Sex-Trafficking Prosecutions Fell During Trump’s Second Term

Dennis Schneidler-Imagn Images via Reuters Sex-trafficking prosecutions have plummeted during President Donald Trump’s second term, despite his administration vowing to make them a top priority, according to a report.

Damning analysis from Reuters found that the Justice Department only charged 73 people with federal sex-trafficking offenses through June this year, a drop of about 22 percent compared with the first half of the past three years.

Court records also show Trump’s DOJ has charged 1,230 people with child pornography violations through June, a fall of 3 percent compared with the last three years.

It charged 318 people with violating the Mann Act, which targets those transporting people for prostitution, a fall of 18 percent from the average.

Multiple former prosecutors and other sources attributed the shocking numbers to Trump’s prioritization of issues such as immigration and mass deportations during his second term.

This includes shifting huge amounts of time and resources from the Department of Homeland Security and reassigning agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a branch of ICE that usually investigates human trafficking or drug smuggling, to try to uncover the president’s disputed claims of voter fraud.

The problem has been exacerbated by the departure of dozens of veterans with experience prosecuting sex-trafficking cases from the DOJ.

In some cases, the staffing issues at some U.S. attorney’s offices are reportedly so severe that those remaining are struggling to find prosecutors to pursue their sex-trafficking cases.

“You can’t say something is a priority and then not provide the resources to make that happen,” Jacqueline Kelley, a former federal prosecutor in New York who led the sex-crimes prosecution of rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, told Reuters.

One veteran federal agent specifically blamed Trump’s prioritization of mass deportations for the lack of sex-trafficking prosecutions.

Another federal agent said reassigning HSI agents to investigate Trump’s voter-fraud obsession has caused some cases to fall apart.

“The administration is throwing sand in the gears in 10,000 different ways,” said Martina Vandenberg, president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center.

The data arrived as Todd Blanche, Trump’s pick to lead the DOJ as attorney general, who only just scraped through his confirmation vote, was widely condemned for his botched handling of the files linked to late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Last year, Blanche also met with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell when he was deputy attorney general, as the Trump administration desperately tried to control the fallout over its backpedaling on its promise to release all files related to the Epstein case.