Please call and email your Representatives and ask them to pass the amended version of HF2458, which will provide $200,000 in funding to staff the new office on Human Trafficking in the Iowa Department of Public Safety (DPS).  This funding will help DPS to hire two staff who are devoted full-time to combatting human trafficking in Iowa. 

HERE IS A LINK TO FIND YOUR REPRESENTATIVE’S CONTACT INFORMATION:  

https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/find

 The $200,000 in funding noted in HF2458 would come from waiving DPS’s requirement that they spend $200K for vehicle depreciation this year; so that they may channel funding to staffing the Human Trafficking office instead. (Link to full text: https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/AMDI/86/S5173.pdf

Earlier this session, the House and Senate passed SF2191, which established Iowa’s first Human Trafficking office, but funding was not provided with this bill.  Governor Branstad signed SF2191 into law, and now it’s time to fund the office.

 Why now?  Now, because human trafficking is the fastest growing crime in the world; and it is putting youth and young adults in every town in Iowa at risk of unimaginable violence.  Now, to help rescue those who are currently victims from being raped every day, multiple times, in addition to being beaten, having their own or their families’ lives threatened, and sometimes tortured and killed by buyers and traffickers.  Now, because gangs, criminal syndicates, and drug dealers operating in Iowa have learned that it’s much easier to traffic children and young adults for sex, and much more profitable, than any other crime they could imagine.  And their profits from human trafficking are being used to fund even greater levels of criminal activity, and also create human trafficking networks across Iowa with a growing capacity to ensnare our young people!

Can you imagine being a parent whose middle school or teenage son or daughter is missing, and forced into the sex trade?  Or your older child in college?  Yes, human traffickers are actively recruiting in our schools and on our college campuses in Iowa, and every young person caught in their grip is in danger of never again being seen; being transported across the country as a sex slave; and even, in rare cases, being shipped overseas.

Can you imagine the tremendous joy and relief you would feel if your child, or the child of someone you know, were rescued from human trafficking?

Please, take a moment now, to call and email your Representative, and tell him or her to pass the amended version of HF2458, in order to provide $200,000 in funds to staff the new Human Trafficking office in the Department of Public Safety.

 AGAIN, HERE IS THE LINK FOR YOUR REPRESENTATIVE’S CONTACT INFORMATION:  https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/find

 Your call and email TODAY could save someone’s life, by putting an officer on the beat whose job is to rescue trafficking victims and take down the traffickers.

Yours sincerely,

Iowa's statewide Network Against Human Trafficking (http://iowanaht.org)