Human-trafficking lawsuit heats up

LIHU‘E — A labor-recruiting company at the heart of what the FBI calls the largest human-trafficking case in U.S. history has denied allegations of exploiting hundreds of workers imported from Thailand to work on farms on Kaua‘i, throughout the state and on the Mainland.

As the criminal case against Global Horizons Manpower Inc. heads to trial in a couple months, more lawsuits may stack up.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made a determination finding Global Horizons and farms across the U.S. guilty of violating workers’ civil rights and discriminating against them based on their nationality, said Chanchanit “Chancee” Martorell, executive director at the Thai Community Development Center, based in Los Angeles.

The Thai CDC helped 263 Thai workers file complaints with the EEOC, including several against Kaua‘i Coffee. Martorell said the EEOC will be demanding $3.5 million in compensation. If Global Horizons and the farms do not agree to pay up, the EEOC will take them to court, Martorell said.

“We’ve worked with (human) traffic cases for the last 15 years and seen time and time again cases of this nature involving children, men and women for all forms of forced labor,” Martorell said. “We recognize the tell-tale signs of trafficking immediately.”

“It’s impossible that 263 workers that don’t know each other would tell the same story,” she said.

Global Horizons spokesperson Kara Lujan, chief executive officer of KSL public relations, said all the allegations are false and Global Horizons has documents to prove it.

Global Horizons Chief Executive Officer Mordechai Orian, a 45-year-old Israeli national with a checkered past, has been behind bars in a federal detention center on O‘ahu since surrendering to authorities Sept. 3 in Honolulu.

A grand jury indicted him and three of his employees, along with two Thailand-based recruiters, on charges of allegedly bringing 400 workers from Thailand to the U.S. under the federal H2A guest-worker program and forcing them to work on farms primarily in Hawai‘i but all across the country. The Sept. 2 indictment claims Global Horizons confiscated passports, failed to honor employment contracts and threatened to deport workers.

A Honolulu judge on Sept. 8 ordered Orian’s bail set at $1 million. The six defendants face maximum sentences of up to 70 years in prison, according to federal officials. This could significantly increase in November as prosecutors plan to update the indictment to reflect that Global Horizons allegedly victimized more than double the number of Thai workers cited in the original indictment.

Martorell said a Thai national went to the Thai CDC office in 2003 after escaping from a farm in Hawai‘i. The worker reported what happened to him and then brought another half-dozen Thai nationals who were in similar situations.

“We didn’t realize we opened up a whole can of worms. More workers kept coming and coming,” Martorell said.

Over a five-year period, hundreds of workers brought into the U.S. by Global Horizons came to the Thai CDC with similar stories of “false promises,” Martorell said.

Kaua‘i Coffee Company — which contracted with Global Horizons to provide workers for its Kalaheo farm several years ago — filed a complaint Oct. 31 against the contracting company, seeking to be indemnified and held harmless of any charges.

Linda Howe, spokeswoman for Kaua‘i Coffee parent company Alexander & Baldwin, said last week that Global Horizons is obligated, under contract, to defend Kaua‘i Coffee in court.

The management at Kaua‘i Coffee sent this week an informational letter to employees stating that the company is not involved in the criminal charges against Global Horizons, and is cooperating with investigators.

Expired visas

Lujan provided a document with a list of 127 Thai farm workers who went missing before their visas expired. Many fled a few days before they were supposed to terminate their employment.

She also released a copy of a Global Horizons document notifying the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that a worker named Sitthichal Chaimuangchuen had fled.

“As soon as their visa was about to run out, they took off and ran because they didn’t want to have to leave the United States,” Lujan said.

Global Horizons had to report the missing workers to the government because it’s the employer’s responsibility “when someone runs like that,” she said.

Global Horizons folded its operations in the United States five years ago, according to Lujan.

When the human-trafficking allegations started stacking up, company officials decided to close all U.S. offices because they “knew that at some point they were going to have to fight all of these things that were coming out,” Lujan said.

The Thai workers, Lujan said, are getting a “free green card” in exchange for their testimony, plus welfare services. “Now they want to turn around and sue for $3.5 million,” she said.

More than 100 of the Thai workers represented by the Thai CDC have been certified as human-traffic victims and received a T-visa, Martorell said. This type of visa allows certain victims of human trafficking to remain in the U.S. if they agree to assist law enforcement in testifying against alleged perpetrators.

“They were not running away to get a green card,” Martorell said.

“You’re dealing with workers who are farmers, who had very little level of education,” said Martorell, adding that most of them had no understanding of their rights.

Martorell said the workers were being held against their will, had no idea the Thai CDC existed, didn’t know what a T-visa was or that the law was going to be on their side.

“They just thought that somehow they would make their way and defend themselves, and get a job that would help them pay their debt,” Martorell said of the workers who fled the farms.

“They were desperate, they had no idea of what was awaiting them. It was a risk that they took,” Martorell said. “They had nothing more to lose.”

‘Between a rock and a hard place’

Martorell said Global Horizons confiscated passports and threatened Thai workers with retaliation if they escaped.

The federal charges allege that at Maui Land and Pineapple Co. the Global Horizons employees confiscated the Thai workers’ passports, failed to honor contracts, threatened them with a gun, demanded fees of $3,750 from Thai workers to keep their jobs and strung lines with bells in wooded areas close to the workers’ housing to alert guards in case of attempted escapes.

“They even beat some of the workers and showed the beating to the workers to intimidate them,” Martorell said.

The Thai workers were caught “between a rock and a hard place,” Martorell said. They came to the U.S. with prospects of earning a living and paying off the high recruitment debts.

The federal charges allege that Thai nationals were charged recruitment fees between $9,500 and $21,000.

In three months the jobs or the pay they were seeking didn’t “pan out,” Martorell said. If they got sent back to Thailand, they would be facing debts they would never be able to pay off and would have to endure life there without their homes or land, which were put up as collateral for their debts, according to Martorell.

‘Completely outrageous’

“Some of the allegations are completely outrageous,” said Lujan, adding that there is no proof.

Global Horizons never took any money for recruitment fees, and the employment agreement shows that, she said.

“We’ll be putting out documentation in the next few days that will show that these passports were not taken at any time,” Lujan said. Such documentation had not been provided by press time for this story.

Lujan said the U.S. Department of Labor approved housing for the Thai workers at Maui Land and Pineapple. The Thai nationals working on the Maui pineapple farm were reportedly placed in a historic property in Makawao equipped to house over 100 occupants.

The DOL produced a 17-page document reflecting inspection of the Makawao property. Lujan said the disclosed document would provide proof that the DOL approved the property, but the company released only the cover and a single inside page of the inspection report.

On the report’s cover, Carol Kawamura, from the DOL, asked Global Horizons to see page 16 for needed items. Lujan wasn’t able to provide the full document by press time.

Pictures of the Makawao property show a large commercial kitchen and multiple large rooms, bathrooms and offices, all apparently decent living conditions.

Martorell had a different story. She said the housing was “very squalid,” and sometimes didn’t include toilets, electricity or running water. She said workers told her they stayed in barracks and in an abandoned school house on Maui.

The Makawao property on Maui is listed online for sale. It’s described as a “historic property, formerly Maunaolu College Dormitory.”

“Perfect location at about 2.5 miles above Pa‘ia just waiting to be restored to its former glory and purposes. May qualify for federal and state historic-restoration grants,” says the advertisement.

Martorell had other pictures showing housing arrangements out of shipping containers and barracks, allegedly from Aloun Farms on O‘ahu, whose owners are scheduled to go on trial in November after their human-trafficking indictment.

Lujan said Aloun Farms was at one point a client of Global Horizons, but breached the contract and decided to recruit Thai workers themselves. Global Horizons successfully sued Aloun farms for breach of contract, according to Lujan, who said the housing pictures in that farm were taken after the contract was breached.

Martorell disputed Lujan’s statement, saying “it was the same housing, whether it was Global or Aloun Farms.”

Martorell said Aloun Farms “decided to get out of the contract and do their own trafficking, because they saw how profitable it was for Global.”

Other issues included workers’ meals. Martorell said workers had to “scrounge around” to find food, plucking leaves out of trees to supplement their meals. In Florida, workers had to fish for food in a nearby stream, she added.

Lujan also provided a short video showing workers in several situations, laboring, partying, lounging, practicing sports, cooking, having meals together or shopping.

Lawsuits

Martorell said Global brought over 1,100 Thai farmworkers to the U.S. This number was based on the number of H2A visas issued by the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, she said.

The criminal indictment against Global Horizons names 400 workers, Martorell said. “But there may be a second indictment adding another 500 workers.”

Martorell said there’s another civil matter pending between the DOL and Global Horizons, where a settlement was reached four years ago but never paid.

“Now the Department of Labor has to take them to court again,” Martorell said.

Global Horizons reportedly agreed in 2006 to pay a settlement of over a quarter-million dollars to the DOL. In 2005 the company reportedly had agreed in a separate settlement to pay the state of Washington $230,000 for back wages and past-due taxes.

Lujan said DOL sued Orian and lost.

In a letter dated May 3, 2010 from the Office of Administrative Law Judges in San Francisco, Calif., Judge Steven Berlin said he granted on April 5, 2010 Orian’s motion for summary decision, which had concluded that the “Administrator has failed to offer any proof that Mr. Orian is an employer within the meaning of the Act and has not alleged any other theory under which Mr. Orian might be liable.”

In that lawsuit, the Administrator, Wage and Hour Division, was seeking more than $800,000 in back wages and civil money penalties.

A letter dated July 9, 2007 from Erik Nicholson of the United Farm Workers, addressed to Legal Services of Utah director Anne Milne, said the union, which represented the employees of Global Horizons, was convinced that a claim of human-traffic in Beaver, Utah was without merit.

In that letter, Nicholson said Legal Services of Utah was attempting to build a human-traffic case against Global Horizons. As a result, many Thai nationals understood they could get legal status if they pursued the litigation, so many have overstayed their H2A visa deadlines believing they could obtain permanent visas.

Kaua‘i Coffee

Kaua‘i Coffee management had no complaints against the Thai workers, who had skills and “great attitudes,” Howe said.

“I don’t know why Hawai‘i is named in the EEOC,” Lujan said. “It sounds like somebody wants to get rich off these companies.”

Lujan said as far as she understands, Kaua‘i Coffee hasn’t done anything wrong. She said she does not know what happened with the 17 workers who filed EEOC charges naming Kaua‘i Coffee as their employer.

Orian followed “every single guideline,” Lujan said, noting he has been complying with the federal government, the Department of Labor and the unions. “He did everything by the book.”

Kaua‘i Coffee stopped contracting with Global Horizons after they were unable to comply with certain state law requirements regarding insurance, Howe said.

Kaua‘i Coffee continues to hire foreign workers to offset a shortage in manpower. In the last few years, however, the company has opted to hire Micronesians, because they have a different work status due to their nations’ relationship with the U.S. Kaua‘i Coffee hires them without using a contracting company, according to Howe.

There have been no complaints against Kaua‘i Coffee brought by Micronesian workers, according to a question-and-answer flyer given to Kaua‘i Coffee employees and also provided to The Garden Island.

Orian is scheduled to appear in court for a bail review Oct. 8. Lujan said the judge may ask for more bail. She said the case is supposed to go to trial Nov. 3, but there might be some delays.

The FBI charges also name Global Horizons employees Pranee Tubchumpol, Shane Germann and Sam Wongsesanit, and Thai recruiters Ratawan Chunharutai and Podjanee Sinchai.

If convicted, Orian and Tubchumpol each face up to 70 years in prison, Chunharutai faces up to 65 years in prison, Germann and Wongsesanit each face up to 10 years in prison, and Sinchai faces up to five years in prison.