Trump administration pulls back on work combating human trafficking, long a top GOP priority

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President Donald Trump holds up the "big, beautiful bill" that was signed into law as during a Fourth of July military family picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (-Pool)
A key office charged by Congress with coordinating the federal government's work against human trafficking was gutted July 11, the latest in a string of cuts across different agencies to the government's work on an issue that Republicans have long hailed as a top priority.
The cuts at the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) decimated a team that worked to combat labor and sex trafficking abroad and helped coordinate domestic efforts across other agencies, including the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Labor.
The so-called 'reduction-in-force' at the State Department came amid a maelstrom surrounding the Trump administration over its handling of federal investigations into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. Officials have said he died by suicide, but his death sparked new conspiracy theories that were fueled by President Donald Trump, who at one point maintained a friendship with Epstein. When this month the Justice Department said there was no Epstein client list, after previously promising to release it, many who had supported Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi were angered, in part because they believed the client list would reveal new truths about Epstein.
Republicans have for years made human trafficking a key issue, pushing for legislation to boost law enforcement and support for victims and telling voters that combating trafficking was a major priority.
This report was originally published by The 19th. The Illuminator is a founding member of The 19th News Network.
For Secretary of State Marco Rubio, anti-trafficking work has been a centerpiece of his policy agenda. Rubio cosponsored bipartisan legislation to help domestic trafficking survivors during his time in the Senate and as recently as May discussed his concerns about a rise in human trafficking in an unstable Haiti. He criticized former President Joe Biden's immigration policy by saying it 'empowered' child trafficking into the United States.
Bondi, too, has long been an advocate of local and federal efforts to combat human trafficking, making it a key focus of her tenure as Florida's attorney general. She went on to lobby on behalf of a Christian anti-human-trafficking advocacy group and the Qatari government on anti-human-trafficking efforts.
People working on human trafficking issues in the federal government and for advocacy groups on the front lines of that work in the United States and abroad have been surprised at the pullback. The administration's attention to the issue during Trump's first term and the ascent of high-profile advocates to the Cabinet gave them the impression that their work would be shielded from the kinds of cuts they were seeing elsewhere.
Instead, funding and staffing for human trafficking work has taken sizable hits.
'We really thought that the broad, bipartisan nature of the issue of trafficking was going to provide some protection for our office. All Americans are against trafficking — Republicans, Democrats, everybody,' said Cindy Dyer, the former ambassador-at-large under Biden to monitor and combat trafficking in persons at the State Department. The office she oversaw had close to 90 full-time staffers. It lost about a dozen to the Trump administration's voluntary resignation program earlier in the year, and, last Friday, about half were dismissed. The remaining were demoted, Dyer said.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The office's work spanned a broad range of human trafficking issues, including sex trafficking, which disproportionately affects women, girls and LGBTQ+ people, and forced domestic labor, which also disproportionately affects women and girls. Dyer is now the chief program officer at the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, which promotes democracy and human rights across the world.
'We really thought that broad bipartisan support we have had for 25 years — ever since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in 2000 — would provide us some protection, and it did not. And I think people are really both surprised and disappointed,' said Dyer, who also worked in the Justice Department in the George W. Bush administration.
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The most recent reauthorization of the law was approved in 2017, during the first Trump administration. The law charged the TIP office with producing an annual report that was due to Congress on June 30; this year's report has been delayed without explanation. Last week's cuts severely impacted the team working on that report, which is widely considered a critical global assessment of human trafficking prevention work.
Before those staffing cuts, the office had also paused the disbursement of grants for nongovernmental organizations working on human trafficking. The 19th could not confirm the current status of those grants.
Varina Winder, who worked as the chief of staff in the Office of Global Women's Issues at the State Department during the Biden administration, said she was dismayed by the pullback on work to uphold global human rights, including stopping trafficking at TIP.
'If you can't empower the office that is literally ending human slavery, what does that say about your larger ambitions about the value proposition of humans in this administration?' she said.
Martina Vandenberg of the Human Trafficking Legal Center said federal work to combat human trafficking falls into four buckets: the State Department's global work, prosecution at the Justice Department, federal funding for outside groups and immigration policy. Every area has taken a hit since the start of the administration, Vandenberg said.
'We have grave concerns,' said Vandenberg, whose anti-trafficking advocacy group connects trafficking survivors with pro bono representation. 'It is distressing to see U.S. anti-trafficking programs decimated by an administration that rode to victory, at least in part, on claims that it would combat human trafficking.'
The Human Trafficking Legal Center published an analysis of federal data this week showing that visas for victims of human trafficking who cooperate with law enforcement to arrest and prosecute traffickers are being issued at record-low levels, despite a growing backlog.
At the Labor Department, the Trump administration in March put an end to close to 70 programs and more than $500 million in grant funding that the agency was using to combat child labor and human trafficking in countries that have trade agreements with the United States. The funding helped ensure foreign governments were fighting human trafficking while also protecting U.S. jobs, The Washington Post reported at the time. The office that managed the funding was also tasked with producing a congressionally mandated report that, in part, outlined goods produced with child labor.
'To have this administration cut funding so significantly has just been a huge blow to the progress that has been made over the last several decades,' said a federal government employee familiar with this work who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation.
'Within the anti-trafficking movement and in the government, we were hoping that we would be protected in some way since during Trump's first administration, there was more funding for anti-trafficking then than there had been in previous administrations even. And Ivanka Trump took a really strong interest in the issue,' the employee said. In his first term, the president's oldest daughter made the issue central to her portfolio and hosted a summit at the White House.
'We've just seen a huge shift in this administration, and honestly, it's sent shock waves through the community,' the employee said.
On Thursday night, Trump said he would authorize Bondi to request from a federal court the grand jury testimony from Epstein's trial. It was a reversal from her previous position on what she would release, though it is still unclear what transcripts the courts could approve to be made public.
Reps. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, have been trying to force a floor vote on releasing the complete Epstein files. Several far-right Republicans have signed on to the discharge petition effort so far, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Eli Crane, Lauren Boebert and Max Miller.
Discharge petitions are a procedural maneuver that circumvents House leadership and the powerful Rules Committee to force a floor vote. They've rarely been successful because they require a majority of House members' signatures to kick off. Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, managed to kill the last one raised in April, which would have let new parents vote by proxy while away from the Capitol.
But Khanna said he's confident that the petition will move forward: 'We have the votes.'
'Moms being allowed to vote in the House is important,' he said of the failed discharge petition effort, then added: 'But the release of the Epstein files to the MAGA base matters 100 times more to them. I think it's a totally different situation in terms of the intensity of scrutiny. … The base cares so deeply about this.'
Next week, a group of high-profile Republicans are expected to gather at the Capitol for the annual International Summit Against Human Trafficking put on by the Conservative Political Action Conference, the group behind the annual gathering of right-wing activists and politicians.
'This pivotal event upholds CPAC's steadfast dedication to eradicating modern-day slavery by uniting survivors, legislators, advocates, and law enforcement from both domestic and international communities to drive bold solutions,' the announcement for the event reads. The group said earlier this month that Trump's investments in immigration enforcement in the 'one big beautiful bill' will 'hit traffickers where it hurts by taking away the shadows they exploit.'
Just days later, Freedom Network USA, one of the leading anti-trafficking groups in the country, is planning to hold a webinar on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons 'to break down how the Trump administration's heinous attacks have impacted human trafficking survivors.'
This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay, Marissa Martinez and Jennifer Gerson of The 19th. Meet Mel , Marissa and Jennifer and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
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