Chairman Himes,Ranking Member Hill, and Members of the Committee, It is an honor to appear before you today as you explore the issue of financial sector solutions to the problem of human trafficking.My name is Luis C.deBaca. I serve as a Senior Fellow at the slavery studies center at Yale University and as Visiting Lecturer in Law and Architecture. I served at U.S. Ambassador to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons under the Obama Administration, and as Director of the Justice Department’s Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking in the Obama Administration and in the early days of the Trump Administration. In prior roles, I was the Chief Counsel of the Justice Department’s Human Trafficking Prosecutions Unit, was DOJ’s Involuntary Servitude and Slavery program coordinator, and was Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, where I was the lead staffer on the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Scope, Nature, and Definition of Human Trafficking The United States defines Trafficking in Persons as manifesting in two market sectors: for commercial sexual activity and for labor. Force, Fraud, and Coercion are the hallmark of both the Forced Labor offense, 18 U.S.C. §1589, and Sex Trafficking of adults, 18U.S.C. §1591. For children, much as we see in statutory rape and age-of-consent laws, commercial sexual activity is presumed to always be coercive by virtue of the victim being under eighteen years of age. 18 U.S.C. §1591. Despite the casual usage of the term“trafficking,”movement is not required or dispositive; the heart of the offense is the coerced service of the victim.

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