The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America by Saket Soni (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)

The U.S. Gulf Coast had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A year later, it was “a construction site of postwar proportions.” Over a million houses had been devastated and crippled oil rigs needed repairs or outright rebuilding from scratch. To hire skilled American labor meant paying union wages--welders, pipefitters, plumbers, and electricians didn’t come cheap. But there was a pool of experience that waited to be tapped--workers on Middle Eastern oil rigs who came from India, all of them easily lured by the thought of getting a U.S. green card. Not only would they be a source of cheap labor, they were a way to make some fast money. These men would pay anything to bring wealth and security home to their extended families and to give their children the opportunity to live well in America.

Five hundred Indian workers paid $20,000 each in response to an ad that promised Permanent Lifetime Settlement In USA For Self And Family. In two years or less, they would be given green cards. Their parents borrowed the money, sold their land, mortgaged their lives to give their sons this chance. Almost ten million dollars went to the men who made this swindle a success. 

When the workers arrived in America, they were shunted into labor camps where they paid $245  a week for a bunk in “a sardine-can trailer. They waited in line for their turn to use the toilets and showers in another trailer and then queued up to get breakfast in the cafeteria. The toilets overflowed, the showers leaked water that soaked the walls and floors, the bread was moldy, and the workers fell sick. They complained about the conditions but their main concern was when could they expect to receive their green cards. Nobody had answers for them and their complaints were met with a force of hired goons. They were threatened with deportation if they didn’t submit to the conditions of the camp. Then one of them heard about an Indian in New Orleans whose job was to help workers. He called a number on a business card and reached labor organizer Saket Soni.

A man still in his twenties with immigration difficulties of his own, Soni was a man who wasn’t afraid to take desperate measures. Slowly and carefully, he arranged a solution that deserves to be in a movie. In the two camps that housed the five hundred workers, one located in Mississippi and the other in Texas, the Indian workers walked out of the gates that barred them from the world outside.

Soni made the case that human trafficking had been reinvented in 21st century America. The five hundred men had been recruited through fraudulent means, with the recruiter keeping their passports as insurance that none of them would back out of the arrangement. Once they were on the job site, their impressive debt incurred in hopes of obtaining a green card kept them in involuntary servitude. They had to pay off that debt before they could return home.

When appeals to the Department went unanswered, Soni ventured into deeper drama--a march from New Orleans to Washington DC, a hunger strike to call attention to the workers’ case. But this is America where politics run deep below every surface. When it became known that ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) had been blocking their case from the very beginning, the workers and Soni himself were certain their cause was a hopeless one.

This book is a crash course in immigration policy, labor issues, and the intertwining of business interests with government agencies. Both a human tragedy and an example of how justice can prevail in spite of apparently insurmountable obstacles, The Great Escape rivals any fictional thriller for sheer nail-biting scenarios--but in this case they all happened in real life. Although this group of workers ended up with what they’d been promised, who knows how many more are being defrauded without recourse in this country, every day?~Janet Brown