was elected to the house. since serving in the clinton administration, she's been president of the university of miami and president of the clinton foundation. democrat debbie mucarsel-powell was born in ek tcuador and immigrated to the u.s. as a teenager. while attending graduate school, her father was shot and killed in ecuador. after graduate school, she worked in a number of local non-profits before joining the administration of florida international university. two florida republicans also joined the house. ross spano previously served six years in the florida house of representatives. he was also an attorney in private practice. and congressman greg steube started his law career in the army's judge advocate general corps. serving three years in iraq. he was later elected to the florida statehouse and then state senate. new congress, new leaders. watch it all on c-span. human trafficking, the topic of the last half hour of our

program today. and joining us is bradley myles, executive director and ceo of a group known as polaris to talk about it. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> a little bit about the work of polaris when it comes to human trafficking. what is it? >> we're an o rganization exclusively dedicated it this issue. we run the human trafficking hotline for the country which is the dogovernment ic's 24/7 lotl. we use data. >> how are you supported? >> some government grants from the deet apartmepartment of hea human services. also institutional foundations then thousands of individual donors. and we run on about a $10 million budget. >> the government declared this month particularly to highlight the causes of human trafficking. why is that is. >> i think there's a lot of bipartisan political will on this issue. people realize this is something that republicans and democrats can get behind. we all agree that people shouldn't be forced to work against their will, people shouldn't be forced against the sex trade against their will. this is the way of highlighting

it and creating public awareness for the society at large to really get behind this issue and use this month as a spike and building political will around this issue. >> when it comes to then the practice, itself, how common is it in the united states? >> more common than people realize. this is, any time someone's being forced to work against their will, any time an adult is in the sex trade by force, coercion, any time there's a minor in the commercial sex trade, we think there's hundreds of thousands in the united states. 25 million actively in the world on any given year experiencing human trafficking. it's $150 billion criminal enterprise around the world. >> you said and hinted at it, but specifically, how do you define it? >> there's a federal law that was passed called the trafficking victims protection act. tvpa. it was just reauthorized a few weeks ago actually. that's the federal anything for the country and fbi. those three buckets. children involved in the commercial sex trade, anyone 17 or younger, adults in the commercial sex trade, there by violence, force or coercion, then anyone, adult or child,

forced to work in any sort of labor industry. >> you say the word, force, how does an individual end up in this type of practice, is it by force, is it by will? how does that usually happen? >> first we have to realize it's immigrants and u.s. citizens. not just immigrants. that's one of the major myths and misen to sepconceptions. could be a runaway child, a child growing up if foster home, gets befriended by a pimp. that pimp initially poses as a boyfriend. few weeks into it, turns violent, and then fullout violence, fullout coercion, fullout beatings, fullout pistol beating, all of that, to keep someone in the commercial sex trade. that's one form. then you've got people violent against their domestic worker in the home. you've got farmworkers experiencing threats and debt bondage. maybe game here on a guest worker visa then had a violent crew boss. so lots of different subtypes of trafficking. that's one of the things about

the issue, it's so diverse and so heterogeneous. there are so many subtypes. the common thread is the abusers using force, fraud or coercion to keep someone working against their will for that person's profit. >> so for the remainder of this program, we're going to talk about this topic of human trafficking with our ghost, and if you want ask him questions, call the phone lines, post on twitter and our facebook page. bradley myles, executive director of the polaris project. polarisproject.org is the website. the business of stealing freedom for profit is one of the aspects of human trafficking. . in some cases going on to say traffickers tricked to fraud, force victims into providing commercial sex. some instances victims are lied to, threatened and manipulated. what makes it difficult for people in these industries to leave? >> one is just the sheer control that they're facing on the trafficker. i mean, the trafficker builds a web of lies and control around them. they may not trust the

authorities. they may not know where to seek help. that's why the national hotline is so key. so there's an outlet for survivors to call. that number is 1-888-3737-888. we're trying to get that number out there. but also there's shame that gets internalized. there's a belief that maybe it's your own fault. and the trafficker figures out a way to brainwash you and manipulate you, saying it's your own fault. no one's going to believe you, no one's gaoing to care about you. we as a society stand up for people who are vulnerable, we're taking the power away from traffickers to actually say that to people as we become a more caring and inclusive society for sure. >> if someone is found to be a trafficker, what's the penalty? >> 20 years or more. i mean, these are serious federal crimes. these are major crimes, prosecuted by the fbi. usually, and hsi. usually, major federal penalties out of the federal courts but now all 50 states also have

human trafficking laws that have passed over the past decade or so. and those are quite strong penalties, too. so this is a crime taken incredibly seriously when you take away someone's freedom, profit off their labor and intentionally force them against their will into labor in the commercial sex trade, taken very, very seriously and prosecuted strongly by the courts. >> is there a certain type that usually gets targeted when trying to recruit for these kibkind of things? >> we're constantly trying to remind the country that labor trafficking is bigger than we think. i think most of us gravitate toward the sex trafficking side. i think that's where there's more media attention, that's where there's more law enforcement attention. certainly, that's where there's more kind of public attention, but what that does, then, is it ignores and gives an underreporting to labor trafficking, which is farmworkers, domestic workers, construction workers, carnival workers, janitors. so many different types of trafficking that we hear about on the national hotline, so let's have some parity between sex and labor trafficking and realize both are issues and not only gravitate toward the sex side.

>> when you find -- how, then, for those who are in the industry, itself, how do they usually get out of it? what usually tends to happen? does someone step in to be an advocate for them, do they escape and turn -- how do those stories work? >> yeah, well, we've gotten over 10,000 calls directly from survivors, calling the national hotline or texting "be free" where they actually reach out for help and signal they need help and they kind of take agency out of their own extrication of the situation. other times, it's a community advocate who steps in. sometimes, unfortunately, the victim gets arrested by law enforcement as a criminal and then in the course of the investigation, law enforcement says, whoa, whoa, we realize here, you're a victim here, we shouldn't have arrested you. so there's multiple pathways. sometimes it's a trucker, sometimes it's a hotel worker. sometimes it's a hospital worker. or flight attendant. so it's a professional that may see it or it's a law enforcement arrest pivoted toward, or it's the person calling the hotline and getting themselves out. or it's a network of survivors actually figuring out a way to get someone out in the first place and you have lots of those

kind of almost modern-day underground railroad efforts that are happening. so lots of ways we're seeing victims get out, but far too few are getting out. we say only 1% of victims get identified so 98%, 99%, are still stuck in these situations which is why we need a better response. >> this is bradley myles from polar polaris, executive director and ce ceo. the first call comes from l loretta in ittexas. independent line. you're on with our guest. >> caller: i want to thank mr. myles and c-span for publicizing this because every day i get so many calls every week for someone from breast cancer, somebody from right to life which, of course, i support, but never, ever, have i gotten a call asking support for human trafficking in the u.s. it's such a problem. i try to be an advocate for the people to give talks, but the schools don't want to hear about

this. the churches don't want to hear about this. it's such an undercover subject, and i realize how many, how many of our children, are raped repeatedly every single night. and they can't get out of it. the whole nation paid attention to jewel l ulie cross. she was held for three months. of course, it's wonderful that she was found but they don't pay any attention to all of those children held by cartels and raped so often. when we do find one, we don't even give them the name of the child. so i just want to thank you so much for bringing this to light, and i wish it were on the news every day, every night. thank you. >> thank you. >> thanks, loretta. . >> she says it's an uncovered issue. is that your experience? >> yeah. well, i -- i think, one, things are getting better. i mean, she mentioned that schools don't want to hear about it. there's about four or five states where the schools are actually now creating curriculum

to train junior high and high school kids on human trafficking. both from a prevention lens, but also from a victim identification lens. california is now training all the schoolteachers. we're seeing it get better. we're seeing more churches get onboard. we're seeing that get better. but i do think that some of the cases that deserve major national attention aren't getting as much attention. and -- >> such as what? >> well, for example, there's a case, the sentoya brown case. this was a child in tennessee who was being forced into the sex trade by a pimp named cut throat. she eventually killed one of the sex buyers who bought her when she was a child. she was sentenced to life in prison even though she was only 16. and the governor of tennessee, a few weeks ago, just granted her clemency. after she served about 16 years of her sentence. but there are other cases like that that aren't getting that same national attention. there's a case in ohio, the alexis martin case.

so we'd like to see certain cases get more national attention when a child has been forced into the sex trade like that. and how do we kind of draw a circle wider of the cases that we care about? like i was saying earlier, not just the sex side, also the labor side. there are so many horrific cases of farm workers and janitors and construction workers and carnival workers and it's not getting by far enough media attention or attention in people's hearts and minds. i think when people really learn about these cases, it will hit them hard and realize how is that happening a few miles from my house? i've got to do something about this. which is why awareness is so key. loretta, thank you for caring about this ire. polarisproject.org if you're looking to learn more. >> maryland is next, republican line. jason, go ahead. >> caller: hey, how are you today? >> hey, jason. >> caller: hey. so i think the real issue, it lies with congress and our laws because when you illegalize something, you create a black market for it and those black markets are unregulated, so if

you legalize, you know, prostitution, i don't like using that word because it's like the oldest industry, in the world, i mean, ever since biblical times, at least 2,000 years. japan had it legalized. the geishas. in vegas, we have it legalized. where it's legal, you don't have too many issues. you know what i mean? once you legalize it and start putting different laws on the books, regulations, licensing, things like that, you take away the power from pimps and people to actually take advantage of people because you have a market for people to actually, you know, do things legitimately. >> okay, caller. thanks. >> i think that's a big debate in the trafficking field of what to do about the sex trade and whether or not to legalize it and would that actually help? i think that the people who are trying to legalize it are doing so for the intention of trying to make sure that people in the sex trade aren't criminalized

unnecessarily, and coming at it from a good place. what we're worried about, though, is that it actually makes things worse. amsterdam tried to legalize it. talk to the new mayor of amsterdam, and she basically says this was a debacle for us and it became overrun with o organized crime. look at a number of countries that have legalized it, what happens is the number of guys who are looking to buy sex that were held back by the fact that it was illegal, the moment that it's legal, you've got millions of new buyers swarming to the market. nowhere near enough voluntary sellers also swarming into a market. so you have a major market imbalance. you've got millions of new buyers and a couple thousand involuntary sellers. someone's got to fill that void. that void gets filled by organized crime and kids who are forced and people who are forced which is why if you look at a lot of legalized settings, where the victim's from, more vulnerable countries from eastern europe and from places that were brought into amsterdam. so we think that it's an important debate.

certainly, lots of people don't want to criminalize the person being prostituted. that's the person who should get the most sympathy and respect and agency. so we want to focus more on the pimps and the jons and the traffickers. legalization may backfire. and it may actually make it worse. so that's what i think the field is still debating. and i think that the data is starting to show that it probably does make it worse. there's actually an interesting model in sweden, in norway, just passed in france, just passed in ireland, it's called the nordic approach, which actually bifurcated legalization, where the person selling sex is actually decriminalized, but the person buying sex and the pimp are criminalized. so you split the triangle. we're seeing really promising results in those countries that have tried that. it's like halfway legalization but halfway criminalization. >> from republican line, brian in pennsylvania. >> caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. i'm just curious because i --

when i was listening to the description of the demographics of the victims, it seems to me that it might point to, you know, the drug cartel, this idea of illegal immigration, people coming in and being sort of herded. how does sanctuary cities and that whole issue hinder your efforts to try to address this situation and help the victims? because it seems to me that this is another argument for, you know, a boundary, the wall, whatever you want to call it, and an increased vigilance on illegal immigration. >> okay. >> caller: thank you. >> thanks, caller. >> yeah. brian, thanks for the question. i mean, i think there's lots of people debating how to deal with this. one of the things that i don't think is really in the debate

enough is how often victims from other countries come to the u.s. on legitimate visas. where, let's say, we have a guest worker visa, h2a visa, for guest work farm workers, h2b visa for guest work unskilled labor. someone gets a legitimate visa, they fly into the u.s., land at one of the major airports. they start working on that visa and then they start getting held in debt bondage then the person takes advantage of them on that visa. there's some really structural challenging things about those visas. you're not allowed a lawyer and a few other things. so what we're worried about is, if you focus exclusively on the foot traffic coming across the southern border, and say, well, a wall would block that foot traffic, for example, you're not really addressing the majority of the ways that the victims get into the united states which is flying in on these legitimate visas. so, i think the conversation is

a little bit more complex than just looking at the southern border and what's coming over on foot and that also doesn't really take into account all the u.s. citizen victims who are victims of trafficking who are already in this country and who aren't immigrants. right? u.s. citizen kids who grew up in abusive homes, they're in foster care then they get abused out of foster care. broaden the conversation to talk about u.s. citizen victims and immigrants then when we only focus on immigrants, we want to make sure we think about the foot traffic piece and the flying in piece and the wall would not address the majority of the trafficking that comes in, which is coming in on airplanes. but i think people are really trying to figure out how to deal with this because it's a complex issue. >> how are states doing in dealing with it? >> i think the states are trying -- the states are laboratories. the states are trying lots of different things. there are some governors that take this issue really seriously. the texas governor, for example.

there's some attorneys ta gener takes this serious. we've seen innovative new state legislation. so i think the states are kind of this patchwork of laboratories. we're seeing some amazing things. for example, california passing this law that all the teachers need to be trained on human trafficking in high schools. and you need to get high school curriculum out. that's an innovative new law that's coming out of the states. so, it's -- trafficking is a complex, dynamic thing. the traffickers aren't just staying still and doing the same thing every day. they're pivoting. every single day they wake up and figure out a way to do the crime differently. the field has to be nimble. we have to be denapic. we have to be thinking and systems thinking and figure out a way that this is a very, very elusive crime. the old ways we used to fight it aren't going to cut it in the ways of the traffickers are figuring out how to pivot. >> this is iris from michigan, independent line. >> caller: hi. good morning. i think this is not a fascinating subject, but one that really needs attention. i believe that donald trump wants a wall to prevent this

more than drugs coming in across our border. it's children. it's the people that are kidn kidnapped and brought here under force and this expression, sex trafficking, drives me crazy. it's another one of the ways washington finds words to soften what is going on. why don't they call it pimping? why don't they call it moving? why don't they call it kidnapping? why -- why do they find polite names to call people like moving them along? there's been movies made about this. one was called "trade." pretty specific. where they take them. how they get them. >> thanks, caller. thank you. >> yeah. i mean, i think that this crime is called lo lots of different things. in many ways, it's pimping on the sex side. sometimes called forced labor on the labor side.

i think one of the most extreme and kind of in-your-face ways to call it is to call it rape for profit. when you talk about the sex side. but i do think that what's striking to me, after working on this issue for is15 years, is h much the country cares about this. i mean, high school kids caring about this. churches are caring about this. there are so many champions in congress that care about this. presidents bush, obama, trump, really care about this. that's why you see january is human trafficking and slavery prevention month. and when you go out and speak around this issue on college campuses and in community meetings, there's a real palpable passion on this issue in the united states. and so i think we have a huge potential to leverage all that excitement and all that passion. and channel it into community awareness, to look for more victims, to volunteer bases to support the non-profits that work on this issue, to donors that could donate to non-profits on this issue.

people could call into their members of congress and say, hey, we need to do something more on this and kind of really champion that. you can even talk to corporations when you're about to buy a product and say, hey, before i buy this, where did this come from? and the shrimp i'm about to buy, do you know where these were farmed or where these were caught? because were any slave s involvd this shrimp? i don't want to be eating slavery that has blood on this shrimp. i think businesses are stepping up. seeing businesses engage in this issue more than we've ever seen in the history of the field. there's lots and lots of potential in the field right now, and i think people are really captivated with this issue. >> polaris website, there's a map. what are we looking at for those looking at this map? >> that's the heat map of all the cases of trafficking we learned about through the national hotline last year. we learned about i'd say 30 new cases a day that break into the national hotline. there's 11,000 cases that we worked on and identified last year. we created a heat map of it. what it shows, and that's just,

not to mistake, that's not saying this is the total prevalence of trafficking. that's only where we learned about it through hotline calls. so if we're not getting enough hotline calls from montana or colorado, it might be actually underreporting the prevalence of the problem. what it does show is look how huge that is. that's 11,000 cases in a year. just the tip of the iceberg. this is a major issue in communities across the country. there's not a single community that's not affecting. >> i'm curious because of the concentration in the northeast, a little bit toward the west of thats, maybe some in the south. >> yeah, that -- i do think that's a reflection of prevalence. but it's also a reflection of where the hotline number of publicity is most strong. so we're getting the most calls and learning about the most cases there. but this is in all 50 states. this is in every community. this is much more common than we think. i think we need to shift our mindset from thinking of this as this novelty of, like, oh my god, it's happening, into the, yeah, of course it's happening, just like domestic violence and sexual assault and child abuse and poverty and homelessness. this is baked into the fabric of so many communities and when we

see that, you actually start to see it everywhere. you start to think, wow, this -- i just got my nails done, what was that? or i just got my hair braided. what was that? and i think itthere's an awarens that begins to happen. as a daily citizen and then you can call the hotline and help this discover a case for sure. >> lake havasu, arizona, democrats line. robby, go ahead. robby from arizona. hello, go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i just want to tell the young man that i live in a small community, it kind of segues on the point that it happens all over. we recently had a chinese lady that had serve businesses in the city. they put her in jail. the judge let her out so she could take care of her kids in california. this segues on the judicial system.

we cannot be catching these people and letting them go back and forth. this doesn't work. it doesn't show the right thing to american public. >> thanks, caller. >> one thing that i appreciate that you highlighted is is the rural communities aspect of this. i mean, i think that we -- we miss a big part of the issue if we only really focus on the big cities. i mean, certainly, it's happening in new york and l.a. and houston and chicago and the big cities, but there's trafficking happening in rural cities across the country. whether or not it's people in a very, very localized sex trade there, where there's a pimp who begins recruiting in the rural area and saying, hey, who wants to get out of this area and go see the big city? and kind of uses the allure of the big city as a recruitment pitch. and you hear lots of victims saying, yeah, we'd like to get out of this small town for a couple weeks, we'll go with you

and not realize they're going with a trafficker. we're actually seeing this in rural america much more. there's so much survivor leadership in the field. there are thousands of survivors who have gone through this and are advocates and leaders on this issue. when you talk to survivors, they'll say, don't overlook the rural communities because that is a big mistake. to not realize how much this is happening in rural communities as well. so thank you for highlighting that. >> how'd you get involved in the issue? >> i got involved fresh out of college, 2002. 16 years ago. i had just graduated from stanford. i was passionate on violence against women issues. initially drawn to work on the sex trafficking side of this then realized how huge it is. realized that it's truly a violence against women turned into profit. and how scary that is. and began working on it and researched the issue for a couple years then the founders of polaris started in 2002 then i joined them a couple years in and been working at polaris ever since. it's been amazing to see how this issue has grown over the

past 16 years and how much momentum there is now. >> from pennsylvania republican line, reginregina, hello. >> caller: good morning. i want to know what this man is going to do for those of the casualty of company people that have had businesses stolen from them because the employer they employed was an illegal using fraudulent documents, and people also -- they were employed, were taken out of a job. so why all this nurturing of somebody that comes to this country, sprays these tear gas at our border patrol? you know, women have, you know, out there in mexico, wherever, where kirsten, praise god for her, if people paid attention like the lady from pennsylvania, the democrat, she is making a way for them to seek asylum. women that have mothers down in these countries are sending their children on birth control pills. you know, just because they

don't get pregnant doesn't mean they don't get a sexually transmitted disease. >> okay. thanks, caller. >> i think regina, i think, one thing i'd highlight that you said is there are parts of the department of homeland security that are really prioritizing this. we know that right now, the federal government is coming up with a government-wide national strategy to combat human trafficking and each of the departments are working on it. you have ambassador john richmond who heads the interagency process, he's the trafficking ambassador for the united states. so now state department's coming up with a strategy. department of homeland security's coming up with a strategy. with secretary nielsen and others. and so you're going to see a strategy come out of the federal government that we really haven't had before that hopefully is comprehensive, hopefully looks at all foams of the issue, hopefully is very victim center and trauma informed and thinks through the complexity here, but i think

that the current approaches need to evolve to realize that putting up a wall or even really cracking down on certain types of immigration, aren't actually going to completely solve this problem. it's still going to be here. it's going to be on limegitimat visas are being here, the u.s. citizen victims, so let's broaden kind of our thinking on how to do this but the same time realize the department of homeland security is doing efforts on this especially out of hsi division, there are lots of hsi agents across the country dedicated to investigating these cases and finding these criminal rings and on the national hotline, we've seen lots of cases get handed over to law enforcement that have come to a really amazing result. and so there is some really good work being done, but also there's some kind of myths and misconceptions in the field that are impeding us from really getting to the next level where we need to be.

>> give out the hotline number one more time. >> hotline number is 1-888-3737-888 and then the textline is "be free." if you text your phone, 233733, if you're not able to make a phone call but can send a silent text, the national hotline that we operate takes texts, phone calls, e-mails, and we even have an online chat function. but i think texts and calls are the most ways that people reach the hotline. we've got 24/7 staffing that takes calls in up to 200 languages. calls are confidential. calls can be anonymous. calls can be about all different types of trafficking and we really encourage people to tall so we get a flood of information and can find more victims that way. and try to do good with it. >> bradley myles with polaris. polar polarisproject.org. thanks for your time. tomorrow nothing on c-span3, cia director gina haspel, national intelligence director dan coats, and fbi director

christopher wray will testify before the senate intelligence committee on threats to the united states. that starts at 9:30 a.m. eastern live here on c-span3. the c-span bus recently traveled to tennessee asking folks what does it mean to be american? >> for me, being an american is being able to break the status quo, to know that i have the ability to not be the conformist to one ideal, you know, form my own opinion and belief on something i feel and challenge the controversial. >> i've had neighbors from el salvador, from iran, from japan, from all over the country, from all over the world, had neighbors from all over the world. coming here to america for a chance at freedom and to me, being an american means creating

a welcoming community for people of all backgrounds. >> being american is all about freedom. it's freedom on where you attend worship on sunday morning. it's freedom in who you marry and where you have children. it's freedom in what you choose to do for you, what your career's going to be, what your strengths are going to be. it's freedom in how you choose to treat your neighbors, it's freedom in how you want to plug into the word and the country and make a difference. i'm hankful for those who came before us and fought for this wonderful freedom. that's what this country is all about. i'm proud to be part of it. >> being an american is based on you, ability to express your own rights. being able to be able to express what you want. being able to eat what you want. being an american is basically having the equality to promote yourself, success rather than negative that's going around. >> to me, being an american

means i have the ability, rights and freedoms to live the life i want to live without regret or second guessing. >> what it means to me to be american is basically the free flow of ideas. the debate of ideas. that we can all have differing opinions but we all come to and decide what is best for america. and so that debate, that discussion, free-flowingi creat with that helps us manifest and develop, establish our laws. it makes us the greatest nation on earth. >> "voices from the road" on c-span. florida has six new members in its congressional delegation for the 116th congress. voters elected republican rick scott to the u.s. senate. coming off of two terms as the state's governor. earlier in his career, senator scott was a health care industry

executive running a company that operated hospitals around the country. and later, he was a venture capitalist. and former health and human services secretary donna shalala was elected to the house. since serving in the clinton administration, she's been president of the university of miami and president of the clinton foundation. democrat debbie mucarsel-powell was born in ecuador and immigrated to the u.s. while a teenager. while attending graduate school, her father was shot and killed in ecuador. after graduate school, she worked in a number of local non-profits before joining the administration of florida international university. two florida republicans also joined the house. ross spano previously served six years in the florida house of representatives. he was also an attorney in private practice. and congressman greg steube started his law career in the army's judge advocate general corps. serving three years in iraq.