Anti-trafficking groups across the US have sent Congress a letter raising alarms about the Trump administration’s failure to release $88m in funding to protect survivors of human trafficking.
The letter from 74 legal, religious and advocacy groups says that the US Department of Justice has frozen funding for more than 100 service organizations across the country that help victims “escape their traffickers” and gain access to “the services and support that they need to survive”.
The groups are asking Congress to push the administration to restore the funding to protect thousands of trafficking survivors across the US. The plea for help comes after a Guardian investigation found the administration has rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking. Trump officials deny the federal government has made any retreat on anti-trafficking.
An array of local, state and national groups signed the letter, including Freedom Network USA, the Human Trafficking Legal Center, the Minnesota Alliance on Crime and the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
“Allowing these funds to disappear would enable human trafficking and put survivors’ lives at risk,” the letter says. “Many regions will lose their only service provider, leaving survivors with no safe emergency housing, case management, or counseling. Communities will be made less safe as traffickers would exploit with impunity, and fewer survivors will be able to come forward.”
Many service organizations saw their federal funding end as of the last day of September, according to Freedom Network USA, a national coalition of service providers, researchers and trafficking survivors.
In response to a query from the Guardian last month about the frozen funding, the justice department said money appropriated by Congress would be spent eventually, but that organizations that received money in the past wouldn’t necessarily do so in the future. Future appropriations, the department said, would be made in accordance with Trump administration priorities.
The letter from the anti-trafficking groups notes: “Congress has overwhelmingly voted to continue these programs over the last 25 years … Protecting and fully funding these lifesaving programs is critical to protecting survivors and preventing re-exploitation.”
