New legal weapons needed to fight human trafficking

It’s welcome news that police have broken up a Bay Area prostitution ring and rescued six women who were being used as sex slaves. According to prosecutors, the six were part of a group of some 100 women from China, South Korea and Eastern Europe who were rotated among several brothels in the area and then shipped to other cities around the United States.

But make no mistake — those women are just a tiny fraction of the victims of human trafficking, which is what we’re talking about here. According to the International Labor Organization, 25 million people are currently being trafficked, and the profits may be as much as $150 billion annually.

Women and girls represent well over half the victims — 71% is the current estimate — the vast majority of them for sexual exploitation. (Traffickers also enslave people for forced labor, forced marriages and forced organ donations.)

Catching these criminals is painstaking work. Police needed two years of investigation before they broke up the Bay Area ring. And for every trafficker who’s convicted, there are plenty of eager replacements, given the outsized rewards.

The chief federal weapon against this terrible crime is the Trafficking Victims Protection

Act, which was passed in 2000 and has been updated three times. Now the law has to be updated again to keep pace with the traffickers’ changing tactics, since technology has become their chief tool for roping in victims. The online exploitation of vulnerable young people has been especially acute during the pandemic when so many were isolated, frustrated and confused. Internet advertising, social media, chat rooms — they are all part of the problem, and Washington must respond.

The Communications Decency Act also needs to be rewritten so that digital platforms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter no longer have legal immunity no matter what they publish, a situation that has allowed Big Tech to shrug off predatory material on its sites. Critics say this might constrict the free flow of information on the internet, which is a serious concern. But Congress must find a way to prevent traffickers from using those platforms to lure victims.

Until recently, it seemed hopeless to expect action from a divided and paralyzed Congress. But now there is cause for optimism. President Biden has a deep understanding of the evils of human trafficking from his decades of service in the Senate, and there is bipartisan support for taking action. So while there may be disagreements on the precise steps to take — some advocates want more attention paid to the abuses of forced labor, others to sexual exploitation — enough common ground can be found to work out an effective compromise.

Meanwhile, local law enforcement agencies need to crack down on trafficking rings whenever and wherever they find them. It’s difficult, time-consuming work. But as the recent Bay Area arrests prove, the payoff can save lives and, ideally, long prison terms for some of the worst kinds of criminals around.