Sponsors (4)
The bill directs multi‑year federal funding, standardized training, data collection, and centralized coordination to strengthen prevention, identification, and victim support in transportation—trading increased federal spending, administrative and privacy burdens, and some loss of local flexibility for better-coordinated, evidence‑based anti‑trafficking efforts.
Transportation agencies, frontline workers, and communities gain stable multi‑year federal funding (authorized $10M/year grants and $10M/year outreach FY2027–2031) to plan and sustain anti‑trafficking programs.
Transportation employees and law enforcement will receive standardized, mode‑specific, trauma‑informed training materials and toolkits within a year, improving identification, victim support, and frontline responses.
Congress, agencies, and practitioners will benefit from a stronger evidence base via mandated prevalence studies and a comprehensive report to inform better policy and resource targeting.
Taxpayers will fund new multi‑year obligations (combined outreach and grant authorizations totaling roughly $100M over five years), increasing federal spending and competing with other budget priorities.
Small transportation businesses and some operators may face added administrative costs and compliance burdens to adopt standardized policies, report into centralized systems, and meet grant/admin requirements.
Centralizing tips, reporting, and evaluation data raises privacy and data‑security risks for victims, reporters, and vulnerable communities if safeguards are insufficient.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Directs DOT to expand research, create centralized tools and model policies, update multimodal training and awareness, run a public campaign, and fund grants to prevent human trafficking via transportation.
Official title: Update the Department of Transportation's multimodal counter-trafficking training and awareness campaign and to award grants to all modes of transportation to address human trafficking awareness, education, and prevention efforts, and for other purposes.
Introduced November 5, 2025 by Catherine Marie Cortez Masto · Last progress November 5, 2025
Creates a coordinated Department of Transportation effort to prevent and respond to human trafficking across all modes of travel. It directs DOT to expand and coordinate research, create centralized information‑sharing tools and model policies, update multimodal training and public awareness campaigns, run a nationwide outreach effort tied to major events, and set up a grant program to fund multimodal counter‑trafficking projects. The bill authorizes funding for these activities for fiscal years 2027–2031. The law emphasizes survivor‑informed, trauma‑informed, and mode‑specific approaches; requires consultation with existing advisory groups and initiatives; requires reports to Congress on research and integration with DHS efforts; and sets aside annual grant funding prioritized for regions with higher trafficking prevalence and multimodal coordination.