Press Releases

Washington, D.C. (February 27, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered opening remarks at the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance hearing on protecting victims of human trafficking and online exploitation.

Below are Ranking Member Raskin’s remarks at today’s hearing.

WATCH Ranking Member Raskin’s opening statement.

Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance 
Hearing on “Protecting Victims of Human Trafficking and Online Exploitation”
February 27, 2025

Thank you very kindly for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman, and greetings to our witnesses. Thank you for your testimony, which I know is harrowing and difficult in some cases, and I thank you for your public service.

Trafficking is modern-day slavery and it reflects a time of cruelty and barbarity when everything is for sale—not just public office in government—but human beings, people, women, children, laborers. And we know that labor trafficking, sex trafficking, child sex abuse material are all flourishing online.

Alas, the social media companies have been pushed to remove all guardrails against objectionable content on their platforms, which is called censorship. The result has not been a free speech utopia, but a dystopian nightmare.

Social media has become a cesspool of scams targeting the elderly, cyber bullying aimed at children and linked to escalating suicide rates, misinformation exploiting the victims of disasters, natural and unnatural, racist and antisemitic hatred and vilification, and foreign disinformation and propaganda undermining democratic elections and social trusts. And all of this has been a boon for the sex traffickers while reduced content moderation has also led to an explosion of child sex abuse material online.

So, we want to prevent the government from becoming a barren hellscape like the social media platforms have become. We cannot allow them to dismantle the government programs and federal funding that actually protect children and teens and aid the victims of human trafficking.

We rely on law enforcement and personnel from Homeland Security, the FBI, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program, which is a national network of 61 different task forces, to target the people that are preying on children and women. Just last week, we learned that the Department of Homeland Security has ordered its entire investigative division—6,000 agents—to stop focusing on drug dealers, terrorists, and human traffickers, and instead prioritize—you guessed it—immigration enforcement. 

So, the child pornographers, the drug networks, and the human traffickers must be uncorking their champagne bottles about the diversion of all the other law enforcement resources to work on the mass round up and deportation of immigrants.

We’ve got an entire ecosystem of groups working to help here. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which receives 81% of its funding from the federal government, does an essential job. Without federal funding, not-for-profits—and there are people determined to dismantle the federal funding—NCMEC and those that support victims by providing housing emergency shelter, food, clothing, and so on, may have a much more difficult time being able to find the victims and survivors, the people who are willing to cooperate with investigations and prosecutions.

My bottom line is, I want to thank you for everything that you all are doing, and I hope that we will invest carefully in the public programs and the funded not-for-profit programs that are actually working to confront this nightmare in our time.

I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.