Federal agency accuses Beverly Hills company of trafficking Thai farmworkers

[Blue_Tires]

Source: L.A. Times

In its largest farm labor trafficking case ever, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Wednesday charged a Beverly Hills-based firm and eight farms with severe abuse and discrimination involving more than 200 Thai farmworkers.

Federal attorneys alleged that Global Horizons Manpower Inc., a labor contracting firm headed by Israel native Mordechai Orian, subjected workers in Hawaii and Washington to violence, inadequate pay and nutrition, rat-infested housing, and other illegal conditions based on their national origin and race.

Global Horizons recruited Thai men to the farms under a legal farmworker program from 2003 to 2007 with false promises of steady, high-paying jobs — then confiscated their passports and threatened them with deportation if they complained about work conditions, according to two civil complaints announced Wednesday in Los Angeles. To secure the jobs, the workers were charged recruitment fees as high as $25,000, forcing many of them to take on staggering debt, according to Anna Park, regional attorney for the commission's Los Angeles office. "Human trafficking remains one of the worst forms of discrimination in this day and age," Park said.

Global Horizons did not respond to an email request for comment, and the firm's phones did not appear to be working. The firm's previous spokeswoman, Kara Lujan, said Wednesday that she cut ties with Global Horizons in December after becoming suspicious about its financial integrity; she is now representing a Vietnam-based firm alleging that Orian scammed it out of $600,000 after failing to produce promised jobs in Canada and Israel for 300 Vietnamese farmworkers.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0421-thai-trafficking-20110421,0,6167205.story

[aquart]

1. Does this explain the plunge in border crossings?

[Blue_Tires]

2. ttt