Subcommittee hearing on the neglected children in foster care, testimonies from the Deputy Assistant director of the fbi. You are watching live coverage on cspan3. Eight months ago, the subcommittee opened a bipartisan probe into the safety human rights and short children in foster care in cross the United States. Protecting americas most Vulnerable Children from abuse and neglect is a moral imperative. We are talking about the most Vulnerable Children of the United States. Children that have been abused and neglected, children that have the trafficked. These children, state foster agencies, they arent mentioned to be a safe haven and sanctuary. Often, a last resort. Naturally, i take the greatest interest and have the highest obligation in and two children in my home state of georgia. And, as a result, the subcommittee, as part of the inquiry, has undertaken a deep dive case study into the safety of foster care in georgia. We have found significant evidence that children have been left vulnerable to abuse and neglect, where children have been trafficked, harmed, after being placed with unfit caregivers, placed in isolation, conditions and, consolidating confinement. The subcommittee recognizes that these represent National Dynamics and trends and challenges, that impact the safety and welfare of Vulnerable Children across the country. Today, we will dive deeper into the federal governments efforts and responsibilities. The ones that protect children into foster care and abuse, trafficking, neglect, hearing from witnesses representing the department of health and human services, and the fbi. We will hear first from Rebecca Jones gaston. She is the commissioner of hhs administration for children and families. The previous director of Child Welfare for the state of oregon. Commissioner, we have other commitments this afternoon, we will work to accommodate your schedule and we appreciate your attendance. We will also hear from jose perez, the federal bureau of investigation disability director, who operates across the country who accommodates 200 victims of trafficking, many of them, children, who have gone missing. If the witnesses would please rise and raise your right hands, so you can be sworn in. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony that you are about to give before the subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you god . Let the record reflect that you have answered the affirmative, please take your seats, and commissioner, jones gaston, begin with your Opening Statement, with your Opening Statement. Please ensure that the red light under your microphone is illuminated when that you wish to speak. Thank you. s chairman, Ranking Members, blackburn, and established members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the u. S. Department of health and human services. Im Rebecca Jones gaston, commissioner for the ministration of four children abuse of families, and the ministration for children and families. Thank you also for the years of strong bipartisan support of partnerships, on Child Welfare prevention efforts which provided the foundation for and enabled the passage of the Family First Services act. A cys is committed to supporting parents and caregivers to holistic and proactive approaches that focus on keeping Families Together and preventing unnecessary involvement with the foster care system. I hear routinely from young people and families that have experienced the Child Welfare system that many families could have stayed safely together if support for their conference needs have been met. As part of the commitment to advance prevention and family preservation of the experience of families who encounter the system it will continue to be informing our policies and our programs. We are working with states and tribes to shift the focus of the Child Welfare system, helping them implement family first and promoting them across the system collaborations that wrecking is the Child Welfare system alone, cannot support family wellbeing. This effort can be taking time and cannot be done solely as the federal level. The president fiscal year at 2024 budget, including proposals to reauthorize increase funding for and amended promoting safe and stable families act, Social Security act, and the runaway homeless sheet act, would expand and provide incentives for the use of the title for incentive program, and provide Additional Support for scribes and support use for our risk for victims of commercial Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking. The Childrens Bureau would provide leadership to improve the safety permanency and well being of wellbeing and families. We partner with federal state and local agencies as well as tribal nations. Directing we implement sediment and implementation of them and ensure tribes states in the courts meet established standards, and outcomes for the federal Child Protection adoption and foster care guardianship program. We participate in a variety of activities to carry out the vision, such as funding essential services, sharing research, offering training and Technical Assistance, and monitoring it Child Welfare assistance. Working with state, tribes, territories to improve Child Welfare delivery, achieve positive outcomes for children and families and ensure that every child has a family and permanency. The Childrens Bureau regional offices conduct ongoing joint planning with states and tribes with the development of a strategic five year child and Family Services plan. The update through the annual progress and services report. Further, regional offices provide direct Technical Assistance to grant recipients, and in partnership with other physicians conducting the child in review. Title for eligibility, under the Social Security act, and other reviews. One of the most impactful means in which we assist the states and ensuring the safety permanency and wellbeing of children and families that they serve, for regulatory action. Through september 2023 the Biden Harrison ministration issued a final kinship rule that proposed once implemented, will profound impact on Child Wellbeing in the Child Welfare system in america. These three rules are designed to remove barriers keeping Families Together. Where eligible legal representation is allowed to stabilize families and reduce the need for more formal Child Welfare system involvement including fairness of the Child Welfare system and included a safe and appropriate placement for all youth. Collectively, along with the family first act, these rulemaking these represent perhaps the most substantial advances in the Child Welfare industry. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Programs Mission and work. I look forward to working with congress as part of the shared collective effort to ensure the safety permanency and well being of children and families across the country and i am happy to answer any questions. Thank you. We will not hear from you, Deputy Assistant director, jose perez. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to come to you be here today, to speak about eight important topic. Sexual explanation of children and trafficking. Under my investigative responsibilities i have the violent prime program, and specifically today, the crimes against children program. We at the fbi have no more Important Mission than protecting the most vulnerable amongst us, especially children. The work is a priority with all of our programs around the country. We cannot stop Human Trafficking alone so we have partnered with state federal and local Law Enforcement agencies as well as nongovernmental and nonprofit agencies on the front lines to address the threat across all angles and provide valuable victim assistance is one coordinated team. Human trafficking in person is a crime in which a person is exploited for labor, services or commercial acts, occurring in every region of the United States throughout the world, and is perpetrated by the array of actors frigid of criminals, or organizations. Often trafficking, with other criminal conduct, such as financial crimes and narcotics trafficking, online Sexual Exploitation of children, extortion, and violence. Six trafficking of adults includes the recruitment and solicitation and transportation of a person for the purpose of commercial , facilitated through force, fraud, or coercion. Exploitation of a minor threes commercial is Human Trafficking and child drive trafficking does not need to be evolving any type of proofs physical force or proven. Harboring and transportation of a person, but for the purposes of objection for the forced labor or involuntary servitude. Labor traffic can be happening in any agriculture industry, construction, landscaping, factories and manufacturing. Traffickers come from a wide variety of backgrounds and demographic categories, they are facilitated by criminal enterprises and transnational organizations. Criminal enterprises often operate in plain sight if they go undetected for decades. Affecting victims before being identified by Law Enforcement. Victims do not leave their situations because they feel traffickers will have a distrust towards Law Enforcement. Where lack of understanding with the basic rights. Traffic can affect anybody regardless of age, race, or the city. Vulnerable possible nations are at higher risks. Traffickers can and will identify and exploit vulnerabilities, they often control victims resources, safeties, living and working conditions. Traffickers can Access Services that can exert power over their victims. The fbi investigates all forms of Human Trafficking including trial sets trafficking regardless of age or nationality. We cannot do it alone. We work with external partners, primarily National Center for exploited children, we have personnel installed to locate victims and help these victims and hold the subjects of victims. Ive defined trafficking schemes as well. We collaborate with these different entities working together to coordinate forensic interviews and medical exams, counseling and other services. Additionally, we combat Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation by working together with federal state and local partners. The fbi is more than 85 Child ExploitationHuman Trafficking past forces spread out across 56 field offices consisting of hundreds of fbi agents and over 100 task force officers. It many positive results were witnessed. In los angeles, man was sent to life in prison for recruiting teenage girls and an adult for commercial work. The subject advise victims for a commercial website and facilitated responses to online advertisements by arranging in person meetings with the victims. They victimize at least three minor girls and threats and coercion, trafficking young adults, all for young profits. Human trafficking passports keynoted with the. We are looking to build more relationships to private organizations, and the problem is not contained. Each of the fbis 56 field offices receives regular complaints regarding Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking. We are also part of the working groups aimed at executing the white houses National Action plan to combat Human Trafficking. We have a division devoted to victim services, integrating victims in the federal investigations. Members of the subcommittee, thank you for your support, in this round, thank you for so much to speak. Thank you mr. Perez. I will yield a moment, to blackburn, for her Opening Statement. I want to say before i do, that, i have observed few members of the senate who have demonstrated a more sustained commitment to Child Protection and the prevention of child trafficking then sen. Blackburn. And we identified earlier in this congress that the protection of the Vulnerable Children was the important priority that weve also collaborated on, the introduction of the Public Safety vacancies asked to empower local Law Enforcement with the resources they need and are now working to get rid of the report act, which, as you alluded to, empower the program to provide Law Enforcement agencies with foreign veteran information to prosecute online child exportation. I think blackburn, she will be collaborating with them, and i thanked her for her effort. Thank you for that. And the report act is scheduled to go on the hotline. And, it already has a house sponsor. I want to thank each of you for being here. And, mr. Chairman, thank you for the hearing and filling this out a little bit. Mr. Perez, i am so appreciated, for your remarks. And, we are doing this at a time, that so many people of lost sight of how important it is to protect children until you say, how important it is, to go after these traffickers. And, they are out there. Did you know they exist. They are social media. And, they are trying to go after them, and it is a vitally important part that we go after these traffickers. In these people that are making a profit off of going after the most vulnerable amongst us. And, i know that the chairman knows, some of you may know, for the last several weeks, i have been trying to figure out and to subpoena the record for Jeffrey Epstein, to find out who was on the plane. I have been so disappointed that chairman durbin has been continuing to block this, because Jeffrey Epstein had probably what is the most high profile six trafficking ring that we have ever seen. It was high profile, high dollar people, that was predators, on these young girls. And, i do not know why that there is a push to block these records. We need to have access to them. We need to know, who was on the plane. Who was participating . They rejected the records in the Delaine Maxwell trial. But, getting to the bottom of this is important. And as we talk about protecting our children, and providing for them, and the role of the federal government in this, for goodness sakes, lets try to figure out what hhs has done with 85,000 Migrant Children. And where exactly they are. Whose hands are they in . The labor trafficking that you talked about. I find it unconscionable that 85,000 children, we cannot find, its unconscionable that chairman durbin would have continued to block by request, the subpoena, of the flight logs. We appreciate so much that you are here today, mr. Chairman, your leadership on these issues, thank you. Thank you sen. Blackburn and we will certainly ensure that our witnesses have the opportunity, to respond to those points. I want to begin, commissioner jones gaston, discussing the role that hhs plays in protecting foster children across the country. The child abuse protection and treatment act requires Child Welfare agencies to have procedures to screen and investigate and reports of child abuse and neglect and requires the states to include child trafficking and their definition of abuse and neglect. How does hhs ensure that state Child Welfare agencies screened victims of child trafficking in practice . And not as a matter of policy on paper. The oversight, of Child Welfare agencies, across the country, for the agencies, receiving federal funds from the Childrens Bureau, we have an oversight process called the child and Family Services review. That process is involving case review, data review, and interviews with young people, community members, parents, that are involved in the cases that are being reviewed. That is the primary mechanism for oversight in the longterm. States are also required to have a title 4 plan that they submit, that includes the policies and procedures that they have been placing in, that you follow federal law and regulation in those p