The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion Tuesday to study the feasibility of establishing a human trafficking prevention body.
The county CEO, Office of Immigrant Affairs, District Attorney’s Office, the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force (LARHTTF) and other departments were directed to report back in 120 days with recommendations to house the body within the Department of Public Health.
The report will make recommendations on staffing and funding, integrating with existing county-run human trafficking-related task forces and groups such as the LARHTTF, the Wage Theft Task Force and the County Child Trafficking Steering Committee, and coordinating with local, state and federal agencies that serve vulnerable communities.
Another study was approved in the same motion Tuesday, with recommendations to be submitted in 120 days on the feasibility of the chief information officer leading data collection efforts and seeking resources and funding opportunities.
“January was National Human Trafficking Prevention Month and there is no better time than now to move forward with advancing Los Angeles County’s efforts to re-imagine its approach to addressing human trafficking as it continues to be an acute ongoing local and worldwide issue,” according to Tuesday’s motion, which was authored by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Lindsey Horvath.
The move follows suggestions from a previous report approved by the board in October 2023 and submitted in March 2024. Two of those recommendations were to look into the feasibility of establishing a countywide coordinating body for preventing human trafficking and establishing collaborative and systematic human trafficking data collection system to be shared among county agencies.
“It (human trafficking) happens unfortunately, with the most vulnerable in our population and right now there’s so much fear going on with respect to where our government is,” Solis said.
Horvath and Board Chair Kathryn Barger said the county was committed to protecting its residents and supporting victims.
“The county has been involved with anti-human trafficking work for several years now,” Barger said, “We’ve been dedicated to provide training for identifying commercial sexual exploitation for children and we established the STAR and DREAM courts to provide collaborative interventions for youth trafficking victims.”
The report is expected to detail which departments to collect data from, the potential challenges, and how to safeguard immigration status.
“The current climate of our ICE raids particularly relates to safeguarding this data,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said. “Some of this data will probably reveal some are (members of the) undocumented immigrant community … how are we going to safeguard that?”
Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the department was not collecting any unessential data.