covid with the workforce they had. We need to be working together to find workforce we are providing for Small Businesses. We are developing those skills for those victims early in the workforce and again, it is a winwin for Small Businesses. It is an Economic Development issue. Companies looking to move into iowa, see that you will have a serious program on this issue, it is for them to see Safer Communities if they need to bring in talent to the state of iowa. Individuals will feel safer about living there. Because you have a program that is really beneficial. Anything along those lines you have seen from corporate engagement . I think that is where it is really important as a chamber for us to have the partnership with our local pd, our local fire department, our schools, Community Colleges, elected officials so that we can all be working together and that working against each other in a Different Initiative that we have to provide a Safe Community. We all think our community is the best community. If we can kind of put our efforts where our mouth is, it really is important when communities and businesses are looking to come into think any. We have a Greater Des Moines Partnership and there are 28 local chambers. We need to spread the word that this is something we are doing and show the importance of a program like this. I think we just grow stronger every day. I think partnering Law Enforcement is a big part of what we are doing in iowa. We worked with the Attorney Generals Office as we mentioned but also the local police department. City government are joining our programs as well. They are employers trying to reach as many people as they can. I think the more we do that, the more successful we can be. I had an opportunity to present to our National Association on secretary of state. My point in presenting his id to more is to adapt and we have mississippi and tennessee jumping in and doing the program. I got a text while we were sitting here. I want my peers to join me. The more of these average we put out their statewide and nationwide, i think the better off we will be. Some of you rotary and international has been a big proponent. Our stay, one of our local rotary started this initiative, got it out there, made it a priority in their district, took the district level all the way up. That is what we do. We took this to the rotary club as well. All these chambers of commerce across the state, all the businesses they represent, on the records across the state and all the people they represent, that is a lot of people. I think that is how you build the army. Across the park transition we got, the breaking news not interested in it. How are you coordinate with them . What are the Lessons Learned you are sharing with them . It doesnt have to be identical to yours. Each state will be having different ways of creating. How are you coordinating with the states and helping them . We did it right here in washington. My staff is very good about giving them the basic information of what we did limited to early organizing. We started with the major change associations. He partnered with the advocate group, the larger one at first and then you branch out. That is the basic tool. I had to remind my staff we are not huge. We dont have a large state agency here. We had to make sure we were certain about staying in ehrling. You cant do it all. It is about partnering. We shared information with them, we got in our hand and then essentially we would say all of these good ideas, borrow them, take them, make them grow. Lessons learned. As you are talking to other states interested in these programs, what are the things you would recommend or what were the hard moments . The easy moments . The opportunities you would want to share with them . The biggest one was explaining to them why the secretary of state would be involved in this. You secretary of States Office has a little bit of a different mission. But we share a couple of basic things. Most handle formal registration. We also handle business and commerce areas. We do address confidentiality because of rotor vendors voter registration. It seemed wrong for us to penalize our people who were voting by putting information out there. Whether they were stocked or stocked or witnessed crimes. The natural next step is you have trafficking and these are victims. I was trying to convince them that you do have a role here. You are statewide elected official. You are elected to office to lead so lead on an issue. Logistically speaking, it is not overwhelming. You dont have to have huge staff. You have all of these great partners. I have my staff that make me look good. What are the Lessons Learned . Why should other states take this on . When we first started, our initiative was to get it out are Small Businesses and then i got struck by something. I was like why am i not telling my peers . It is easy. That is something i started to do. We have 20 chambers. We are going to tell the story. We are going to tell them you should be doing this. We do need an army. We need an army of people out there trying to help these victims. It is one day at a time. I think just keep telling the story and keep telling people about it. The more we can feel comfortable talking about this issue, the more we can combat it and hopefully get rid of it. I think it is just keep talking about it. Talking about a going forward, where do you see the Program Going from here . What are some of your longterm goals of this program . Obviously you thought something big. In a year and a half it has gone public. Where are you taking it from here . I did not want this to be a flash in the pan. Those causes happen. This is the one i am with this year. We worked hard to make sure it stays fresh. We tried to share with them what their companys are doing. We have to continue to step up. I am not satisfied we have reached enough people yet. We are not a large state. Put it in perspective. You might have contacts and liaisons. Everyone understands it. I submit to you and i dont want to over dramatize it. But you look around this room right now, many of your going to be touched by Human Trafficking. In one way or another. That is a real reality. These are things we can do every day. That is still going to be our primary mission. I am going to put a plug in right now and ask you to go to our website and pull that information out and push it out there for us. We would like to continue to share with you. This has become the International Sign for distress. We will help. It is something the Mother Truckers report pretty aggressively. We can do these little things. Kind of like an empty swimming pool. He truly Human Trafficking. Clarkes take on this r d. One of the things important about these efforts is you have to have a dedicated staff. But also the resources. Talk about how other states can find the resources within their own state. It doesnt have to cost a lot. In our case, it was mostly a commitment of my personal time. Making the commitment to get out there and speak on the issue. From a staffing standpoint, we start with one. Now we have to. It is a large staff. We lean and hard on you. Younger kids are the ones doing other presentations out there. We just ask them to share it with us so others know what these businesses are doing to get the message out. Email newsletters dont cost a lot. We put some brochures together. That is our biggest budget item. It is not about to. In State Government we have to watch many dollars we have. But i am not shy about leaning on private partnerships. If i feel we need to do something, i will give a card to my businesses in my state and say would you sponsor and print this brochure . That is the great thing about this publicprivate partnership. There are a lot of things you can do faster and quite frankly better. So we are going to take advantage of those resources. An Excellent Way to talk about why it is so important for this publicprivate partnership. Part of the whole goal is to do something and just start something. It builds from there. Talk a little bit about how the chambers have grown in their engagement. You helped to bring some in. What are some tidbits of how youre going to grow into this . You find the influencers. Those are your chambers of commerce, those are your rotaries. Those are the people that care about your community. They are out there raising money for your community. Doing things to better your community. Finally influencers, they are there and willing to help. They are willing to spread the message. That is something secretary payton and the staff has done well. They found the ones that are like people are doing it so i am going to do it. That is important. That is what i would do. He finally knows influencers willing to spread the story. Final thoughts, everything i did not cover in our conversation . Cracks it did not cost the chamber anything to be part of this program. We spread the message to our businesses. The return on investment is the Safe Community we all want to live, work and play. I know i said that numerous times but it is true. As a mom of two young girls, i will make is to be able to walk down the street and going to the boutiques and going to the stores and i dont have to worry about their safety. I want the community to be safe. I i challenge each of them to join, join the force, join the army and be a part of providing a Safe Community for everybody who lives, works and plays in it. I cant say much better than that but i want to thank the u. S. Chamber for putting this out there so we can continue to spread this message. I want to thank all the partners , whatever you are doing on your communities to get that done. We can do it. We have seen that army being built. Those are the ones that will continue to schedule. I am very confident of that. My first goal is to eliminate trafficking in the great state of iowa. Then we will move to the next date and the next day. We will keep pushing it out until we can say that with some satisfaction. We are all very proud of where we live. Until everybody feels safe in our community, the work isnt done. You will find some information you might encourage her state to take on. There are 50 states. Our work isnt done. Lets go back to encourage or secretary of state r d, rebuff and duplicate in your state. Thank you for what youre doing here. When youre doing in iowa is very impressive. Thank you both. That was a great presentation and we have one more before lunch. I have the pleasure and honor of introducing mr. Cardell moran who was the director of the u. S. Department of Homeland Security center for counseling Human Trafficking. Michael said we were lucky to have him. We are. The Blue Campaign recently joined and i can tell you that being a part of the campaign, this is a fantastic change for us. This has provided us an opportunity and availability to help Human Trafficking around the country. Mr. Murray has 16 component agencies to advance Law Enforcement programs, protect victims and enhance prevention efforts by looking at all this. This comes down to the office in san diego. This is one of the busiest offices in the country. We saw offices responsible for all investigations that think that occurred, it covers the california one. Criminal an allergist. He also served as a deputy special agent in charge of the issues as i office in baltimore. He served as the assistant special agent in charge of houston and in that capacity oversaw the investigation activities. He was a resident agent in charge in vermont and galveston and certified undercover operations. He served as the unit chief and acting deputy of the cybercrime center. The Computer Forensics program and the support Crimes Program for each ssi. He began his federal career in 1994 as an import specialist in charleston, south carolina. He holds a bachelor degree of psychology from the citadel, the Military College of south carolina. It is my pleasure to introduce to you director cormorant for cch t. Class combating Human Trafficking come from public and private entities, Standing Shoulder to shoulder to eradicate this heinous crime from our world. Good morning. That quote from the Nobel Peace Prize winner goes to the heart of why we are here today. I thought in an appropriate way to start off. It is an honor and pleasure to stand among so many people with a collective vision of eradicating Human Trafficking. Conspiring to share a room with individuals who are making a difference by bringing attention to Human Trafficking working in department private and public sectors to identify it. In other services to its members. It is important it was encouraging to speak to you but because the positions do so, i think you offer Standing Shoulder to shoulder with us in this fight. As you know, it is a global fight. That is why as a nationwide fight. The victims in every u. S. State and demographic. It is a thriving, profitable industry for traffickers in a fight that requires coordinated response with the public and private sectors working together using the unique capabilities, tools and skills to stop traffickers, bring them to justice and assist victims in their journey to becoming survivors. This is a fight we at the department of Homeland Security are in with you every day. Though this morning, i would like to speak with you about what we are at the center. What dhs is doing to combat these crimes. For those of you who dont know it was created in 2020. This is the investigative arm of dhs. 16 component within dhs. I work comes from active assistance, intelligence, training and outreach. We support a victim centered approach to Human Trafficking and investigation. And in 56 countries around the globe. Providing subject matter expertise from investigators and analysts who spent years investigating sex and labor trafficking in the field. Many of those personnel in our Program Managers serve as great sources of information and guidance with the investigators currently in the field to encounter trafficking work. Our National Public Awareness Campaign educating the public about Human Trafficking was recently realigned under cch tape and is critical to our production and partnerships. The Campaign Works to protect victims by educating the public, Law Enforcement and key Industry Partners like you to recognize and respond appropriately to the indicators of Human Trafficking. To develop multilingual human centered and culturally sensitive products such as yes, information sheets, brochure and other service announcements. Last year, the Blue Campaign trained over 8000 members in the public and over 2000 members of industry and distributed over 1. 3 million pieces of outreach material. In fiscal year 2022, there are over 1300 investigations and their best in more than 3600 individuals in connection with Human Trafficking. From this case is, more than 760 trafficking victims were identified. I know the chamber supported that act and we thank you for that support. The act made our center permanent it also authorized 40 million in funding to carry out our mission. That is a game changer. We are here to stay. We will not have a level of staffing and will administer support and protection programs. The act also realigned the Blue Campaign within c. We will also be able to enhance and expand the Blue Campaign outreach efforts. I would like to point you owe point you also our annual report that details the contract trafficking work and every dhs component. I am very proud of last years report and what it says about how we are attacking labor trafficking on many fronts. You can find it on dhs. Gov by entering the keywords entering the keywords annual report 2022. Lets talk about why we are here. Persia. Dhss Human Trafficking strategy is rooted and detection, prosecution and partnership. That means providing training and outreach to prevent and detect Human Trafficking, identifying and stabilizing victims by using a victim centered approach to our operations and working with prosecutors to ensure successful prosecution. In collaborating with our state, local, tribal, federal, private and Industry Partners to identify victims and bring traffickers to justice. The fourth is a critical element to a successful investigation and prosecution of trafficking crimes. We cant successfully combat Human Trafficking without members of industry and the public. We are grateful to collaborate in sharing information and expertise. As a Law Enforcement organization, we have legal means to gather information and data when it comes to ongoing criminal investigations. We are also appreciative of those companies that reached out to us. In furtherance of our shared impacting Human Trafficking. This is not theoretical. You have seen our collaboration victims being identified and removed from the trafficking situations. For example, last year, a woman who is being labor trafficked in the Service Industry in birmingham, alabama saw an outreach poster outlining trafficking indicators in the womens restroom. Realizing that that she was a victim of labor trafficking but without a phone to call the hotline, she feigned an injury the next day so she would be taken to the doctor. The doctor happened to be a medical volunteer who received training on how to respond to possible trafficking cases. That dr. Called the tip line. They opened an investigation on the trafford which is ongoing. In another case, also last year, hsi received a tip from an Airline Pilot who suspected a teenage girl of traveling on his flight might be a victim of Human Trafficking. Further investigation revealed one of the men communicated with the girl was a sex trafficking. And part of a large criminal enterprise. The victim was connected to a local Nongovernmental Organization for support services and a criminal case was launched against the trafficker. The pilot had learned about the indicators of trafficking through training he received under the lightning initiative. The department of Transportation Program helped Aviation Personnel identify potential traffickers and victims. They reported their suspicions to Law Enforcement. This is a valued partner in our fight against Human Trafficking. The Blue Lightning Initiative currently has 129 aviation partners enrolled in the program. Our Blue Campaign personnel engaged regularly with Industry Partners and provided them with educational materials to reach their organizations membership. Those materials can be requested on the Blue Campaign website at dhs. Gov Blue Campaign. There are printed materials and awareness videos both general and for specific industries and areas such as convenience retail, transportation, health care, Law Enforcement, education and hospitality. It is simple. The more people we educate about Human Trafficking, the more victims we can identify and assist. Within your own business is the best way to help protect victims and familiarize yourself with indicators of Human Trafficking and what they should do if they see those indicators at work or in their daily lives. Lets face it, trafficking is everywhere. We might observe trafficking in our travels or in our own neighborhoods as private citizens. Knowing what it looks like and making sure you pass that knowledge on is an important way to combat Human Trafficking. We talked about sex and labor trafficking but i want to mention something dhs is actively involved in. The prevention of forced labor in the your supply chain. Our work in the space provides another activity for partnership with industry. This hurts vulnerable workers, lawabiding businesses and consumers. Imported goods produces to present a risk for the public. Was the prohibits the they regularly detain shipments after the notion of dispassion. This will effectively enforce trade and criminal laws prohibiting the forced labor and hold those who are benefiting accountable. As Business Owners, make yourself aware of the products you buy is one way to prevent Human Trafficking around the world. One way to do this is review the website. Especially the resource guide entitled Due Diligence and Global Supply chains. Angela technology that i see on the u. S. Chamber of commerce website. It is about education and vigilance. The department is also dedicated to eliminating forced labor in our own supply chain. This is the senior accountable special ensuring the department does not take part in any acquisition tainted by forced labor. We seek to ensure the integrity of our supply chain by limiting contractual requirements, audits and suspension of departments. All members of the i was asian workforce are required to do forced labor training every two years to ensure they do not enforce the requirements of the federal regulation to combat Human Trafficking and forced labor. As i and my remarks, i want to make it very clear how grateful we are for what you do within your own organizations and the chamber. We truly believe in the power of businesses. Our outreach efforts are evidence of that. I encourage you to reach out for those resources, contact them if youre interested in training. Stay vigilant. Know that we will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with you as we continue to expand and refine our efforts to combat trafficking in all its forms. Thank you. Quick thank you, tom. Thank you director moran. With that we will take about 45 minutes to an hour for lunch. I have one challenge if you are at lunch, if youre sitting with somebody you know, you can talk about the program but if you can play Musical Chairs and may be said with people you dont know, talk about what you learned and how you can Exchange Contact information and the part of the solution, th