The administration of Donald J. Trump is particularly good at one thing—issuing executive proclamations. The president has issued roughly 340 proclamations since assuming the office of the American presidency—none of which have translated into meaningful action.
For example, in December 2018, President Trump proclaimed that January would the National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. In signing the proclamation, the president touted the Department of Justice’s aggressive prosecution of “human trafficking networks.”
“Human trafficking is a horrific crime against the human dignity of the victims, and it can have no place in our society,” then Acting Attorney General Matthew G. Whitaker said. “But the Department of Justice is taking action against the traffickers. In fiscal year 2018, the Department of Justice secured over 500 human trafficking convictions – an increase from the previous fiscal year. We also filed a record number of new cases. And in districts where our new Anti-Trafficking Coordination Teams are in place, we have ramped up the number of trafficking prosecutions. We have sent a clear message to traffickers that the Department of Justice will bring the full force of the law against them.”
Sex Trafficking Cases Down Under Trump Administration
What the president and his then-attorney general did not tell the American people is that, the Jeffery Epstein case notwithstanding, prosecutions for sex trafficking under the very law (18 U.S.C. Section 1591) used to indict the billionaire pedophile and one-time Trump associate are down by 26.7 percent over the past fiscal year, according to TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse). This marks the second year in a row that child sex trafficking prosecutions have dramatically fallen under the Trump administration compared to the Obama administration.
During the Obama administration, child sex trafficking prosecution rose from 97 in 2010 to 360 in 2015, according to the McCain Institute. During that six-year period, the following occurred:
- Child sex traffickers were indicted on an average of 3.78 criminal charges;
- Convicted on an average of 2.13 criminal charges; and
- Sentences ranged from no time in prison to life in prison with an average minimum sentence of 13.5 years in prison with 30 child sex traffickers being sentence to life in prison without parole.
President Trump frequently compares the manufactured improvements his administration has supposedly made over the Obama administration. The prosecution of child sex traffickers is one area in which the Trump administration cannot, under any stretch of the imagination in the White House’s alternative fact world, claim greater success over the Obama administration.
Resources Diverted to Illegal Reentry, Refugees
The simple, unvarnished truth is that the Trump administration has exhibited a continuous deplorable pattern of crimes against children and casual neglect for their well-being. Justice Department attorneys, at the explicit or implicit direction of the president, have diverted most of their prosecutorial resources to illegal entry cases. Besides a decrease in child sex trafficking prosecutions, prosecution of corruption cases have also declined considerably under the Trump administration.
In effect, the Trump administration is telling the American people that the prosecution of misdemeanor illegal entry cases is more important the prosecution of child sex trafficking and political corruption cases, neither of which should be surprising inasmuch as the president has a history of paling around with rich pedophiles and has established the most corrupt presidency since Warren G. Harding.
Tragically, and unfortunately, what this means is that America now has a presidential administration that tolerates child sex trafficking and bear hugs political corruption while making the misdemeanor offense of crossing the nation’s Southern border “Enemy Number One,” to borrow J. Edgar Hoover’s favorite “lock her up” phrase.