Remarks by President Trump in Meeting on Human Trafficking on the Southern Border | Eastern North Carolina Now

    These women don't necessarily have access to 911. These women don't always identify as a victim based on the coercion and the manipulation that's being done by their traffickers. If we had access, or if they had access to 911, obviously we would serve them quicker. But we're identifying them and then really wrapping services around them in order to, if you will, bring them to team America.

    We want these victims to be stabilized. We want them to be healthy enough to allow us access to investigative information that they can provide so that we can prosecute the offenders, and the controllers, and the traffickers that are keeping these women working and laying down 20, 30, 40 times a day.

    So my job is to work alongside the agent when we identify this victim, and again, make sure that that victim is interviewed in a way that's not blaming. We certainly don't want to ask the victims of human trafficking, "How many men did you have sex with each day?" We want those women to be met with non-blaming language, such as, "How many men had sex with you?"

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    You know, this is not their fault. No matter what they look like, no matter how they're dressed, you know, our idea of them or what our community thinks of them when they're being controlled and coerced into this kind of environment, it's our job to help identify that, and then, like I said earlier, to rescue them.

    So we look for additional support all the time in our program, because again, the outreach that we do to the community and to the people that really have their eyes and ears there to identify them is important to us.

    You know, our Blue Campaign that is run by HIS and ICE, the slogan is "Hidden in Plain Sight." And I think that's such an important slogan to have because these women are among us. Obviously, when you talk about the Super Bowl, we talk about women that are there. There's other people there that need their eyes and ears to help identify that. But they are hidden in plain sight.

    And so our outreach efforts and the victim assistance efforts that we take every single day to help identify them and support them really will bring to pass additional prosecutions and support for them.

    Thank you, Mr. President.

    THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.

    SECRETARY NIELSEN: And finally, sir, one more. Jim at the - again, at the appropriate level - is going to tell us a little bit about how technology plays a very important role here. And we're extraordinarily proud of what HSI and ICE bring to the table in terms of their investigations.

    So, please, Jim.

    MR. COLE: Mr. President, thank you for having me. I want to talk about HSI's role in using technology to fight these types of crimes. We're definitely a world leader in applying technology and doing victim-centric investigations.

    I founded our HSI's Child Victim Identification Program and Laboratory back in 2012. I've dedicated my career to identifying and rescuing victims of these horrendous crimes.

    In doing so, we applied several different pieces of technology. Actually, I have some demonstrations here for you. So one of the things that we do quite often and what you see here is a sanitized image of an offender's hand abusing a victim that we've removed from this image. But in that image, we were able to pull a fingerprint of the subject from that image and thusly identify that subject through the fingerprint.

    We routinely do this now -

    SECRETARY NIELSEN: And if I could interrupt, Jim. That's even though the fingers are not facing the picture.

    MR. COLE: Correct.

    SECRETARY NIELSEN: So the technology enables them to pull the prints from the photograph.

    MR. COLE: So, another thing that we do often are comparisons. So after the fact - after we've identified and rescued the victim usually - and we have imagery, again, depicting - we have a lot of hands in our imagery. So this is a case of having an individual's hand from the abuse imagery and then having exemplar images from a search warrant photo and using the dermatological markings from that person to be able to draw the difference that it is the same person.

    And so we do a lot of comparisons of pretty much anything that can be photographed or depicted in imagery or video, we can do a comparison of as long as we have an exemplar.

    In this case here, this uses some creative technology but also some external expertise. So we have the child depicted in an outside environment. That child is horrifically abused in imagery and video that we have seized, as well as some of the non-abuse imagery.

    So what we did is we sanitized her away from the image. So we just remove her using different image editing tools. And what we did here, we noticed that there is some plant life; there's flora and fauna.

    In the bottom right, in the red circle, is what's called a "dwarf palm." We then, with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a strong partner of ours, we submitted this image to the Smithsonian Institute, and an expert in flora and fauna was able to tell us that that plant is only going to be in the areas in green that you see on the map here, primarily southwest United States and Florida.

    Using other imagery from that, there was a playground. We worked with the playground manufacturers and with certifying bodies of playgrounds throughout the United States. And through that, we were able to identify that that specific playground was just outside of Houston, Texas.

    That allowed us to focus on a specific neighborhood in Houston, Texas, and within hours, we identified that child and apprehended the offender, and rescued that child from horrific and ongoing abuse.

    The rest of my briefing is law enforcement sensitive, sir.

    THE PRESIDENT: Okay, that's fine, Jim. Thank you very much. You do a great job. We appreciate it.

    Kellyanne, do you have anything to say?

    MS. CONWAY: Sir, thank you so much, and Secretary Nielsen, and Ivanka Trump, for just convening us and allowing the press to come in. Because so many times, I just think Americans are not hearing the basic facts and figures, not appreciating the tragedy that so many of these young victims endure day in and day out, and really, the very brave and important work of the men and women around this table and all that they represent, all the people that they represent.

    Sir, coming fast on the heels of the largest seizure of fentanyl by the border control in our nation's history - yes, through a port of entry, but that's what we know about. It's all the things, as you hear here, that we don't know about - the perilous journey that people are taking, that they're forced into.

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    And I think this is exactly why you're asking for a physical barrier as the centerpiece of a larger immigration reform package. Something that people cannot drive through, walk around, crawl under, or climb over. Something that keeps the likes that you heard today out - keep them on that side of the border or let them come legally. Keep the drugs out. And human trafficking - we want these young girls and boys to have a better life. And it's not going to happen if people feel like they can just drive them over the border and into Queens, New York, as you heard today.

    So thank you very much for your leadership. I really hope the Democrats will see this as a nonpartisan issue looking for bipartisan solutions.

    THE PRESIDENT: That would be nice. Ivanka?

    MS. TRUMP: Well, I think we heard some incredibly powerful stories today. And I do think for so many people this is viewed as an international issue. And to hear the stories around this table and to realize this is happening in our country, this is happening every day - whether it's Atlanta around a major sporting event like the Super Bowl, or whether it's just through the course of the day - this is very much an American issue as well as an international issue.

    Timothy, as we were both on the Hill championing for the passage of anti-trafficking legislation last year, I met with the young girl that you mentioned, and nobody can meet with a survivor and not be deeply moved and feel deeply passionate about the issue of human trafficking.

    So, I'm so grateful for the work of the NGOs and law enforcement community. Thank you, Secretary Nielsen, for all that you're doing on this front. And of course, thank you, Mr. President, for highlighting this issue because it is the gravest of human rights violations.

    THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. And thank you to everybody. It's a big issue and a very important issue. We're going to strengthen up our southern border. It should have been done 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace.

    And now you have problems even with - I understand yesterday, even people from Venezuela want to come through. Everybody wants to come through. A part of it is the success of our country, but we're going to keep our country successful.

    And we want people to come in. It's so important to say. We need people. We have a lot of companies moving in. A lot of companies are moving back into the United States. I'd never thought they'd be moving back. And we need people. You see that with the jobs numbers. We really need people. But it has to be through a legal process and a process really of merit. But we do want people coming into our country. They have to come in legally.

    I just want to thank everybody for being here. What you go through is incredible. And the job you do is incredible. Few people could do what you do. And we want to try and make it easier for you. Or another way - you could, this way, handle more of the incredible work. Because no matter what we do, it's not going to stop, but we can reduce it incredibly by tremendous numbers.

    So I just want to thank everybody for being here. And we're very proud of you. Very proud of the job you do. And thank you very much. And, Madam Secretary, thank you very much. Really great.

    Q Mr. President?

    THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

    Q Mr. President, why not just go ahead and do the national emergency now (inaudible)?

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, we're building the wall now. Yeah, we're building the wall. People don't understand that, I'm starting to learn.

    We're spending a lot of money that we have on hand. It's like in a business, but we have money on hand and we're building - I would say we will have 115 miles of wall, maybe a little bit more than that, very shortly. It's being built. Some of it has already been completed. And in San Diego, if you look, it's been completed. It's really beautiful. Brand new.

    We have other wall that's under construction and we're giving out a lot of contracts. So we're building the wall. It's getting built one way or the other.

    Q Is there another option besides the national emergency that you would consider?

    THE PRESIDENT: We are doing things right now. I mean, we're building it with funds that are on hand. We're negotiating very tough prices. We've designed a much better-looking wall that is also actually a better wall, which is an interesting combination. It's far more beautiful and it's better. It's much more protective. But it looks better, because the walls that they used to build were not very attractive. I actually think that's possibly part of the problem.

    But the real problem is we need something. We have to have a very strong barrier. But we're building a lot of wall right now, as we speak. And we're renovating a lot of wall. And we're getting ready to give out some very big contracts with money that we have on hand and money that comes in.

    But we will be looking at a national emergency, because I don't think anything is going to happen. I think the Democrats don't want border security. And when I hear them talking about the fact that walls are immoral and walls don't work - they know they work.

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    I watched somebody being interviewed the other day by a very good anchor, and the anchor actually was getting angrier and angrier as they tried to explain how a wall doesn't really have that much of an impact. And yet, thousands of people are on one side of the wall, and nobody is on the other side of the wall. It was actually laughable and really horrible in the same breath. So that's the way it is.

    You know, if you look at El Paso, if you look at certain places - but El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities in the whole country. Once the wall was completed, it became one of the safest - immediately. It wasn't like it took five years. Some of you know this. Immediately, it became one of the safest cities in the whole country.

    So, we're building the wall. A lot of it is - I mean, the chant now should be, "finish the wall" as opposed to "build the wall," because we're building a lot of wall. And I started this six months ago. We really started going to town because I could see we were getting nowhere with the Democrats. We're not going to get anywhere with them. It's going be a part of their campaign, but I don't think it's good politically.

    And I think Nancy Pelosi should be ashamed of herself because she's hurting a lot of people. And I think the Democrats should be ashamed of themselves.
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