Los Angeles Company Indicted for Human TraffickingPratap Chatterjee*,
Inter Press Service Pratap Chatterjee*, inter Press Service
–
Wed Sep 15, 8:55 pm ET
WASHINGTON,
Sep 15 (IPS) - Mordechai Orian, president of Global Horizons, a Los
Angeles-based labour recruiter, has been indicted by the U.S.
Department of Justice for "engaging in a conspiracy to commit
forced labour and document servitude" of approximately 400
Thai citizens who were brought to work on farms in the U.S.
between May 2004 and September 2005.
Orian was formally charged on Sep. 1 in what federal
officials described as the biggest human-trafficking case
ever brought by the U.S. government.
On Sep. 2, Orian "deceived and evaded federal FBI agents for
approximately 24 hours by providing sporadic misleading and
conflicting information concerning his location, willingness
to surrender in Dallas, and failing to report," government
lawyers stated in documents filed with the federal court.
They further charged that Orian "flew to Hawaii on another
flight to avoid contact with federal agents at the airport."
Today Orian is sitting in a Honolulu jail awaiting Judge
Leslie Kobayashi's decision on a government request to deny
Orian's release on one million dollars bail secured on his
exclusive West Moonshadows Drive home in Malibu. Susan
Cushman, assistant U.S. attorney for Hawaii, has filed
documents stating that Orian is a flight risk, noting that
he had used 26 different aliases and four different Social
Security numbers in the past.
Multiple Court Cases
Cushman's request to keep Orian locked up until trial also
described numerous violations of the law, according to a
filing delivered to the Honolulu court on Sep. 9.
Cushman provided the court with a copy of a 2003 report,
"Migrant Workers in Israel - A Contemporary Form of
Slavery," published by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights
Network and the International Federation for Human Rights.
It states that Orian took 3,000 dollars from each of 19
Chinese workers for the "privilege" of working in Israel for
two years.
"By the end of February Mr. Orian owed each of the workers
between 2-3 months wages," the report concluded. "Instead of
paying the workers, he sent ten armed guards to surprise the
workers in their sleep, beat them and drive them to the
airport, where they were forcibly deported."
In another document filed by Cushman, U.S. Department of
Labour Judge William Dorsey concluded on Nov. 30, 2006 that
Global Horizons Manpower, Inc. had "willfully and
fraudulently represented it had contracts with Taft Farms"
in Bakersfield, California to obtain temporary work visas
for more than 200 workers between Aug. 1, 2003 and Apr. 30,
2004.
Dorsey found that the company had neither a contract nor
jobs for the 200 workers. Unable to find them paid
employment, Global Horizons fired the workers "for poor
performance, when in fact, they were terminated for lack of
work," Dorsey wrote in his final decision. He ordered that
Orian be barred for three years from bringing guest workers
into the U.S.
On Sep. 7, 2007, Philipda Modrakee, a U.S. Department of
Labour investigator, filed a report on 156 Global Horizons
workers employed at the Maui Pineapple Farm in Hawaii.
Modrakee estimated that Global Horizons owed 459,256 dollars
in fines for failure to pay wages at the minimum rate and on
time, for illegally deducting money from the workers'
paycheques for housing, and for failing to provide them with
transportation to their work sites.
Immigration attorney Melissa Vincenty of Honolulu, who is
representing 80 clients with claims against Global Horizon,
told the Maui News last week that the company had
confiscated the workers' passports and visas. "It is called
document servitude," Vincenty told the newspaper, noting
that passports are required for travel between the islands
that make up the state of Hawaii.
Orian bought a twin-engine aircraft for inter-island
transport of the Thai workers, thereby avoiding the
necessity of presenting identification/passport to
government officials, according to the documents filed
before the court. Cushman noted that the airplane was
recently seized as evidence.
Responding to the Government
It was against this history of questionable dealings that
Orian's attorney Mark Werksman asked for his client to be
released on bail. Werksman's Sep. 10 filing presented a
series of arguments and documents to prove that his client
was not a flight risk.
"The government appears to be asking the court to detain Mr.
Orian because it thinks he is a bad employer and a chronic
lawbreaker and deserves to be punished," wrote Werksman.
"There is no evidence of this outside of this outside of the
government's cherry-picked examples of adverse
administrative rulings." And the government's immigration
and labour bureaucracies are bound to have "disagreements,
legal snafus and paperwork hassles."
Orian never intended to deceive the FBI, but simply took a
lower-priced flight to Hawaii, Werksman says. "What Mr.
Orian did not know is that the FBI intended to make a high-profile arrest at
the airport," he charges in the court
documents.
The 26 alleged aliases (such as O'Ryan and Moty) were
"insignificant misspellings or typographical errors,"
Werksman added.
"He is not a flight risk, he is not a danger to society,"
Kara Lujan, a public relations executive, told Haaretz, an
Israeli newspaper. "He pleaded not guilty. He never
threatened Thai workers, never took their passports, and
there is no evidence of that.
Thai Workers Stand Up
But while Cushman and Werksman were filing competing
documents in Honolulu, some of Orian's former employees were
playing out a parallel drama in Los Angeles.
There, on Sep. 8, in front of the Wat Thai Buddhist temple,
some 25 Thai farm workers lined up wearing sunglasses,
baseball caps, and traditional Thai scarves to disguise
themselves for fear of retaliation, they said. One-by-one
they told media assembled at a press conference organised by
the Thai Community Development Center about their treatment
at the hands of Global Horizons.
One 42-year-old man told reporters that recruiters promised
him a fulltime job for 1,000 dollars a month - 10 times more
than he made as a rice farmer. The recruiters told him that
Global Horizons could find him work picking apples in
Washington and pineapples in Hawaii. Lee, a pseudonym,
arrived in Seattle on Jul. 4, 2004 to discover that he would
have to pay 18,000 dollars to the recruiters.
"I thought I would find freedom and jobs here," Lee said at
the news conference. "I thought the United States was a
civilised nation, the highest in the world. I never imagined
this kind of thing could happen here."
Lee says he was housed in a wooden shack and threatened with
violence and deportation if he tried to escape or to speak
to any outsiders. In September 2005, Lee says he escaped one
night by running through pineapple fields.
Lee's story was confirmed by Chanchanit Martorell, executive
director of the Thai Community Development Center. Martorell
and her staff say they have interviewed more than 200
farmworkers and filed civil charges against Global Horizons.
She noted that some of the farm workers were so badly
treated that they had to survive on eating leaves from
plants or fish they caught in a nearby river.
The FBI says it is taking the Global Horizons case very
seriously. "In the old days, they used to keep slaves in
their place with whips and chains," FBI Special Agent Tom
Simon told the Beverly Hills Courier. "Today, it is done
with economic threats and intimidation."
*This article was produced in partnership with CorpWatch.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/20100916/wl_oneworld/world3694671284598742
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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