The bill
Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2025
HR. 1144, 119th Congress — read as touching Private Prisons & Immigration Detention.
Sponsored by
Rep. Smith, Christopher H. [R-NJ-4]
ID: S000522
Follow the money
The bill
HR. 1144, 119th Congress — read as touching Private Prisons & Immigration Detention.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
21 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Department of Education" section, p. 377-379 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Ordered to be Reported (Amended) by Voice Vote.
July 21, 2025
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
The Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2025 - a bill so noble in name, yet so riddled with bureaucratic cancer that it's a wonder anyone expects it to actually accomplish anything.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** This bill reauthorizes the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, because apparently, we need to keep reauthorizing laws to remind ourselves that human trafficking is bad. The main objective is to combat trafficking in persons, both domestically and internationally, by modifying existing programs and adding new ones.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill makes several changes to existing law, including:
* Renaming the "Grants to assist in the recognition of trafficking" program to the "Frederick Douglass Human Trafficking Prevention Education Grants" because who doesn't love a good rebranding? * Expanding the scope of grants to include linguistically accessible, culturally responsive, and trauma-informed programs. Because, you know, that's exactly what we need - more buzzwords. * Adding new provisions for combating human trafficking abroad, including modifications to tier standards and counter-trafficking efforts in development cooperation and assistance policy.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects are involved:
* Local educational agencies * Non-profit organizations specializing in human trafficking prevention education * Law enforcement * Technology or social media companies (because they're clearly the experts on preventing human trafficking) * The Secretary of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, and Attorney General - because who doesn't love a good interagency committee?
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill will likely have all the impact of a feather in a hurricane. It's a classic case of "legislative theater" - designed to make politicians look like they're doing something about human trafficking while actually accomplishing very little.
The real disease here is bureaucratic inertia and the desire for politicians to appear proactive without actually taking meaningful action. This bill is just another symptom of that disease, a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.
In short, this bill is a waste of time and resources, a feel-good measure designed to placate voters while doing nothing to address the root causes of human trafficking. But hey, at least we're reauthorizing something, right?
Rep. Smith, Christopher H. [R-NJ-4]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
This bill has 10 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
ID: M000687
Top Contributors
10
ID: M001157
Top Contributors
10
ID: S000168
Top Contributors
10
ID: J000311
Top Contributors
10
ID: C001063
Top Contributors
10
ID: W000795
Top Contributors
10
ID: R000600
Top Contributors
0
No contribution data available
ID: V000129
Top Contributors
10
ID: W000812
Top Contributors
10
ID: M001213
Top Contributors
10
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 39 nodes and 36 connections (22 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $163,450
Showing top 17 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 2 helped, 1 harmed.
Section 204(a) clarifies that nonhumanitarian, nontrade-related foreign assistance will not be provided to countries that do not meet minimum standards for combating human trafficking, which could impact private prison operators involved in immigrant detention.
Section 101(d) prioritizes local educational agencies that partner with law enforcement to assist in training efforts to protect children from labor trafficking and sexual exploitation.
Section 102(b)(10) provides assistance with obtaining victim compensation, direct victim assistance, or other funds for mental health care, which may involve health insurance providers.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
AI Analysis:
"The bill focuses on human trafficking prevention and victim support, while the Project 2025 excerpt centers on parental rights, FERPA/PPRA reforms, and opposition to gender ideology in schools; they share only a tangential connection through federal involvement in education."
— 345 — Department of Education financial assistance. Investigations can take months if not years. The department has never suspended or terminated the funding for an educational institution or agency for violating FERPA or PPRA. In essence, Congress has granted parents and students important statutory rights without an effective remedy to assert those rights. l The next Administration should work with Congress to amend FERPA and PPRA to provide parents and students over the age of 18 years with a private right of action to seek injunctive and declaratory relief, together with attorneys’ fees and costs if a prevailing party, against educational institutions and agencies that violate rights enshrined in these statutes. This will empower parents and students, level the playing field between families and education bureaucracies, and encourage institutional compliance with these statutory requirements. Protect Parental Rights in Policy In addition to strengthening legal protections for parents, the next Adminis- tration should: l Prioritize legislation advancing such rights. Promising ideas have appeared in bills introduced in the 117th Congress such as H.R.8767, the Empowering Parents Act,15 sponsored by Representative Bob Good (R-VA); H.R. 6056, the Parents’ Bill of Rights Act,16 sponsored by Representative Julia Letlow (R-LA); and H.J.Res. 99,17 proposing an amendment to the Constitution relating to parental rights, sponsored by Representative Debbie Lesko (R-AZ). l These congressional actions should be carefully reviewed to make sure they complement state Parents' Bills of Rights, such as those passed in Georgia (2022), Florida (2021), Montana (2021), Wyoming (2017), Idaho (2015), Oklahoma (2014), Virginia (2013), and Arizona (2010). As documented by writers such as Abigail Shrier and others, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons documented a four-fold increase in the number of biological girls seeking gender surgery between 2016 and 2017. Larger increases were found in the U.K. from 2009 to 2019 and 2017 to 2018. These statistics and others point to a social contagion in which minor children, especially girls, are attempting to make life-altering decisions using puberty blockers and other hor- mone treatments and even surgeries to remove or alter vital body parts. Heritage Foundation research finds that providing easier access to such treatments and — 346 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise surgeries without parental involvement does not reduce the suicidality of these young people and may even increase suicide rates. l The next Administration should take particular note of how radical gender ideology is having a devastating effect on school-aged children today—especially young girls. School officials in some states are requiring teachers and other school employ- ees to accept a minor child’s decision to assume a different “gender” while at school—without notifying parents. In California, New Jersey, and certain districts in Kansas and elsewhere, educators are prohibited from informing parents about children’s confusion over their sex if the children do not want their parents to know. Such policies allow schools to drive a wedge between parents and children. The next Administration should work with Congress to provide an example to state lawmakers by requiring K–12 districts under federal jurisdiction, including Wash- ington, D.C., public schools, Bureau of Indian Education schools, and Department of Defense schools, with legislation stating that: l No public education employee or contractor shall use a name to address a student other than the name listed on a student’s birth certificate, without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians. l No public education employee or contractor shall use a pronoun in addressing a student that is different from that student’s biological sex without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians. l No public institution may require an education employee or contractor to use a pronoun that does not match a person’s biological sex if contrary to the employee’s or contractor’s religious or moral convictions. State lawmakers should use this model and adopt similar provisions for public schools within their borders. Federal lawmakers should not allow public school employees to keep secrets about a child from that child’s parents. Advance School Choice Policies The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher program providing scholarships to children from low-income families living in the nation’s capital to attend a private school of choice, is capped at $20 million annually and limited to
AI Analysis:
"While HR 1144 focuses on combating human trafficking through prevention, victim support, and law enforcement, Project 2025's DHS section emphasizes restricting immigration benefits for unaccompanied minors, ending Flores, and limiting asylum—policies that could increase trafficking risks. The bill does not address immigration enforcement or detention reforms central to Project 2025."
— 148 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Unaccompanied minors 1. Congress should repeal Section 235 of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA),9 which provides numerous immigration benefits to unaccompanied alien children and only encourages more parents to send their children across the border illegally and unaccompanied. These children too often become trafficking victims, which means that the TVPRA has failed. 2. If an alternative to repealing Section 235 of the TVPRA is necessary, the section should be amended so that all unaccompanied children, regardless of nationality, may be returned to their home countries in a safe and efficient manner. Currently, the TVPRA allows only children from contiguous countries (Canada and Mexico) to be returned while every other unaccompanied minor must be placed into a lengthy process that usually results in the minor’s landing in the custody of an illegal alien family member. 3. Congress must end the Flores Settlement Agreement by explicitly setting nationwide terms and standards for family and unaccompanied detention and housing. Such standards should focus on meeting human needs and should allow for large-scale use of temporary facilities (for example, tents). 4. Congress should amend the Homeland Security Act and portions of the TVPRA to move detention of alien children expressly from the Department of Health and Human Services to DHS. l Asylum reform 1. The standard for a credible fear of persecution should be raised and aligned to the standard for asylum. It should also account specifically for credibility determinations that are a key element of the asylum claim. 2. Codify former asylum bars and third-country transit rules. 3. Congress should eliminate the particular social group protected ground as vague and overbroad or, in the alternative, provide a clear definition with parameters that at a minimum codify the holding in Matter of A-B- that gang violence and domestic violence are not grounds for asylum.10 — 149 — Department of Homeland Security l Parole reform. Congress should end the widespread abuse of parole in contravention of statute and return it to its origins as an extraordinary remedy for very limited purposes. l NGOs and processing. Congress should halt funds given to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to process and transport illegal aliens into and throughout the United States. Such funds and infrastructure, including the DHS joint processing centers, should be redirected to secure the border, detain aliens, and provide space for immigration court proceedings. l Other pathways for border crossers. While Congress should use its oversight authority to ensure that Expedited Removal is used to the fullest extent and followed to the letter of the law, other paths for border crossers should be included in a legislative package. 1. Migrant protection protocols. Update the statutory language providing the basis for the Remain in Mexico program as needed to withstand judicial scrutiny and executive inaction. 2. Asylum Cooperative Agreements. While the agreements themselves must be negotiated, Congress should mandate that the executive branch work faithfully to negotiate and execute ACAs and set parameters to ensure that an unwilling executive cannot renege on an existing agreement or abandon the effort. 3. Other expedited pathways. Congress should explicitly permit programs akin to the Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR) and Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP) programs. l Employment authorization 1. Congress should reassert control of employment authorization, which is subject to rampant regulatory abuse, and limit it to certain categories of legal immigrants and non-immigrants. 2. Congress should also permanently authorize E-Verify and make it mandatory. l State and local law enforcement
AI Analysis:
"The bill focuses on combating human trafficking and supporting victims, while the Project 2025 HHS section emphasizes teen pregnancy prevention, adoption reform, ORR relocation, and child support enforcement. Both share a concern for protecting vulnerable youth from exploitation, but their primary objectives and policy mechanisms differ significantly."
— 477 — Department of Health and Human Services Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) and Personal Responsibility Educa- tion Program (PREP). TPP is operated by the Office of Population Affairs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health; PREP is operated by the ACF Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation. Both programs should ensure that there is better reporting of subgrantees and referral lists so that they do not promote abortion or high-risk sexual behavior among adolescents. CMS should ensure that Sexual Risk Avoidance (SRA) proponents receive these grants and are given every opportunity to prove their effectiveness. SRA programs, both at ACF and at OASH and both discretionary and mandatory, should be equal in funding and emphasis. Qualitative research should be conducted on both types of programs to ensure continuous improvement. In addition, certain provisions should be employed so that these programs do not serve as advocacy tools to promote sex, promote prostitution, or provide a funnel effect for abortion facilities and school field trips to clinics, or for similar purposes. Parent involvement and parent–child communication should be encour- aged and be a part of any funded project. Risk avoidance should be prioritized, and any program that submits a proposal that promotes risk rather than health should not be eligible for funding. Site visits should be revamped to ensure adherence to these optimal health met- rics, and a cost analysis of programming as compared to students served should be a metric in funding (taking into account that in certain cases, intensive programs will serve fewer students and can have more positive results). These same param- eters should apply to sex education programs at ACF. Any lists with “approved curriculum” or so-called evidence-based lists should be abolished; HHS should not create a monopoly of curriculum, adding to the profit of certain publishers. Furthermore, lists created in the past have given priority to sex-promotion text- books. HHS should create a list of criteria for evaluating the sort of curriculum that should be selected for any sex education grant programs, both at OASH and at ACF, with the aim of promoting optimal health and adhering to the legislative language of each program. Adoption Reform. There are roughly 400,000 children across the nation on the waiting list for foster care and 100,000 awaiting adoptive families, and the opioid/ fentanyl crisis is putting more at risk every day. Unfortunately, many of the faith- based adoption agencies that serve these children are under threat from lawsuits, or else their licenses and contracts have been halted because they cannot in good conscience place children in every household due to their religious belief that a child should have a married mother and father. HHS, through ACF and the Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources (ASFR), should repeal the unnecessary 2016 regulation61 that imposes nonstatutory sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination conditions on agency grants and return to the policy of maximizing the options for placing vulnerable children — 478 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise in their forever homes. ACF and OCR should also survey their programs to consider whether additional waivers of HHS grant conditions—waivers the Biden Admin- istration revoked in 2021—are needed for faith-based agencies. Additionally, Congress should pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act62 to ensure that providers and organizations cannot be subjected to discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based on their beliefs about marriage. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The Office of Refugee Resettlement should be moved to the Department of Homeland Security. Having health and welfare functions managed by HHS and border security functions managed by DHS has created intolerable failures in both. HHS and ORR have forgotten their original refugee-resettlement mission and instead have provided a panoply of free programs that incentivize people to come to the U.S. illegally. Even more troubling, ORR has too often placed children into dangerous situations when releasing them into the country. Nearly all of HHS’s care, custody, and placement of children is done through cooperative agreements with private agencies, many of which may have broken federal law by inducing or being accomplices in illegal immigration. Those arrangements could be handled far more effectively by DHS. Congress should reform the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act63 to transfer all ORR duties for unaccompanied alien children to DHS and eliminate the Flores settlement agreement.64 Regardless of where ORR’s functions reside, ORR staff and care providers should never be allowed to facilitate abortions for unaccompanied children in its cus- tody, including by transporting minors across state lines from pro-life states to abortion-friendly states. Pregnant, unaccompanied girls in ORR custody should be treated with dignity, not trafficked across state lines to be victimized by the abortion industry. ORR should withdraw its policy of allowing elective abortions for children in ORR care and issue a new policy of instructing care providers not to allow girls to be transported for elective abortions. HHS OGC and the White House should insist that DOJ fight to defend that policy up to the U.S. Supreme Court in light of Dobbs. Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) Congress established Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1935 to assist single-parent families who were suffering financially from the loss of a bread-winning husband and father. Within two decades, however, the majority of families receiving aid were depen- dent because of paternal abandonment rather than death. Today, nearly a third of America’s children live without a father present in the home, and a fourth of them are enrolled to receive child support. The glaring issue in child support enforcement today is a non-resident father’s ability to provide full or consistent child support payments. The literature reflects this divide as fathers have been categorized as “deadbeat” dads, then as “deadbroke”
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.