Justice Department has not awarded three quarters of two years of anti-trafficking grants, senator's report finds
Sen. Richard Blumenthal counts $133.5 million of the roughly $179 million Congress provided for fiscal 2025 and 2026 still unawarded by the Office for Victims of Crime. The department called his letter politically motivated and said applications are under review.
Federal anti-trafficking grants: what Congress appropriated and what has been awarded
Washington. The Justice Department has not awarded about $133.5 million, roughly 75 percent, of two years of money Congress set aside for programs serving human trafficking survivors, according to a report Sen. Richard Blumenthal released on Nov. 9. Mr. Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent it with a letter to Brecht Donoghue, director of the Human Trafficking Division at the department's Office for Victims of Crime.
The grants, authorized by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, go to state, local and tribal governments and to nonprofit victim services organizations. They pay for counseling, case management, health care, transitional housing, job training and trafficking task forces. Providers funded by the office serve more than 10,000 survivors each quarter, the report says.
Where the money stands
Congress appropriated about $179 million for the programs in fiscal 2025 and 2026. For fiscal 2025, the office has awarded $45.5 million of $92 million, under four of seven programs; $29.8 million of that, for Services for Victims of Human Trafficking, was awarded on Nov. 5. Nothing has been awarded under Housing Assistance for Victims of Human Trafficking, Preventing Trafficking of Girls or the Enhanced Collaborative Model task force program. None of the $87 million for fiscal 2026 has been awarded.
The grants run for three years. Awards from fiscal 2022 and 2023, about $190 million together, ended on Sept. 30, 2025, and Sept. 30, 2026, with no replacement awarded. Award notices have usually come in August or September, with work starting Oct. 1, the report says; fiscal 2025 grantees had been given a start date of July 1, 2026.
Programs closing
The report keeps providers anonymous to protect their pending applications. A transitional housing program in a large city closed when it could no longer pay rent or staff, and about five survivors had to move. A counseling and job training program serving more than 100 survivors a year will close on Jan. 1, 2027, without new money. A youth program put referred children on a waitlist; children left waiting "end up being further exploited," its provider said.
Mr. Blumenthal asked the office to issue the fiscal 2025 and 2026 awards immediately and to explain by Nov. 20 the delays, how applications were evaluated and how its staffing has changed since Jan. 20, 2025.
A Justice Department spokesperson called the letter "politically motivated and deliberately deceptive" and said the department "has received hundreds of applications, which are being carefully reviewed," Reuters reported. A department official told Reuters the remaining fiscal 2025 grants should be awarded by the end of the week and more than 670 fiscal 2026 applications are under review.
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