The federal government committed to spend nearly $110 million on identifying unknown victims of child sexual abuse last week through the Secure America Act.
President Donald Trump signed the $70 billion Secure America Act on June 10 to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol through 2028.
But the mega-bill also includes important provisions from the Renewed Hope Act, a bipartisan measure to help the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identify trafficked children.
“[The Renewed Hope Act] ensures that [law enforcement] has the funding and personnel that it needs to help identify children who have been abused and trafficked — the children that we see in child sex abuse materials online,” Congresswoman Laurel Lee (FL), who first introduced the act in September 2024, told LIVE NOW from Fox this week.
The Secure America Act dedicates $108.5 million for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division to:
Hire 40 more forensic analysts and 30 more child exploitation investigators to work at its Child Exploitation Investigation Unit’s Victim Identification Lab.
Hire 130 new forensic analysts and child exploitation investigators to work at its special agents in charge offices.
Create a program dedicated to training federal, state and local law enforcement agents to identify and locate child abuse victims.
The expansion represents a 97% increase in DHS’ child abuse identification workforce. According to Senator Josh Hawley (MS), one of the Renewed Hope Act’s biggest supporters, the department currently employs just seven investigators dedicated to identifying unknown victims of child abuse.
The federal government’s investment in combatting child trafficking can’t come a moment too soon. Congresswoman Lee explains:
Heisman trophy winner and child welfare advocate Tim Tebow testified to the severity of the problem before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, chaired by Senator Hawley, in March. There, Tebow noted the International Child Sexual Exploitation database currently tracks 89,000 unidentified children portrayed in online child sexual abuse material.
Per Rep. Lee, the number of unknown victims of online child abuse increased to 89,000 from 57,000 in 2024.
In his Senate testimony, Tebow further noted that, between October 2025 and March 2026, the Department of Justice documented nearly 340,000 unique United States IP addresses which downloaded or distributed child rape images.
Representative Lee told Fox the Renewed Hope Act was based, in part, on Operation Renewed Hope I, II and III which were coordinated with help from the Tim Tebow Foundation.
“We’ve done a pilot program of this operation before — the Tim Tebow Foundation has been an incredible partner to us in Washington — and what we saw is that when we have the right experts, Homeland Security Investigations can help find these children, bring them home and bring those perpetrators to justice,” she explained.
The most recent operation, Operation Renewed Hope III, occurred from February 24 to March 7, 2025. HSI led the investigation in conjunction with the National and International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Tim Tebow Foundation and four other U.S. law enforcement agencies; 26 foreign and international law enforcement agencies; and 28 victim identification specialists from 21 countries.
The operation yielded the identification of 36 victims and generated leads on 380 more victims.
Tebow celebrated the passage of the Renewed Hope Act on X last week.
“I am grateful to our congressional leaders for getting this lifesaving legislation over the finish line, and to the law enforcement [agents] who never stop fighting for these kids,” he wrote.
“My prayer is that hope is renewed for many more boys and girls, and that their stories will be different because of this legislation.”
The Daily Citizen thanks Tim Tebow , his foundation, Congresswoman Lee, Senator Hawley and all other legislators involved in authoring and passing provisions of the Renewed Hope Act — a measurable legislative change with the potential to save and redeem thousands of children’s lives.
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