Sponsors (8)
The bill increases coordination, accountability, and transparency to strengthen prevention and services for trafficking-affected children, but it raises administrative costs and risks of rushed implementation and metrics-driven short-termism that could undermine long-term survivor outcomes.
Children at risk of trafficking will receive stronger prevention and survivor-support services through coordinated DOJ and ACF strategies.
Programs funded under the bill must use grantee baseline data and clear, measurable goals, improving accountability and increasing the likelihood of effective outcomes.
Congress and the public will receive timely oversight information via a required report within 180 days describing steps taken, increasing transparency of implementation.
Performance metrics could incentivize providers to prioritize easy-to-measure short-term outputs over harder-to-measure, longer-term survivor outcomes.
Implementing new measurement systems and interagency coordination will impose administrative and compliance costs on grantees and local agencies.
The short 180-day reporting deadline may rush initial implementation and produce superficial plans rather than fully developed programs.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Directs DOJ OVC, coordinated with ACF OTIP, to implement GAO anti-child-trafficking recommendations, set measurable goals using grantee baseline data, and report actions within 180 days.
Directs the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), working with the Administration for Children and Families’ Office on Trafficking in Persons (OTIP), to put into practice specific anti-child-trafficking recommendations from a December 11, 2023 GAO report. It requires the agencies to develop prevention and survivor-support strategies, set objective, measurable performance goals using grantee baseline data, and file a report describing steps taken within 180 days of enactment.
Introduced December 4, 2025 by Burgess Owens · Last progress December 4, 2025