The day-long curriculum includes a focus on forced labor and combatting contemporary slavery, furthering the Foundation’s mission to educate and improve the response of the law enforcement community
Today, Grace Farms Foundation hosted a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) training of approximately 250 federal, state and local law enforcement officers at Grace Farms to address modern ways of improving investigations and enforcement action against globalized forced labor, trade-based money laundering, the dark web and using new data platforms for actionable intelligence.
The training is an extension of Grace Farms Foundation’s commitment to convene, public, private and government sectors to disrupt all forms of contemporary slavery and gender-based violence through effective training, policy and advocacy. Since opening in 2015, the Foundation has been convening diverse bodies of law enforcement agencies at Grace Farms and abroad for customized curriculums that address its focus areas.
“Along with our initiative to educate the public on all forms of modern slavery, this collaboration reflects our commitment to combat this issue through targeted, capacity building partnerships that improve intelligence-led investigations and the prosecution of criminal perpetrators on a national and global scale,” said Rod Khattabi, Grace Farms Foundation’s Justice Initiative Director and Risk Officer.
Opening remarks were hosted by Sharon Prince, the Foundation’s Founder and President, and Khattabi. Other key speakers included Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Darling, USMC; Troy Miller, Director of Field Operations (CBP); Stephen Maloney, Director (CBP); Ray Donovan, Special Agent in Charge (SAC), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), New York; Dr. Bryan Pendleton, Director, DHS Homeland Identities, Targeting and Exploitation (HITEC). Topics included, “Initiatives for Success: Threat Awareness, Unscripted Conversations, and Team Building”; trade-based money laundering and money laundering; counterintelligence collection operations; dark web/cryptocurrency; forced labor; and techniques for using open source information to generate leads for law enforcement agencies.
“U. S. Customs and Border (CBP) is extremely proud to have led this this training today and would like to ‘thank’ the Grace Farms Foundation for hosting.” said Troy Miller, Director New York Field Office. “It is through collaborative training such as this that law enforcement agencies can take a pro-active approach to the prevention of these nefarious criminal organizations.”
The Foundation recently started new public and private programs to bring awareness of forced labor issues across sectors, including a first-of-its kind initiative to remove the imprint of slavery from material procurement in the architecture and construction industry. This new movement, launched by the Grace Farms Foundation Architecture + Construction Working Group, is buttressed by a Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, which prohibits all forced labor-produced goods from importation.
In addition to enforcing approximately 400 federal violations, the CBP and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) enforce this Act, and encourage stakeholders in the trade community to closely examine their supply chains and employ due diligence to ensure that goods imported into the U.S. are made without any trace of forced labor.
