The u. S. Chamber is proud to be sponsoring this publication that will be released later this year. That was a quick preview of what is to come. With that said, lets give a round of applause for our first two panels. [applause] and we will take a quick, i say an eight minute to nine minute break, so we could make this quick. There is still purpose in the back and if you need to use the restrooms but they are on the outside, so thank you. [indiscernible voices] [indiscernible voices] ok. All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming back from break. We have had some great panels is morning and we are happy to be invited to participate this morning as well. I am a victim just as Program Specialist for the office of victims of crime at the department or justice Human Trafficking division and i am join today with heather from the texas advocacy project, and Heidi Alvarez with the university of Maryland Safe Center and actually happens to be one of my grantees, so we have worked closely together for four or five years it has been now. So with that, i think, we actually have a bit of the different presentation. We love powerpoint. We are going to use powerpoint. We actually have a few videos that we will include to set the stage on some of the content presented this morning, specifically around housing and employment for survivors of Human Trafficking, but i have introduced myself. Oops, we are missing a slide. All right, before i go to that, i will have heather and heidi it might be the next slide. We might have it out of order heather . Heather i am the ceo at texas advocacy project. I am sure you are done hearing about texas today in austin specifically but it is 105 today. I needed to be here in your freezing cold weather. The texas advocacy project has been around for 40 years and we provide Free Services for survivors of assault, stalking, child abuse, and Human Trafficking, so what that looks like is being able to provide the court orders that somebody might need in order to have longterm safety, and the safety they have identified that they need, so we walk alongside them in their journey and we just try to make sure that there are resources that are supportive as possible. We have a lot of partners including the Austin Police department to help us reach the survivors and one of the things that makes this a unique is that we are very integrated with all these other organizations, but because we are independent of the government or of the Police Departments, and we are able to help survivors in a slightly different way, especially because of attorneyclient privilege. I am not an attorney. My staff will not allow me to play one on tv, so dont ask me legal questions. I might sound like an hr professional, which i am not. We just try to keep it afloat and keep it sustainable so we can help the many survivors out there. So. Heidi good morning. I am the director of Economic Empowerment at the university of Maryland Safe Center for Human Trafficking survivors. We are a new kid on the block. We have been around since 2015 and were founded by ambassador and our goals are threefold, to provide direct services that includes case management, crisis intervention, Legal Services, counseling, Economic Empowerment and engage in research and policy advocacy. And we wear part of iowa say a coalition of other nonprofits and survivor leaders that helped to pass the first labor trafficking law in the state of maryland and 2019. And that was a very importt because unfortunately, there were not any laws fore that and we really wanted to make sure that weere addressing both sex tffking and labor trafcking in maryland. And i have been very fortunate to work with others and having met heather and i will turn back to kristin. Kristin thank you. So those of you in the remain up no the office for prevention of crime. I would take a moment to tell you about our work. We are part of the u. S. Department of justice. Basically we are a branch that really focuses on serving all victims of crime. We do happen to have one branch that is exclusive to Human Trafficking, which is what i am part of, and we have a staff of almost 10 now. We have over 3 million, no, it is more than that 300 million i think it is. , Million Dollars . I think, no, even my program for housing is more than that, but specific to housing though, we have 120 award specifically for housing for victims of Human Trafficking, that is a program i oversee, in which heidi has a grant under. So, you can see here that we also support voca, the state Victim Compensation programs, that funding comes from our office, and a lot of ngos have funding through it. We also have funds for tribal communities and we also do mass terrorism response with fbi, turning to technical assistance, partnerships with federal agencies such as hud, office of violence against women also under the department of justice, and then of course we have demonstration project so that is just a little bit about ovc. Ok. Them we had an opposite order. Here we are. And with that. We start tonight with a Human Trafficking concern. After Human Trafficking conducted by Law Enforcement agencies in texas. It is counselee moving to the country, even el paso. Were not talking up just about forced prostitution but forced labor. Human trafficking has no race, no gender. It does not matter where you are from, whether you are an adult or child. I am here to tell you it happens everywhere in the smallest of towns and in the largest of cities. It is not a madisonville thing. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. Human trafficking is the debasement of humanity. It is humanity at its worst. It is happening right next door to you and you this house is located on a culdesac. I called my supervisor and told him, we have a Human Trafficking case. One of the things we discovered during the investigation was that the women were being raped daily, over and over again, at this residence. They pulled in, and another car would pull in, and another car would back out. It was a constant flow of traffic. They just kept coming and coming, and we knew exactly what was happening in there with the women. It was really discarding disheartening, especially with two daughters. We realize these same girls were being transferred into Harris County and being sold in other locations for sex, over and over again, from one to another spot. This led to an even larger investigation that we discovered within new york. We discovered these women were being brought in for these purposes. I know that that was abrupt, apologies for that, and many of you in the room have an idea about what trafficking looks like, but oftentimes we are making these presentations and we tried to do an Awareness Campaign, and it is different from what is being promoted in media and tv, but maybe it looks like a neighborhood that you lived in or somebody you know lives in, so to my point, when you see it in your own community, you cannot unsee it. If at the end of your own video, we are almost trained to automatically think about sex trafficking. But trafficking looks varied. It crosses all boundaries. It is about the exploitation of somebody else for another persons profit. It is power and control, coercion. That might look like your neighborhood and that what might be you are used to seeing, but there is also labor trafficking and that is happening in front of us all the time. We will show you one more short clip from the office of victims of crime. [video clip] for a case of trafficking, what we will be looking for are signs that workers do not have the freedom to move about. They are not getting paid for the work they are performing. Maybe they do not have identifying documents. They are being made to live in substandard living conditions. They may be skilled or unskilled laborers, young or old, male or female. i had never heard them complain. It didnt cross my mind that they were being abused. when you asked them how it was going, none of them ever said that this happened to me or whatever. we had a case and it involved the apparent exploitation of American Workers and they were adults with intellectual disabilities. They were transported from texas to a turkey Processing Plant for approximately 35 years. These adults were working for a company for at least 40 hours per week, but only being paid 65 a month. They worked they were hidden away from much of the world. These men were punished in cruel ways, so after 35 or 40 years of blood, sweat, and tears when these men were finally rescued, they had nothing to show for it. what we find in a case like that, these are involving people with intellectual disabilities, is that the things that make them vulnerable are the very same things you might in a case involving foreign workers. The same time type of forced coercion that a shackle would be would be the same mental anguish they are going through. in order to build any kind of love relationship kind of relationship, you have to go out. I am talking about everything to working with a social service providers, the clinics, the churches, anywhere that labor trafficking victims may go for strength or help. That is where Law Enforcement should be reaching out and proving we are serious about helping. the illinois migrants Legal Assistance project provides Free Legal Services to migrants and farmworkers. Heather to wrap the two videos quickly, we wanted to show them because it is our goal to stop other ring othering. We always think if these people do not like us, coming from some scary made up land that it cannot happen to us, and i get why our brains do that. It is a protective thing, but we have to stop othering survivors of trafficking and pretend like it is not in our communities and the places we shop and and everything we consume. Kristin thank you, heather. Heather mentioned this earlier and one of the things to understand is the traffickers know how to groom their victims. They use manipulation tactics to exploit and to coerce and enforce victims of Human Trafficking into their situations, and they do this by trying to understand what that persons vulnerability is and targeting and fulfilling a need. So that as a way for us to understand this. If someone needs housing, if they need food, medical care, this is where the traffickers come in and are able to provide those needs and sort of gain trust, gain and create a relationship with victims in order to then say later on, now you owe me. It becomes a situation where that person has a relationship, they have a bond, and now, even if they are uncomfortable, maybe they are willing to think that the trafficker is now asking them to do it because they feel that they owe them. So at the center come at the university of Maryland Safe Center, we work with a number of different partners. We have received case referrals from the hotline, we have also worked with Law Enforcement partners, and i agree the first 72 hours are crucial, so that is where our team comes in to provide emergency services, provide emergency housing, food, immediate medical care, if needed, to make sure that the person we are working with, the survivor we are working with, they feel that they can Start Building a relationship with us. We know that takes time, but that is the goal. After that, we work with the survivor to develop a comprehensive Needs Assessment, to understand beyond these 72 hours, what does this person want to do next . It is about providing opportunities for choice and control. Because that was a big part of what the trafficker did, was take away their ability to have choice and control and make decisions on behalf of their own lives. That is part of the work that we do, is to inform, provide opportunities, and walk alongside the survivor so they are able to meet the conditions that are best for themselves and their family. In addition to that, we start working on their legal case. In addition to that, we also work specifically with survivors that need immigration legal relief. As we know, there are survivors that are trafficked into the united states, and there are immigration legal remedies they have access to. Finally, as part of this cycle of care and continuum of care, we provide Counseling Services and Economic Empowerment. Economic security, i would say, is a big determinant, and i would say a positive aspect of being able to help survivors avoid the exploitation, and for them to really be able to be independent and work towards their own selfdetermination. As part of this understanding of where Economic Security is, one of the most important studies i have seen was this National Survivors study by teleres, which surveyed 500 survivors of Human Trafficking, and there were key findings i wanted to share with everyone because i think this is part of the discussion we are having about public and private partnerships. 43 of households earn 2500 25,000 a year or less compared to 26 of households. Roughly 40 of respondents reported some kind of criminal record as a result of their trafficking experience. Over 60 of respondents reported experiencing Financial Abuse, which is a big part of the power and control tactics that traffickers use. And then respondents were twice as likely to be unbaked, which means not having access to bank accounts, unfortunately having poor credit as a result of the Financial Abuse when compared to the rest of the u. S. Population. Kristin so what does justice mean for the survivor . This is the legal means we need to look at, and we want to work with the social weichert social workers to make sure that their needs are being met. Those are basic needs that every human being deserves. We talked about what can be barriers to the restoration process, for somebody to get that job or where you talk about employment and housing. So what would those barriers be . Sometimes it is like what she said, criminal record relief. You might need an expungement, might need to have that off your record, because it goes back to being unbaked. You cannot get a bank account if you have a criminal record. You cannot get an apartment. You cannot get a job if you have if you do not have a bank account or an apartment. So our attorney workers will help you with that, and the social workers will help file for criminal investigations to help you file that home and get that first step. And there are times where it is about assessing housing. You have to fill out the lease documents and everything else. You think about it. The first time you rented an apartment by yourself. It was scary and you had a lot of paperwork to do and a lot of things you had to prove. Imagine if you had a criminal record and that needs to go away. You might need help in having any identification, so we will have to help you obtain your identification because he will not be able to do all of those without it. Oftentimes, you might have been trafficked and you might have had a child with your abuser, so you will need parental rights to terminated. Determined. It is tough if you do not have a seasoned experienced attorney walking alongside you. Those are all important and we are able to provide those for every. I want to touch on something that not everybody thinks about, which is trauma informed trial prep. We were talking to a sergeant of how important it was these survivors to be able to approach the criminal justice process, but imagine how hard that would be if you have lived a large portion of your recent life in trauma or crisis. You have reasons to not believe people, yet you are supposed to go on stand and face your accuser. So we work with survivors so we can help them be better prepared for that. That might mean doing Virtual Tours of the courtroom they are going into, it might mean that our former product formal prosecutors and staff will help you prepare for the types of questions you may be asked, and the types of questions you have a right to choose not to answer, because it is about empowering these survivors. We want to make sure they are participating in the criminal justice process that they feel it is safe and it is not traumatizing. We all want these people like traffickers off the streets, but we cannot do that at the risk of these survivors. So the trauma informed trial prep is something we are excited to provide at the texas advocacy project. We do work with Police Departments bid i invite you to talk to people in your community about making that something that would be available to them. We think about holistically what you need as a human being, and unfortunately, oftentimes that Court Document is access to Legal Services and that has got to be free. That is one of many things that the texas advocacy project is able to provide. Kristin love hearing about the work, heather and heidi. So a survivor, the first 72 hours, it is critical meeting those basic needs. Both of our panels today, you get those basic needs met. You have got food in your tummy, of roof over your head, somewhat stable for the first 72 hours, and the survivor is driving what their journey will look like at that point. So heidi, what do people look at next once they have a roof over their head and food in their bellies . Heidi this is thinking about how to move forward. And i think this is w