Breitbart News’s Brandon Darby alleged in Townhall.com Monday that officials in Eric Holder’s Justice Department have neglected their duties to sex-trafficked minors and human trafficking victims. Darby speculated that internal reports within the FBI were changed to conceal the involvement of minors to prevent the FBI and the DOJ from acting immediately as they would have been required to do.
But the Justice Department is not the only department in the Obama administration that is being lenient, to say the least, on human traffickers.
According to the Washington Times, the White House and the State Department have failed to enforce threatened sanctions against countries that the State Department itself has “accused of doing little to control human trafficking.” This means these countries continue to receive foreign aid from the United States.
The Times notes that of the 23 countries the State Department “cited in a June 2011 report as having failed to meet minimum standards in fighting human trafficking,” President Barack Obama granted full or partial waivers to all of the countries except for three, which were Eritrea, Madagascar, and North Korea.
Countries that received waivers included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen and Sudan. Those receiving partial waivers included Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.
Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), who authored the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, told the Times that the issuance of the wavers, which are granted in the “national interest,” are “counterproductive” and “appalling.” He said the waivers are “supposed to be used as an exception, not as a default position.”
According to the Times, the State Department last month cited 17 nations that failed to do enough to combat human trafficking in 2012, and Obama has until mid-September to decide if any of these countries in the 2012 report will be granted waivers.
Meanwhile, Breitbart News has called on Congress to investigate the allegations Darby leveled against the Justice Department.
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