This bill became the vehicle for passage of the government spending bill for the remainder of fiscal year 2018. On March 22, 2018, the House replaced the text of the bill with the spending bill (preprint text).

This bill was formerly the TARGET Act. A summary of the earlier bill from the Republican Policy Committee follows:

H.R. 1625 amends the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956 to authorize the State Department and law enforcement agencies to target international human traffickers by offering financial rewards for their arrest or conviction. The Department currently has a rewards program that uses appropriated funds to offer cash awards to deter transnational organized crime.

The legislation broadens the program to explicitly include severe forms of human trafficking, which are sex trafficking and labor trafficking as defined in Pub.L. 106-386. That law came from [H.R. 3244 (106th): Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000] (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/106/hr3244).

Any proposals to pay rewards are submitted to the Department of State by the Chief of Mission at a U.S. Embassy at the behest of a U.S. law enforcement agency. Reward proposals are carefully reviewed by an interagency committee, which makes a recommendation for a reward payment to the Secretary of State. Only the Secretary of State has the authority to determine if a reward should be paid. In cases where there is federal criminal jurisdiction, the Secretary must obtain the concurrence of the Attorney General.