U.S. Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta, facing growing calls from Democrats to resign, wants to decimate funding to the federal agency that combats child sex trafficking. Acosta is under fire for having given billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, now a registered sex offender, a sweetheart deal when he worked as a federal prosecutor.
Epstein was just again arrested, this time on charges of child sex trafficking.
Acosta is proposing a whopping 80 percent cut in funding to the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB).
“The bureau’s budget would fall from $68m last year to just $18.5m,” The Guardian reports. “The proposed reduction is so drastic that experts say it would effectively kill off many federal efforts to curb sex trafficking and put the lives of large numbers of children at risk.”
The UK newspaper notes the U.S. Dept. of Labor is “widely respected for its vital role in investigating, prosecuting and preventing human trafficking worldwide. Experts say any major cut to ILAB would be a direct threat to the US government’s ability to combat the sexual exploitation of children.”
President Donald Trump has frequently – and more than 20 times on Twitter – claimed one of the reasons he wants to build his wall on the U.S. Southern border is to reduce trafficking.