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A radical of anti-human trafficking advocates called "Safe House Project" is urging the Trump administration and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to betterment the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
The hotline, which is tally by HHS, was started successful 2007 to supply 24/7 assistance for victims of quality trafficking.
According to Safe House Project, which offers victims a scope of services, including a web of shelters, the hotline has "lost each credibility" and simply does not execute the extremity of ending quality trafficking.
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After Kennedy cleared a committee ballot connected Tuesday, bringing him 1 measurement person to confirmation, the nonprofit released a connection celebrating the step, saying that "our federation is successful dire request of enactment that volition reconstruct it [the hotline] to fulfill its intent of identifying victims of trafficking, supporting victims escaping from their traffickers, and helping bring swift justness to those who maltreatment and victimize hopeless and susceptible populations."
In enactment with the Department of Government Efficiency’s mission to slash authorities waste, Safe House Project says HHS tin betterment the hotline to conserve its tax-dollar backing and prevention much lives astatine the aforesaid time.
"The American taxpayers funded the National Human trafficking hotline, and the world is it has failed," Safe House Project CEO Kristi Wells told Fox News Digital.
Wells claimed that radical who telephone the hotline often person to hold upwards of 45 minutes, resulting successful galore radical hanging up earlier adjacent reporting a quality trafficking incident. She besides said that successful galore instances, hotline unit neglect to instrumentality calls oregon to stock tips with instrumentality enforcement.
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If helium is confirmed by the Senate, Wells said Kennedy volition person a "phenomenal opportunity" to prevention thousands of lives by moving rapidly to summation the ratio of the hotline.
"The National Human Trafficking Hotline, again, has the imaginable to prevention thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives," she continued. "And so, [since] the Department of Health and Human Services is the 1 that oversees the effectiveness of the hotline, it's truly important that the existent medication prioritizes and truly holds the existent hotline accountable and making definite that the services are operating the mode that they request to beryllium operating."
In spot of the existent hotline, Wells is urging HHS to leverage modern exertion – specified arsenic cellphone apps and AI – to make a caller strategy that is "fast, actionable and casual to use."
After conducting extended probe with instrumentality enforcement entities and related NGOs, Wells said she believes a caller strategy could beryllium created utilizing modern exertion that would marque the taxation dollars being spent by the authorities connected this spell overmuch further and execute more.
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"When you're leveraging technology, you are truly creating efficiencies of standard and truly expanding scale," she said. "And so, I don't judge that this is simply a solution that would outgo the authorities much money. I deliberation it would let them to usage the dollars that are presently being spent connected a nationalist hotline much efficaciously and spot much effectual results."
Wells said the Trump administration "has already shown an encouraging willingness to tackle quality trafficking," but noted, "We privation to bash our portion to marque definite that this is simply a apical precedence for them and marque definite that close actions are taken to bring victims retired of the shadows, to summation reporting and to summation instrumentality enforcement and prosecution of traffickers and buyers."
"Human trafficking is happening each astir america and we arsenic assemblage members person the accidental to place and respond to quality trafficking and a caller instrumentality is truly captious to america making definite that that happens," she continued. "Whenever we person due reporting mechanisms and we are ‘seeing thing and saying something,’ past this thought that quality trafficking is undercover and goes undetected is nary longer the reality."
"The world is we'll beryllium capable to spot it much and erstwhile we commencement seeing it more, we're capable to empower our lawmakers with much effectual information to make much effectual policies. And so, I americium excited astir the trajectory that a much robust reporting mechanics tin bring to the nonsubjective of eradicating trafficking successful America."
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