House Passes Bipartisan Legislation to Combat Human Trafficking

Mar 05, 2026 - 10:56

Updated: 4 months ago

House Passes Bipartisan Legislation to Combat Human Trafficking

Committee Chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) speaks as Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer appears for a House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 5, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The U.S. House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation on March 3 to bolster the federal government’s fight against human trafficking and strengthen protections for victims of exploitation.

The legislation, called the Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act (H.R.4307), passed by a voice vote. The measure would direct the Department of Labor to train its employees to identify and report suspected human trafficking and assist law enforcement in preventing such crimes.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee, and Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), introduced the legislation in July 2025. A companion version of the legislation (S.2241) was introduced in the Senate in the same month by Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.).

“Today, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle took a stand in denouncing the scourge of human trafficking,” Walberg said in a statement on March 3.

“Very often, Department of Labor employees are the first to encounter signs of human trafficking, forced labor, and exploitation; the Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act provides these employees with the tools and knowledge needed to detect and address this heinous crime.”

According to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, law enforcement tallied 340 human trafficking cases—which involved 585 victims—in Michigan in 2024. The majority of the victims were being trafficked for sex. Some were performing domestic work, and a few were working in the farming, food service, and hospitality sectors.

Georgia saw 342 human trafficking cases in 2024, with 573 victims identified, according to the Hotline data.

The House “took an important step forward in the fight against human trafficking” by passing the legislation, McBath said in a statement.

“Human trafficking is a grave violation of human rights that demands vigilance, coordination, and accountability at every level of government.”

In January, federal authorities announced that they had dismantled an alleged family-run sex trafficking operation in Pennsylvania that was disguised as massage parlors, after a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh indicted four Chinese nationals.

In an X post on March 3, Husted said he will keep working to get the legislation passed into law.

“Human trafficking is a tragedy happening in our communities every day,” the senator wrote. “I’ll keep pushing to get it signed into law to give officials the tools they need to identify and prevent these horrific crimes.”

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said the House’s passage of the legislation is a “strong step forward” toward confronting the Chinese regime’s forced labor.

“China makes billions of dollars from human trafficking and forces hundreds of thousands of people into imprisonment and labor camps,” Moolenaar said in a statement on March 3.

“The Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act is a strong step forward in ensuring that our law enforcement officials have the training they need to fight this horrific practice and stop human trafficking.”

China, Afghanistan, Belarus, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, and Syria were among 13 countries identified by the U.S. State Department’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report as being the world’s worst human trafficking offenders.

According to the report, about 3.9 million people were “exploited by state-imposed forced labor” in China and elsewhere, generating approximately $236 billion in illegal proceeds per year and contributing to complex global supply chains that can link legitimate businesses and unsuspecting consumers to these abuses.

“In China, the Chinese Communist Party is exploiting Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang through a government policy or pattern of widespread forced labor, including through mass arbitrary detentions,” the report reads.