U.S. Admits Modern-Day Slavery Exists at Home | American Civil Liberties Union

Source:  American Civil Liberties Union:

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, Human Rights Program, ACLU

Some of America's most vulnerable workers are victims of modern-day slavery, and the government knows it. What's worse: These workers are protecting U.S. military and economic interests – but the U.S. isn't protecting them.

In its annual Trafficking in Persons Report, released Friday, the State Department acknowledged that trafficking and forced labor still exist in America. The report includes several examples: abuse of third-country nationals trafficked to work on military bases, migrant domestic workers subjected to forced labor by diplomats and international organization personnel, and temporary guest workers in a variety of industries forced to work under horrifying conditions with nowhere to turn. While it's important that the report stresses there's more the U.S. government can do to stem trafficking in America, it offers nothing new and recycles much of its findings and recommendations from past years — recommendations that still haven't been fully implemented.

Continue:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights-immigrants-rights-womens-rights/us-admits-modern-day-slavery-exists-home

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Get Tough on Human Trafficking - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Source: NYTimes.com

Steven Watt is a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program.

JULY 17, 2013

"Diplomatic immunity is necessary, but its purpose gets muddled when it shields diplomats involved in human trafficking and forced labor. Under U.S. law, foreign diplomats stationed here can apply for special visas to bring domestic workers with them. However, in a disturbing number of cases, some diplomats have abused this privilege. They lure workers to this country with promises of good jobs, but then, on arrival, trap them in their homes by confiscating their passports. These workers are then forced to toil for long hours for little or no pay. Some women have reported been physically or sexually abused."

Continue reading Steven Watt's article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/07/17/fixing-the-chinks-in-diplomatic-immunitys-armor/get-tough-on-human-trafficking

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State Dept. Report Spotlights Urgent Need to Fight Modern-Day Slavery | American Civil Liberties Union

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

http://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights/state-dept-report-spotlights-urgent-need-fight-modern-day-slavery

06/21/2013

By Chandra Bhatnagar, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program at 10:32am

The State Department this week released its 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report(TIP Report), documenting the worldwide problem of human trafficking and other forms of modern-day slavery. This year's report highlighted the difficulty of identifying victims of this egregious practice. According to the report, "46,000 victims of trafficking were brought to light worldwide, compared to the 27 million that we know are enslaved."

In the United States, the identification of victims of labor trafficking remains a particularly difficult problem. As the report notes, in 2012, of the 4,746 convictions for trafficking offenses, only 518 were for labor trafficking. Of course, the actual number of victims is much higher, but in addition to the problems in victim identification, "workers fear seeking assistance because of blacklisting and other retaliation methods, including inciting fear of deportation."

The U.S. could improve this situation through more effective monitoring and enforcement of existing anti-trafficking laws, policies and practices, and the introduction of new measures where they are needed.

The H-2B temporary worker program is the perfect example. As it stands now, the current temporary labor scheme encourages rather than deters labor trafficking. Flaws in the program allow employers to exploit and abuse foreign workers, and facilitate labor trafficking. A prominent example is the Signal case, a horrifying example of modern-day slavery, where the ACLU and co-counsel represent men from India who were trafficked into the U.S. through the H-2B program with dishonest assurances of becoming lawful permanent U.S. residents and then subjected to squalid living conditions, fraudulent payment practices, and threats of serious harm.

But there are ways to improve the current system, prevent labor trafficking and adequately protect workers. A first step would be to insure that in all temporary worker programs:

• workers must have the ability to leave abusive U.S. employers and seek employment with other U.S. employers without having to leave the U.S. and return to their country of origin, a path to permanent residency and citizenship (with their families), robust governmental oversight of labor conditions, and enforcement mechanisms verifying that employers comply with the terms of the contract.
• employers must bear the recruitment/visa processing/travel costs of workers.
• the government must adopt a rigorous and streamlined process to deny visa applications of employers who have violated workers' rights under prior contracts.

Our government can and should do more to combat labor trafficking and to assist victims. As Secretary of State Kerry announced when he introduced the 2013 TIP Report "[f]rom heads of state and justice ministers to police officers and labor inspectors, we have to be tough in order to at last end modern slavery once and for all."

Learn more about human trafficking and other civil liberty issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

New Push, at Home and Abroad, to Combat Modern-Day Slavery | American Civil Liberties Union

http://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights/new-push-home-and-abroad-combat-modern-day-slavery

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

05/17/2013

By Chandra Bhatnagar, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program at 7:07pm

A White House task force set up to combat human trafficking held its annual meeting today, chaired by Secretary of State John Kerry. The cabinet-level group, called the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (PITF) coordinates the U.S. government's efforts to eradicate the phenomenon commonly likened to "modern-day slavery."

At the meeting, Secretary Kerry stated he had been "stunned by the stories and examples of the evil... It is nothing less than the most predatory, extraordinary modern slavery that you can conceivably imagine."

The PITF was not the only human trafficking-related event this week.

On Monday and Tuesday, the United Nations convened a high-level General Assumbly meeting on the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons. The Plan of Action commits governments around the world to fully implement key anti-human trafficking treaties and to join forces to counter the multi-billion dollar industry which has trapped some 21 million men, women and children in forced labor. At the meeting, actress Mira Sorvino, the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador to Combat Human Trafficking, described human trafficking as "one of the great social justice issues of our time." The United States also addressed the meeting, stating, "(t)he solution in face of this scourge is clear – joint action across nations and across UN agencies." United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that "(h)uman trafficking devastates individuals and undermines national economies," and called on governments to prevent trafficking by ratifying relevant treaties, implementing the U.N.'s Global Plan of Action against trafficking, and making contributions to the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund to help victims.

The ACLU endorses these measures and encourages the U.S. to do more to address human trafficking through better monitoring and enforcement of existing anti-trafficking laws, policies and practices.

For years, the ACLU has worked with other organizations to protect the human rights of victims of labor trafficking. That work has included:

• Advocating on behalf of 500 guestworkers from India who were trafficked into the U.S. through the federal government's H-2B guestworker program with dishonest assurances of becoming lawful permanent U.S. residents and subjected to squalid living conditions, fraudulent payment practices, and threats of serious harm. The workers' lawsuit, which was filed in 2008, highlights serious flaws in the current guestworker program wherein foreign low-wage temporary workers are subjected to numerous human rights violations including trafficking and forced labor. These violations take place due in part to the exploitation of visa application processes by duplicitous recruiters and employers. The lawsuit also highlights the U.S. government's failure to regulate and supervise these visa schemes appropriately to prevent abuse, and failure to vigorously enforce anti-trafficking and labor laws when violations occur.
• Advocating on behalf of foreign workers, known as Third Country Nationals (TCNs), contracted to perform services for the United States overseas, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these workers have been deceived about how much they will be paid, as well the nature and location of their job, and charged thousands of dollars in recruitment fees that effectively place them in debt bondage. Last year, President Obama issued an importantExecutive Order aimed at addressing these issues and in January this year Congress enacted legislation designed to achieve these same ends. These measures, while welcome, will only prove effective if they are properly implemented and enforced. Together with a coalition of anti-trafficking groups, the ACLU recently made recommendations to the Federal Acquisition and Regulatory (FAR) Council to ensure the laws effectiveness.
• Advocating on behalf of domestic workers trafficked into the United States by foreign diplomats stationed here and subjected to forced labor and other abuses.  Because of diplomatic immunity, victims are left without access to legal remedies for these abuses. Domestic workers are a uniquely vulnerable population as they do not generally enjoy the right to organize, minimum wage protections, or other fundamental workplace protections, and their race, gender, immigration status, education levels, and physical isolation in the home make them particularly susceptible to labor trafficking.

Today's PITF meeting and Monday and Tuesday's UN meetings were important reminders that despite some progress, much more must be done by governments and civil society to combat human trafficking in this country and to provide redress and other support to victims.

In the words of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, "(h)uman trafficking is a vicious chain that binds victims to criminals. We must break this chain with the force of human solidarity."

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Your Tax Dollars at Work? U.S. Military Contractors and Human Trafficking in War Zones » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

Jul 21st, 2011
Posted by Steven Watt and Valerie Brender, Human Rights Program at 2:24pm

Today, we filed a lawsuit to enforce an earlier Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request aimed at tackling the underreported problem of trafficking and abusive treatment of foreign workers on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 70,000 low-wage workers, commonly known as third country nationals or “TCNs,” work for U.S. military contractors to provide the U.S armed forces with essential services on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction, cooking and cleaning. As recent media reports indicate, many of these workers often end up on these military bases through a convoluted system of sub-contracting rife with corruption, debt bondage, coercion and other abuse.

Our FOIA lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, seeks documents detailing the monitoring and enforcement of trafficking and labor laws and policies on U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A recent article in The New Yorker paints a typical picture of the corrupt military sub-contracting system in operation. The article tells the story of a group of Fijian women TCNs, one handful of the tens of thousands of individuals who work to support the American military in war zones around the world. Hired by a local recruitment agency in their home country as beauticians in 2007, the women were promised lucrative employment in luxury hotels in Dubai. However, upon their arrival there, the women were informed that they were actually bound for a U.S. military base in Iraq. Some of the women had taken out loans to cover onerous recruiting fees; others were threatened with exorbitant termination fees if they returned to Fiji. Because of these costs, they felt compelled to travel to Iraq despite the danger to their lives. Once in Iraq, the women’s contracts were reduced to a fraction of what they had been initially promised in Fiji. And, before being paid at all, the women were all required to sign contracts stating that they would work twelve hours a day, seven days a week with overtime hours that they were unable to turn down.

These corrupt recruiting tactics were not supposed to happen. In fact, back in 2006, in direct response to mounting evidence of trafficking and other abuses of foreign workers by U.S. military contractors, then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General George Casey, issued rules for all military contractors aimed at stopping trafficking and abuse. These rules required that all foreign workers retain their passports, basic standards of living for foreign workers and that all unlicensed recruiting firms be banned from the contracting process.

Unfortunately, since the rules were established, it is difficult to determine whether they have been successful in ending illegal trafficking and abuse. And, recent media articles and government reports suggest the opposite; that they have done little to prevent trafficking and other abuses. Other instances of trafficking and abuse of foreign workers in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as those of the Fijian women, continue to be exposed, revealing that the rules are neither being followed by contactors nor enforced by the government.

We hope that our lawsuit will promote greater transparency about the sub-contracting process with a view to effectively stemming further trafficking and abuses of workers on American military bases. Stay tuned for information about what we uncover.

Learn more about human rights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Source: Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

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News Story: Signal International lawsuit could be largest human trafficking case in US history - India Abroad - AALDEF

Attorneys for Indian guest workers who are suing Mississippi-based marine and fabrication company Signal International along with its co-conspirators and other entities for human trafficking and racketeering have filed for class certification to include hundreds of additional workers in the lawsuit. If class status is granted by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, the lawsuit could be the largest human trafficking case in US history.

"Over 400 workers have given consent letters to join the class action suit. We expect another 100 workers may also join it," said Chandra Bhatnagar, Human Rights Program staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Louisiana Justice Institute and the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP filed the original proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of the seven individuals, who seek to represent a class of approximately 500 former guest workers who say they were lured to work in the US after Hurricane Katrina and subjected to racial and national origin discrimination, forced labor, and other abuse.

Labor recruiters Sachin Dewan in Mumbai and Michael Pol and immigration attorney Malvern Burnett are also defendants in the suit.

The story began in 2003, when workers saw advertisements--placed allegedly by Dewan--promising Indian welders and pipe-fitters green cards and permanent residence in the US for the men and their families.

Signal has shipyards in Mississippi, Texas and Alabama, and is a subcontractor for major multi-national companies. After Hurricane Katrina scattered its workforce, Signal retained its co-defendants to import employees to work as welders and pipe fitters, the suit noted. Between 2004 and 2006, hundreds of Indian men paid as much as $ 20,000 each for travel, visa, recruitment and other fees. But when they arrived at Signal in late 2006 and early 2007, they discovered that they wouldn't receive the green cards as promised, but rather a 10-month guest worker visa (H2-B).

"Green card was the main attraction," one of the victims said."If they told us that we would be allowed to stay only for 10 months, most of us would not have come at all,"

The lawsuit says Signal also forced them to pay $1,050 a month to live in overcrowded, unsanitary and racially segregated labor camps where 24 men shared a trailer with only two toilets. When the workers tried to find their own housing, Signal officials allegedly told them they would still have the rent deducted from their paychecks. Visitors were supposedly not allowed into the fenced camps. Company employees who stood guard at the camps regularly searched the workers' belongings and workers who complained were threatened with deportation, according to the lawsuit.

In 2008 the workers and presented themselves as victims of human trafficking before the public and officials of the Department of Justice. They organized protest rallies and marched to Washington, DC. Several workers undertook protest fasts. Some of the workers said many of them got visas given to victims of human trafficking.

Signal International said the workers received wages above the prevailing wages for their skills. It also claimed that it never promised green cards. Bhatnagar said Signal is also suing the immigration attorneys for wrong promises.

"Signal is a multibillion dollar company and if the court allows damages and compensation to the workers, they are able to pay it," Bhatnagar said. "These courageous men who have been victimized by systemic deficiencies in the US guest worker program and subjected to trafficking and racketeering at the hands of the defendants are seeking to assert their fundamental human rights. We hope the court will certify the class and enable several hundred of their fellow Indian guest workers to have their day in court."

Signal and the other defendants, said Kurian David, a class representative in the lawsuit, "should be held accountable for what they did to so many Indian guest workers who worked for them, so that others won't have to go through the same terrible things."

Murugan Kandhasamy, another worker in the lawsuit, said, "I speak on behalf of hundreds of Indian guest workers subjected to abuse by Signal and its co-conspirators. We came to America for good jobs and opportunity, which we were denied, and now we are asking for justice."

"After being treated as disposable workers, these Indian guest workers are entitled to seek justice for their wholesale mistreatment. They toiled under a climate of fear and coercion and deserve their day in court," said Ivy Suriyopas, AALDEF staff attorney.

Alan Howard of Dewey & LeBoeuf, which has been jointly litigating the case on a pro bono basis, said, "Class certification is warranted because that is precisely how defendants treated plaintiffs, as a class--albeit second-class--group of workers who could be exploited for higher profits."

Source: Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
http://www.indiaabroad-digital.com/indiaabroad/20110211?pg=20#pg20

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Defending the Dignity of Migrant Workers » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

Feb 4th, 2011 Posted by Aron Cobbs, Human Rights Program at 4:43pm

Tuesday marked the 146th Anniversary of National Freedom Day, the day on which President Abraham Lincoln signed the joint congressional resolution that outlawed slavery and became the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In remarks to the president's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that "modern slavery, often hidden and unrecognized, persists today on every continent and, most tragically, right here in the United States, despite being prohibited by both domestic legislation and international law."

On that same day, the ACLU and its co-counsel filed for class certification (PDF) in a case on behalf of over 500 Indian guestworkers. The lawsuit alleges the workers were trafficked into the U.S. and subjected to squalid living conditions, fraudulent payment practices, and threats of serious harm under the control of Signal International, LLC, a company that builds ships and offshore oil drilling rigs.

The lawsuit was first filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in March 2008. The ACLU is co-counsel with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Louisiana Justice Institute, and Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. If class status is granted, it could be the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history.

The complaint alleges that recruiting agents hired by Signal International held the guestworkers' passports and visas, coerced them into paying extraordinary fees for recruitment, immigration processing and travel, and threatened the workers with serious legal and physical harm if they did not work under the Signal-restricted guestworker visa. Between 2004 and 2006, hundreds of Indian men paid as much as $20,000 each for travel, visa, recruitment and other fees under the pretense that it would lead to good jobs and permanent U.S. residency for them and their families.

The complaint also claims that once in the U.S., the workers were housed at Signal's overcrowded, unsanitary and racially segregated labor camps, where as many as 24 men shared a trailer with only two toilets. The lawsuit charges Signal and its agents have violated the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. In addition to Signal's corporate violation of domestic laws and polices, the federal government has failed to protect the rights of migrants under the International Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICPRMW), as proven by the lack of government oversight necessary to prevent such a trampling of rights.

Also Tuesday, the FBI, Department of Agriculture and Department of the Interior joined — for the first time — the Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons meeting, which suggests that various governmental agencies and departments are now strengthening their efforts to remedy this endemic domestic issue and, hopefully, advance lawsuits against culpable corporations. Fulfillment of the task force's mandate, in addition to greater overall respect for international norms, are opportunities the U.S. must seize to affirm the human rights to which all migrants are entitled.

Learn more about immigrants' and workers' rights: Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, and friend us on Facebook.

Source: aclu.org/blog/human-rights-immigrants-rights

Defending the Dignity of Migrant Workers » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

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