Luis C.deBaca is an American lawyer and diplomat who served in the Obama Administration as Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and as Director of the Department of Justice's Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART Office).
Public service career
Department of Justice (1993–2007) After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, C.deBaca was hired by the Department of Justice as a civil rights prosecutor. He investigated and prosecuted cases involving human trafficking, official misconduct, and hate crimes, as well as money laundering, organised crime, and alien smuggling. He became the Department's Involuntary Servitude and Slavery Coordinator and later the Chief Counsel of the U.S. Human Trafficking Prosecutions Unit upon its founding. During this time, C.deBaca developed the modern "victim-centered approach" to investigating human trafficking cases cooperatively with non-governmental organizations and those who advocated for workers and survivors of prostitution and sexual abuse. Among other cases, he prosecuted the high-profile "Deaf Mexican" forced labor case; the garment factory case United States v. Kil Soo Lee, the largest slavery case in US history; and the pathbreaking Cadena case, which applied the Thirteenth Amendment to forced prostitution and impelled legislative efforts to update the slavery statutes. C.deBaca also pursued other civil rights cases, for instance, obtaining the conviction of a man who used a Confederate Flag to intimidate an African-American family in the exercise of their housing rights.
As a result of these cases, C.deBaca received the Attorney General's John Marshall Award from Attorney General Janet Reno and the Distinguished Service Award from Attorney General John Ashcroft. He worked with Senators Paul Wellstone and Sam Brownback, and with Representatives Chris Smith and Sam Gejdenson and their staff to incorporate the interagency model and victim-centered approach into the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. In recognition of his work on behalf of survivors, he received the highest award of the victim services community, the Freedom Network's Paul & Sheila Wellstone Award.
House Committee on the Judiciary
From 2007 to 2009, C.deBaca served on detail as Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee under Rep. John Conyers, Jr. In this role, C.deBaca advised Chairman Conyers and other committee members on immigration reform, civil liberties — especially the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — and civil rights issues such as involuntary servitude.
US Department of State
In March 2009, President Barack Obama nominated C.deBaca to be Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The United States Senate confirmed C.deBaca on 6 May 2009. As the director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, he led U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery.
As ambassador, C.deBaca continued his victim-centered approach to human trafficking prosecution. He drove change across U.S. government agencies, leading the Cabinet-level President's Interagency Task Force on Trafficking (PITF) and the interagency Senior Policy Operating Group, resulting in the development of the US Victim Services Strategy, and Executive Order to prevent exploitation in government contracting. He published the "gold standard" snapshot of global anti-trafficking efforts, the Trafficking in Persons Report and conducted extensive bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, pressing for governments to apply the 3P paradigm of Prevention, Protection, and Prosecution, as set forth in the TVPA and the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.
As in the Civil Rights Division, C.deBaca rooted his work as ambassador in the United States' own struggle against slavery, and supported efforts such as Historians Against Slavery, The National Trust for Historic Preservation's President Lincoln's Cottage where the Emancipation Proclamation was written, the Frederick Douglass Family Foundation, and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, whose film Journey to Freedom combined the story of 'Twelve Years A Slave''s Solomon Northup with modern abolitionists and survivors.