FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Combating human trafficking is a priority for the Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Department, but the agency can’t do it alone.
That’s why HHS partnered with state and local officials in Mississippi to carry out a two-week human trafficking sting leading to 72 felony and misdemeanor arrests and 29 victim rescues, 15 of whom opted to receive rehabilitation resources, according to data provided first to The Daily Signal.
“We’ve been going after human traffickers, sex-offender registry, trying to make sure they’re in compliance, and trying to get the drug dealers of fentanyl, and we’ve had about 400 local, state, and federal law enforcement partners that have helped us in all these five different locations across the state,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch told The Daily Signal.
Operation Guardian Force ran from July 14 to July 29.
“It’s been amazing to see all the rescues and to really help these victims, because the ultimate goal is to help them get into society without any shame or blame,” Fitch added. “We offer that hope and that next step in their journey to them.”
Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary at HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, flew to Mississippi to watch the sting in action.
“When we were in Mississippi last week on a Wednesday night, over an eight-hour period, while the sun was still out, they were able to make three arrests and charge criminals with trafficking offenses,” Gradison told The Daily Signal in an interview, “and they were able to get nine victims off the streets. Five of them accepted services.”
The partnership in Mississippi is a model for how HHS wants to team up with other state attorneys general to combat trafficking, according to Gradison.
“The attorney general is a leader in this space, because she has prioritized getting traffickers off the streets to clean up their communities,” Gradison said. “As the Trump administration, we are ready to partner with any law enforcement agency that wants to combat human trafficking.”
While HHS has good relationships with other executive agencies in the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, most of the enforcement is local, he explained.
“When an attorney general steps up and prioritizes combating trafficking, we are ready to partner with them to make sure they have the information that they need to investigate and then to make sure that those victims are taken care of on the back end,” he said.
Under HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, the Office of Trafficking in Persons supports states in fighting human trafficking by making sure tips to the National Human Trafficking Hotline get to law enforcement and by connecting victims to available services.
“We’re there to partner to make sure that these victims are identified, that they receive eligibility letters as potential victims of trafficking, and then connect them with services,” Gradison said.
HHS wants to partner with a number of states on operations similar to the one in Mississippi.
“It’s been mostly Republican-led attorney generals who have prioritized trafficking, but we want to partner with all states, and we will work across the aisle to combat human trafficking,” Gradison said. “This is not a partisan issue. This is a human issue, and there are probably more victims than you could possibly imagine who need our help.”
Another way HHS is supporting states in combatting human trafficking is by reforming the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
HHS refers tips to state and local officials through the National Human Trafficking Hotline, but the Biden administration neglected the resource, allowing thousands of tips to go unanswered.
In 2023, more than 40 state attorneys general, of both parties, sent a letter to the Administration for Children and Families, expressing concerns that relevant tips submitted through the hotline were not making it to state or local law enforcement.
“The Biden administration didn’t actually do much about that concern,” Gradison said.
The attorneys general wrote another letter to the Trump administration reiterating concerns about the hotline.
In alignment with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s transparency priority, HHS set up a dashboard displaying the number of incoming calls and where they are going. In September, HHS will offer a grant to a new provider to operate the hotline more effectively.
Democrats accused the Trump administration of neglecting anti-human trafficking prevention programs after the State Department made cuts to its anti-trafficking unit. But the decision to prioritize ending trafficking in the U.S. before targeting it abroad is in line with the president’s “America First” foreign policy, Gradison said.
“I would argue that it is an America First policy to focus on fixing the trafficking issues in this country and making sure that we have the appropriate staff and resources to do that before we attempt to solve the world’s trafficking problem,” he said. “Not to say that we don’t have a role to play there, but we’re trying to clean up our own backyard.”
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