HR1144-119

What This Bill Does

The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act updates domestic and international anti-trafficking programs. It renames HHS school prevention grants as Frederick Douglass Human Trafficking Prevention Education Grants and prioritizes local educational agencies in high-intensity child sex trafficking areas or places with significant child labor trafficking. Grantees are expected to partner with survivor-informed nonprofits, law enforcement, and technology or social media companies; train guardians, K-12 students, teachers, and school personnel; collect demographic and risk data; and report annually on grants, partnerships, schools using evidence-based practices, people trained, survey results, potential victims identified, at-risk students, service gaps, and best practices. It also authorizes an HHS survivor employment and education program for adult trafficking survivors, with cooperative agreements to eligible organizations that provide education, job training, life skills, expungement help for nonviolent victimization-related offenses, scholarship assistance, case management, and mental health funding support for up to 5 cumulative years.

Internationally, the bill extends programs to end modern slavery through 2029, changes the State Department trafficking country-list terminology to a Tier 2 watch list, and requires countries on the list to show increasing investigations, prosecutions, convictions, victim assistance, and reduced official complicity. It adds counter-trafficking safeguards to development and disaster assistance so U.S. aid planning does not create conditions that increase trafficking risks for disaster-affected people. It clarifies that restrictions on nonhumanitarian, nontrade-related assistance to governments failing trafficking standards do not block disaster, food, refugee, health, anti-trafficking, global health security, basic-needs, NGO, international organization, private-sector, or security-necessity assistance. The bill also eliminates a duplicative trade-priorities report, requires hardcopy public access to the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, and reauthorizes anti-trafficking funding for fiscal years 2025 through 2029, including $23 million annually for section 113(a), $30.755 million annually for prevention and victim-services purposes with $5 million for the National Human Trafficking Hotline and cybersecurity/public education campaigns, $111 million annually for assistance with up to $37.5 million for modern slavery programs, and $35 million annually for OVC housing assistance grants for trafficking victims.

Who Benefits and How

Local educational agencies in high-trafficking areas benefit because they receive priority for prevention education grants. K-12 students, guardians, teachers, and school personnel benefit from trauma-informed, culturally responsive training on trafficking, grooming, child sexual abuse material, and technology-facilitated exploitation. Adult trafficking survivors benefit from up to 5 cumulative years of employment, education, life-skills, expungement, scholarship, case-management, and mental-health support. Anti-trafficking nonprofits and eligible survivor-service organizations benefit from cooperative agreements and grant-partnership roles. The National Human Trafficking Hotline benefits from a dedicated authorization stream. Researchers, Congress, and the public benefit from richer reporting on grant outcomes, at-risk student populations, TIP Report information, and modern-slavery programs. Humanitarian organizations benefit because the foreign-assistance restriction definition preserves disaster, food, refugee, health, anti-trafficking, NGO, and basic-needs assistance.

Who Bears the Burden and How

HHS must administer renamed prevention grants, consult other federal departments, set demographic reporting expectations, enter cooperative agreements for survivor services, and submit annual public reports. Grant recipients must demonstrate survivor-informed partnerships, train school communities, collect data, protect privacy, run surveys, and report service gaps and outcomes. The State Department must apply Tier 2 watch-list standards, manage deadlines, make the TIP Report available in hardcopy, and operate under updated country-list rules. The President and foreign-assistance agencies must incorporate trafficking-risk safeguards into disaster and development assistance planning. Central governments that fail trafficking minimum standards continue to face loss of nonhumanitarian, nontrade-related U.S. assistance and participation funding, subject to the bill's humanitarian and security exceptions.

Key Provisions

• Expands Frederick Douglass Human Trafficking Prevention Education Grants with priority for high-risk trafficking areas and survivor-informed partnerships.
• Requires annual HHS reporting on grant recipients, schools, training, surveys, identified victims, at-risk students, demographics, gaps, and best practices.
• Creates an HHS survivor employment and education program offering education, job training, life skills, expungement help, scholarships, case management, and mental health support.
• Extends modern-slavery grant authority and congressional notification rules through 2029.
• Revises State Department Tier 2 watch-list standards for countries with significant trafficking problems or weak evidence of increasing anti-trafficking efforts.
• Directs development and disaster assistance planning to avoid increasing trafficking risk for vulnerable populations.
• Clarifies humanitarian, health, refugee, food, anti-trafficking, NGO, private-sector, and security exceptions to foreign-assistance restrictions.
• Requires public hardcopy access to the annual Trafficking in Persons Report.
• Reauthorizes anti-trafficking funding for fiscal years 2025 through 2029, including hotline, modern-slavery, and OVC housing-assistance amounts.