H.R. 4732 — Orphanage Trafficking Prevention and Protection Act

This section states congressional findings that orphaned, abandoned, and institutionalized children (an estimated 5,400,000 globally) are highly vulnerable to trafficking in persons for labor, sexual exploitation, forced begging, and other purposes, often under guises of education, caregiving, or adoption. It further finds that "orphanage trafficking"—recruitment into residential facilities for exploitation and profit—is documented in State Department Trafficking in Persons Reports (2019, 2024), linked to international travel and volun-tourism, and not explicitly recognized as a severe form of trafficking under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7101 et seq.), hindering prosecution, victim protection, and foreign assistance conditioning.

This section expands the definition of severe forms of trafficking in persons to include the recruitment, harboring, transportation, transfer, or receipt of orphaned, abandoned, or persons under 18 years of age living in public or private residential facilities, by means of fraud, coercion, force, or abuse of a position of vulnerability, for the purpose of exploitation and profit, forced labor, involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, slavery, child labor, or sex trafficking.