Justice Department names national coordinator to fight trafficking, child exploitation

The Justice Department put Alessandra Serano in a new national role on Wednesday, giving a veteran federal prosecutor a mandate to knit together one of the country’s most fragmented law enforcement fights. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Serano will serve as the department’s national coordinator for human trafficking and child exploitation cases, housed in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, and will have 120 days to deliver an updated strategy report.

The appointment is more than a personnel announcement. Blanche said the job is meant to break down the “information silos” that can slow cases spanning multiple jurisdictions and agencies, while Serano will also act as DOJ’s liaison to other federal agencies and outside stakeholders. The department said the post is intended to create a single national coordinator to lead efforts to prevent, prosecute and end human trafficking and child exploitation in the United States.

Serano arrives with deep institutional experience. DOJ said she served as the National Project Safe Childhood Coordinator for the Executive Office for United States Attorneys and worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of California from 2003 to 2021. Project Safe Childhood, launched in May 2006, was designed to marshal federal, state and local resources to find online child exploiters, prosecute them and rescue victims.

The benchmark for whether Serano can change outcomes is stark. Congress required DOJ in 2008 to maintain a national strategy for child exploitation prevention and interdiction, yet the Government Accountability Office found in 2022 that the department had issued that strategy only twice, in 2010 and 2016. GAO also said the strategy had not fully included 12 of 19 required elements, and that nine detailees had rotated through the coordinator role in 13 years, a pattern that suggested instability in a job meant to centralize expertise.

The scale of the underlying crime has only grown. GAO cited National Center for Missing and Exploited Children data showing suspected child sexual exploitation reports rose 35% from 2020 to 2021, reaching 29.3 million reports in 2021, with 4,260 new child victims identified in child sexual abuse imagery. DOJ strategy materials have also highlighted child sexual abuse material, sextortion, livestreaming, virtual child sex trafficking, enticement and coercion as rising threats.

Human trafficking prosecutions have climbed as well. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported prosecutions more than doubled from 805 in 2012 to 1,656 in 2022, while convictions rose from 578 to 1,118. In fiscal 2022, 1,912 people were referred to U.S. attorneys for human trafficking offenses. With trafficking and exploitation cases spread across the department’s 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices, Serano’s mandate will be judged by whether the new post speeds prosecutions, improves victim support and turns coordination into measurable results.