Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow returned to Capitol Hill with a message for lawmakers: the global crisis of child exploitation online is expanding rapidly, and investigators need more resources to identify and rescue victims.
Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, Tim Tebow urged Congress to pass the bipartisan Renewed Hope Act of 2026.
According to Fox News, this legislation aimed at strengthening federal efforts to locate children whose abuse images are circulating online and bring offenders to justice.
Tebow, who founded the Tim Tebow Foundation after his football career, used his testimony to highlight the scale of the problem. His organization works closely with law enforcement and global partners on initiatives designed to identify children appearing in abuse images.
During the hearing, Tebow pointed to results from Operation Renewed Hope, an international effort to identify victims whose identities remain unknown in online databases.
“Over the course of three operations, 1,119 children have been tentatively identified,” Tebow told lawmakers. “Five hundred children have been safeguarded. Almost half of those were American children.”
But those numbers only scratch the surface. According to data shared during the hearing, investigators are still trying to identify victims linked to more than 89,000 separate image series stored in a global Interpol database.
Other countries face similar challenges. Canada’s Child Abuse Image Database alone contains over 94 million uncategorized files pulled from the dark web that still need to be examined, officials say.
The scale of the backlog is part of the reason Tebow is pushing for federal legislation that would significantly expand the workforce responsible for identifying victims.
“Our country’s most precious and vulnerable lives have been forgotten,” Tebow said. “Every day, these children lose hope, and it’s not the fault of law enforcement that these children wait. They need more resources, plain and simple.”
Currently, the Homeland Security Investigations Cyber Crimes Center has only seven full-time victim identification analysts dedicated to this work nationwide. Identifying victims often requires analyzing images for environmental clues, coordinating with multiple jurisdictions, and verifying information before rescue operations can begin.
The Renewed Hope Act, introduced by Rep. Laurel Lee earlier this year, seeks to address that gap. The bill would require the Department of Homeland Security to hire and train more than 200 additional investigators, forensic analysts, and criminal analysts to focus specifically on child exploitation cases.
The legislation also calls for expanded forensic technology and stronger coordination with organizations such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and international law enforcement agencies.
The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee in January and has drawn bipartisan backing from lawmakers focused on combating trafficking and child exploitation.
Sen. Josh Hawley, who chairs the subcommittee, praised Tebow’s advocacy during the hearing and emphasized the urgency of the issue.
“Child trafficking is a scourge on our society,” Hawley said in a statement, adding that Congress must work to dismantle the networks responsible for exploiting children.
Beyond legislation, Tebow’s foundation is also involved in legal efforts targeting platforms that host abusive material or fail to remove it. In partnership with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the organization recently supported a legal brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to examine whether social media platforms can be held accountable for hosting child sexual abuse material.
For Tebow, the mission remains centered on the victims.
“This is a problem we can solve,” he told lawmakers.
If you suspect child exploitation or encounter illegal material online, you can report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline at CyberTipline.org or by calling 1-800-THE-LOST.