2026-01-09
Dear Advocate,
On Sunday, January 11, we commemorate National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Some will join the Blue Campaign. Many of us will remember human trafficking survivors in prayer. We ask that you take a moment to join us in federal Advocacy to support anti-human trafficking legislation.
The Alliance to End Human Trafficking (AEHT), joined with the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd (NAC), worked over the past year and asked Congress to pass the The Trafficking Survivors Relief Act (H.R. 4323). Many trafficking survivors face arrest, conviction and incarceration, often without recognition of their extenuating circumstances. H.R. 4323 will provide critical relief for survivors who already have been convicted as a result of their trafficking victimization through vacatur, expungement and sentencing mitigation. We are pleased to report that Congress passed this bill last month and President Trump is poised to sign the bill into law. We cheer this success!
And yet more legislative solutions need to be enacted. AEHT and NAC continue our joint work at the federal level to end human trafficking, keeping the needs of those vulnerable to being trafficked and those who have survived at the forefront of our effort.
We now call on Congress to pass two other important bills that we have been actively supporting. The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2025 (H.R. 1144) is a critical piece of legislation that would reauthorize both domestic and international provisions of the last TVPRA along with International Megan's Law requiring advanced notification of traveling sex offenders. The bill also provides for education prevention grants serving a high-intensity child sex trafficking area or an area with significant child labor trafficking, along with offering wrap-around social services and education to prevent child trafficking through social services support for the attainment of life-skills, employment, and education necessary to achieve self-sufficiency.
In addition, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) (S. 1748) is urgently needed in today's dangerous, digital world. KOSA would take the foundational step of requiring technology companies to take action to keep kids safe online. This bill would establish a "duty of care" (i.e., a legal concept that sets a standard for a person or an entity to act with reasonable care). The bill also provides parents and kids with tools for safeguards and sets out requirements for notices and algorithms - "behind the scenes" programming methods that help a platform or application decide what content to display and direct to a user and in what order.
Please take action to use this opportunity to remind Congress that more work remains before the 119th Congress adjourns this year.
Thank you for your advocacy.