Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer Delivers Remarks at the Discussion on Missing or Murdered Black Women and Girls

Thank you for those kind words, Linda. I'm grateful to be here and feel privileged to have a chance to join you as we open an incredibly important conversation-one that has been far too long in coming.

I want to begin by thanking all our speakers and presenters. I know they will frame this discussion in deeply personal and poignant terms that will underscore the fierce urgency of this issue.

I would also like to thank Brent, Linda, and their team at the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) — as well as all our federal partners — for the work you're doing, and the commitment you have made, to find justice for missing and murdered Black women and girls.

I know this audience needs no reminder of the devastating scale of this problem, but I think it's worth laying out at the start exactly why we're here and what we're up against.

It begins with an acknowledgement of the disproportionate impact of violence in our country on Black women and girls. We know that Black women are murdered at rates far out of proportion to the rest of the American population. Research from Columbia University recently found that, from 2019 through 2020, Black women were six times more likely to be murdered than their white peers. Depending on the state, the ratio was as high as 20 to one.

Other research shows that Black women are also more than twice as likely as white women to be killed by intimate partners, and that Black women and girls go missing at rates well above their proportion of the population.

It's painfully clear that something has gone deeply wrong. And it is critical that we take action to address the profound challenges facing Black women and girls.

At the Department of Justice, we understand that we must be part of the solution — and we are stepping up our efforts.

Through our Office on Violence Against Women, we are supporting a resource center focused on preventing and reducing homicides attributable to intimate partner violence, led by the Center for Justice Innovation, Esperanza United, and Ujima: The National Resource Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community.

To find the missing, and to recover abducted children, we're leveraging the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, managed by our National Institute of Justice, as well as other resources from OJP - including BJA's Ashanti Alert and OJJDP's Amber Alert, to name a few.

Meanwhile our law enforcement divisions — the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service — are redoubling their efforts to find and return missing persons. Most recently, the Marshals Service recovered over 200 missing children through Operation We Will Find You 2.

And our Civil Rights and Criminal Divisions are marshaling their resources to bringing justice for Black women and girls, including through the prosecution of human trafficking and cold cases.

You’ll hear more about this work later in the program. These actions are part of the Justice Department’s commitment to addressing violence against Black women and girls, and to combat violence affecting historically marginalized and underserved communities more broadly.

None of our work occurs in a vacuum. Only through the power of partnerships- like the ones represented in the room today — can we seek justice for missing and murdered Black women and girls and their families in our country.

This is a matter of equal justice, but it's also a matter of basic human dignity. Through this work, we are honoring the lives of so many who deserve to be seen, found, and remembered.

We are grateful to all of you for telling their stories, and for your leadership in driving this work forward. We’re proud and humbled to join you.

Thank you for your time, and I wish you well in your discussions today.