Cortez Masto to introduce human trafficking bill

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., joined with the family of former Transportation Security Agency Jimmy Deal on Friday at the Bruce R. Thompson U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building in Reno to mark the 10th anniversary of her law as attorney general that made human trafficking a felony in the state.

She also announced she will be introducing legislation called the Jimmy Deal Trafficking Survivors Assistance Act in honor of Deal’s work helping survivors who sought to escape from their traffickers. Deal’s family, including his widow Cathy, daughter Jessica and her husband David and their daughters, were present for the announcement.

Cortez Masto said she hoped her new bill would continue Deal’s legacy.

“Jimmy Deal was always at the forefront,” she said. “Every time I came back through Reno, he would stop me and meet me at the airport to address human trafficking.”

Nevada, which ranks second for states with the highest rates of human trafficking with 5.77 per 100,000 residents, according to the World Population Review report, recorded 201 cases from 571 tips. Most cases were categorized as sex trafficking, and Nevada recorded 157 sex trafficking incidents.

Serena Evans, policy director for the Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, who provided opening remarks to Friday’s conference, said passage of Cortez Masto’s legislation a decade ago has been monumental in shifting how the community thinks about trafficking today. Washoe County Undersheriff Jeff Clark also shared how frustrated he was in a regional street enforcement unit before trafficking became a felony.

Melissa Holland, executive director of Awaken, a faith-based nonprofit in Reno that works to eliminate commercial sexual exploitation, said she was introduced to Deal in 2015 when Cortez Masto was attorney general and became aware of a victim who needed to leave the community immediately with her 5-year-old daughter. After calling friends in North Carolina who were willing to provide shelter for the both of them, Deal said he would assist without any hesitation.

“He was the go-to guy and he made it happen for every survivor,” Holland said.

Cortez Masto has passed multiple bills to help combat trafficking. These include the Not Invisible Act and Savanna’s Act that address missing, murdered and trafficked Indigenous women and girls; the Debt Bondage Repair Bill that protects the credit scores of trafficking survivors who have been financially exploited; the FIND Human Trafficking Act that requires the Government Accountability Office to examine virtual currencies and the dark web in human and drug trafficking; and the Safe Connections Act to assist survivors of trafficking in keeping their phone line apart from a family plan while maintaining their own phone number as well as the privacy of survivors in need of protection.

In January, President Joe Biden signed two Cortez Masto bills as part of an anti-human trafficking legislation package. The Interdiction for the Protection of Child Victims of Exploitation and Human Trafficking Act bill trains officers to recognize and rescue at-risk, trafficked and exploited children.

The second bill is the Human Trafficking Online Research Act, which helps to combat human trafficking activity on social media platforms. The bill gives the National Science Foundation the ability to find out how social media, human trafficking and online trafficking recruitment methods intersect and to investigate the preventive measures used by the social media platforms to help stop crime and raise awareness.