Advocacy Group Urges Congress to Create First Specialized Human Trafficking Courts

‘Nothing is more demoralizing than to see a bill pass on human trafficking and there’s no enforcement,’ the group’s leader said.

Jaco Booyens in Washington on July 16, 2025. The Epoch Times

The leader of an anti-human-trafficking advocacy group is pushing Congress to establish specialized human trafficking courts to prosecute more cases.

“We’re talking about a $52 billion industry of buying and selling predominantly women and children inside this country—American citizens,” Jaco Booyens, who runs Jaco Booyens Ministries, said.

In a paper published on July 15, Booyens argued for creating human trafficking courts in the United States. He said that federal and state judicial systems are failing to properly prosecute human traffickers “despite a quarter century of passing robust anti-trafficking laws, providing funding for task forces, and raising public awareness campaigns.”

Human trafficking convictions are even less common at the state level, Booyens said.

The Massachusetts government published a study that found that state-level prosecutors rarely sought human trafficking charges for offenders accused of those crimes.

Instead, prosecutors more frequently sought charges related to “promoting prostitution and the transport of persons for the purposes of prostitution,” or rape, kidnapping, and pandering.

As for why they pursued the cases on charges not related to trafficking, prosecutors in the study said it was because of judges’ and juries’ lack of familiarity with human trafficking, legal ambiguity over new trafficking laws, low awareness about those laws, lack of victim cooperation, and the fear of losing “high-profile cases.”

The Urban Institute published a similar report with the same findings: Despite estimates that the number of human trafficking offenses is high, the courts have identified and prosecuted fewer cases than expected.

The report noted that this leads to public speculation that state and federal anti-human-trafficking laws are not being adequately enforced and that law enforcement agencies are not working together to tackle the problem.

According to a 2016 study by the Anti-Trafficking Review, the passage of laws to combat human trafficking throughout the United States has resulted in only a “small number” of human trafficking cases that have been prosecuted.

The study said state prosecutors pursued human trafficking charges in only “one-fifth of the human trafficking cases reviewed.”

This is where Booyens said he sees a critical gap in state and federal judicial responses to human trafficking offenses and why he said he believes dedicated courts can meet that need.

“Human trafficking cases are very complicated. The current justice system lets far too many trafficking cases slip through the cracks due to a lack of subject-matter expertise,” he said.

“Specialized courts will eliminate unnecessary delays and lost opportunities. Survivors deserve a justice system that moves with the urgency and care their stories demand.”

Booyens told The Epoch Times in a recent interview that as human trafficking increases, prosecutions decrease.

“We’re at this inflection point in our culture where it seems that things are back to normal ... pre-COVID,” he said. “But things are not normal. There’s a very, very dark element underneath the surface.”

He said many of the victims are children, who are subjected to debt bondage, labor trafficking, and sex trafficking.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Washington on Aug. 12, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

According to the Department of Homeland Security, 43 percent of general human trafficking victims worldwide—which includes forced labor and sex trafficking—are women and girls, and 57 percent are men and boys.

The vast majority of sex trafficking victims, however, are women and girls, at 78 percent. Sixty-seven percent of victims of trafficking for forced labor are men and boys. Overall, 73 percent of victims are older than 18.

The agency notes that there is “no reliable estimate of human trafficking within the United States” but that it occurs in all 50 states.

Those who are most vulnerable to being trafficked are people who experienced childhood abuse, adolescents in foster care or juvenile detention, the homeless, the poor, survivors of domestic violence, unaccompanied illegal immigrant children, survivors of wars and political instability, and those who work in industries with few legal protections.

The Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime describes some of the ways Americans are exploited for human trafficking.

Any minor engaged in commercial sex acts, “regardless of use of force, fraud, or coercion,” is considered a victim of human trafficking.

Other victims are found in both legal and illegal labor industries, which include child care, elder care, the drug trade, massage parlors, hair salons, restaurants, hotels, factories, and farms. Sometimes victims are hidden behind doors in domestic enslavement inside homes.

“Although there is no defining characteristic that all human trafficking victims share, traffickers frequently prey on individuals who are poor, vulnerable, living in an unsafe situation, or are in search of a better life,” the report stated.

Victims are procured by false promises of love, good jobs, or a stable life and lured into situations in which they are forced to work under “deplorable conditions with little or no pay.”

There are male and female human traffickers, according to the Justice Department, and they are often pimps, gang members, diplomats, business owners, labor brokers, and farm, factory, and company owners.

‘US is No. 1 in Sexual Exploitation’

Booyens said the United States is “the No. 1 nation on earth where sexual exploitation is happening and it’s commercialized.”

The Justice Department’s report found that in fiscal year 2023, in the United States, there were, on average, at least 7,755 clients per quarter who were confirmed trafficking victims or people showing strong signs of having been victimized.

Within that year, the agency saw more than 10,000 new clients who had come forward for the first time.

The sheer number of cases, and their complexity, is why specialized courts to handle human trafficking charges are critical, Booyens said.

The cases could go to those courts, which would be administered like circuit courts at the county or state level and presided over by judges nominated and confirmed as human trafficking judges.

“We’re not growing government; the funding is already there,” he said.

A sign warning about human trafficking at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., on July 3, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

He said the cases would be funneled to a judge who is educated and proficient in human trafficking laws and to a prosecutorial class with similar expertise, “down to the bailiff and the court clerk.”

The judges, prosecutors, and clerks would understand the “vernacular, the methods, the ways, and means” of trying human trafficking cases simply by repetition.

“On average, a judge in the county may see one human trafficking case brought to his court in five years, and they go: ‘We don’t even know how to deal with a witness that’s still in trauma. How do we take testimony? How do you build this case?’” Booyens said.

He said the new specialized courts would be federally administered at the state level.

“It gives the state another arrow in the quiver to say: ‘We don’t have a judge in our county that has any proficiency on human trafficking; give us jurisdiction. We want to go try this case in front of the human trafficking judge.’”

If these courts were created, Booyens said, a vast majority of human trafficking cases would be prosecuted on human trafficking charges, instead of related offenses.

He said he hopes that if the United States becomes the first nation in the world to establish specialized courts for human trafficking, it will encourage more survivors to come forward with information.

If survivors see “accurate prosecution and justice, they’re willing to talk, they’re willing to come forward, they’re willing to share information,” Booyens said.

“Nothing is more demoralizing than to see a bill pass on human trafficking, and there’s no enforcement.”