New Mexico AG, Dem lawmaker announce legislative proposals to empower human trafficking survivors

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and state Rep. Meredith Dixon (D-Albuquerque) stood alongside advocates for human trafficking survivors Thursday morning to announce a pair of legislative proposals they say will be a key step toward fixing the state’s outdated victim protections.

Dixon said she plans to carry two measures in the upcoming legislative session — one bill and one proposed constitutional amendment — to increase penalties for human trafficking; close the loophole that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to avoid registering as a sex offender in New Mexico; and shield survivors from being retraumatized during their traffickers’ criminal trials.

The Trafficking Investigation and Meaningful Enforcement Act would place no statute of limitations on prosecuting sex trafficking, would raise the age of protection to 18 and would update criminal penalties, particularly in cases where the victim is a child. It would also treat forcing someone to work off a debt as trafficking and expand the list of offenses that require someone to register as a sex offender.

Despite pleading guilty in Florida to procuring a minor for prostitution, Epstein was never required to register as a sex offender in New Mexico, where he owned property, largely because New Mexico law set a lower age limit for victims than Florida. In addition to raising the age of protection to 18 and expanding the offenses that require sex offender registration, Dixon said the law would require lifelong sex offender registration for people convicted of child prostitution crimes.

Her other measure, the Victims’ Rights Amendment, would go to voters in the next general election as a proposed constitutional amendment if it passes out of both chambers of the state Legislature.

The proposed amendment to the state Constitution’s victims’ rights section would give survivors greater privacy protections, expand the state’s definition of who counts as a survivor and give survivors the right to refuse being interviewed by the suspect’s attorneys. Under the amendment, if a survivor agreed to participate in such an interview, they would have the power to end it at any time and could have a support person in the room with them.

Both measures will “close gaps that leave our survivors of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation without the protection and voice they deserve,” Dixon said at a news conference in the New Mexico Department of Justice’s Albuquerque headquarters. 

Torrez, who began his career by trying child abuse cases, said he has long believed New Mexico’s protections for survivors of sex crimes stand among the weakest in the nation.

As an investigatory subcommittee at the state Legislature and Torrez’s NMDOJ investigate Epstein’s time and potential crimes in New Mexico, he said it’s particularly important for state leaders to make good on their promises of delivering justice for survivors and their families.

“There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of survivors in this state that are victims of horrific crimes year in and year out,” Torrez said. “Their perpetrator is not internationally known, politically connected or otherwise prominently featured in national news stories…these are the victims that go unseen all too often in our criminal justice system.”

Advocates for human trafficking survivors backed the proposals at a news conference with Dixon and Torrez Thursday morning. 

Shelley Repp, executive director of the Albuquerque nonprofit New Mexico Dream Center, which advocates for trafficking survivors, said the provision to let survivors opt out of repeatedly recounting the abuses they endured before a criminal trial will make it easier for them to navigate the criminal justice system.

“It is important to me and it is important to the clients I represent to be able to say, ‘You can be protected,’” she said. “You, as a victim, can have the time that you need to recover. You, as a victim, can have the protections that you deserve. We, as the legal system, do not want to retraumatize and revictimize you.”