Human Trafficking

Right here in the USA: US farm companies charged with human trafficking.

US authorities on Wednesday filed charges against two companies on charges they exploited hundreds of Indian and Thai workers who earned a pittance and were forced to stay in decrepit conditions.
In what it called its largest ever human trafficking case in the farm sector, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said that contractor Global Horizons brought in some 200 Thai men on promises of high-paying jobs.
The Thai men were sent between 2003 and 2007 to farms in Hawaii and Washington state where they were crammed into rooms infested with rats and insects and faced verbal and physical assaults, the federal agency said.
The men had paid insurmountable fees to enter the United States but were stripped of their passports and kept separately from non-Thai workers who had more tolerable conditions, the suits alleged. Authorities learned of their plight after a Thai community center in Los Angeles got involved.

And not only the contractor is on the hook:

The federal agency also sued companies running the eight farms where the Thai men worked, saying they "not only ignored abuses but also participated in the obvious mistreatment, intimidation, harassment and unequal pay of the Thai workers," according to a statement.
The companies are Captain Cook Coffee Co., Del Monte Fresh Produce, Kauai Coffee Co., Kelena Farms, MacFarms of Hawaii, Maui Pineapple Farms, Green Acre Farms and Valley Fruit Orchards.

Global Horizons is based in Beverly Hills. From their web site:

Global Horizons, Inc. thinks globally and acts locally with a post-9/11-worldview, one which understands that economies cannot continue to grow and prosper without an ample, qualified and legal workforce. Too, it understands the aspirations of countless workers who dream of having better jobs in better places, but who wish to return to their country of native origin when they've completed the job