Friday, June 29, 2012
For victims of human trafficking, a ‘Life of Freedom’
For victims of human trafficking, a ‘Life of Freedom’
The Life of Freedom center gives survivors of sex exploitation and human trafficking an opportunity to learn leadership, job skills and financial independence.
A woman walks past a mural by artist Monique Lassooij at the opening ceremony for the Life of Freedom Center for human trafficking victims in Miami on Tuesday June 26, 2012. PATRICK FARRELL / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Fullsize Buy Photoprevious | nextImage 1 of 5
BY ANNA EDGERTON
AEDGERTON@MIAMIHERALD.COM
As a new center to help abuse victims prepared to open its doors, Anna Beard recalled a photograph of herself at age 17 taken by the man she thought was her boyfriend. The wide-eyed girl in the Polaroid picture — unsmiling, wrapped only in a blanket — barely resembles the poised, eloquent 26-year-old speaking with guests earlier this week at the Life of Freedom center for victims of human trafficking.
With the trace of a southern accent from growing up in North Carolina, she described how her 40-year-old guitar teacher told her that she was beautiful when she was in high school. He told her that she should be a model. That she should let him take pictures of her.
After about six months, he wanted her to pose in more sexually explicit positions. Beard, who got kicked out of her house after numerous fights with her parents, moved in with him. Eventually, he began to drug her and she would wake up to evidence of having been with other men. Sometimes he kept her chained to the bed. He fed her based on performance.
“He kept a tally on the calendar of how many times I was raped,” Beard said. “Hundreds of times.”
She shared her story as a survivor with guests who attended the opening on Tuesday night of the Life of Freedom Center, one of Miami’s first walk-in support centers for victims of human trafficking. Beard, now an advocate, is in Florida for the summer to help the LoF center welcome its first participants in July.
Florida has a complicated collection of services to address the problem that is not easily defined or categorized. Human trafficking includes illegal labor and sexual exploitation, and affects both international and domestic victims. Depending on their case, victims pass through all parts of the system: law enforcement, nonprofits, homeless shelters, foster care, immigration lawyers, task forces, drug rehab. Most providers agree that the many faces of human trafficking make it difficult to have a regimented response.
“That’s what makes trafficking so hard to identify: there’s no typical case,” said Regina Bernadin of the International Rescue Committee, which deals exclusively with international victims. “You can have 10 indicators, and then the next case has none of those.”
The LoF center will partner with local and national service providers to teach life skills to victims of commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking. It is not a group home or a shelter. Nor does it provide counseling or legal assistance. The LoF center will teach leadership, job skills and financial independence, and give victims the opportunity to make and sell their own jewelry and other products.
“This is a great opportunity for victims of human trafficking,” Beard said. “Money’s been made off them and a lot of them never see the money they make. Now they get to make a profit off something they created, and that’s an extremely empowering feeling.”
Founder Jorge Veitia describes the center as a “circle of protection” for girls who have escaped the immediate dangers of human trafficking, but remain vulnerable unless they have other avenues to join society in a healthy way. This faith-based nonprofit also encourages members of the community to go through a 14-hour mentor training to work with girls who are referred by law enforcement or come on their own seeking help.
“If you understand the cycle of abuse, these girls are enslaved long after they’re off the street,” Veitia said.
To be classified as incidents of human trafficking, there has to be an economic component where something of value is exchanged, and there is restriction of movement, whether by physical or psychological means, Bernadin said. And there have to be people willing to pay for sex.
“The No. 1 risk factor [for commercial sexual exploitation of children] is when children are in demand. And we have a large demand population in Miami,” said Sandy Skelaney of Kristi House, a Miami center to help child victims of sex abuse.
The character of the crime makes it hard to get accurate numbers of victims, but Skelaney, who has worked with more than 200 victims of commercial sexual exploitation since 2008, said that the number of reported cases barely scratches the surface. A study from Florida State University found that Florida has the third highest number of reported sex trafficking cases, after California and Texas.
The number of recognized victims in South Florida is increasing, partly because there is more awareness, but also because there is more crime of this type taking place, according to Tyson Elliot, the statewide human trafficking coordinator for the Department of Children & Families.
“There are more street gangs and organized crime getting into human trafficking because there’s more money to be made than selling drugs,” he said. “If a bad guy spends $1,000 on drugs and then goes and sells it for $2,000, his product is gone, and he spends his profit buying more product. With human trafficking it’s different. If someone pays him for a girl, he can go and sell her again that night.”
In a high-profile case made public this week, police arrested four alleged pimps who were accused of soliciting and selling girls who were in foster care. The victims were all minors who were living in a group home. The sex-trafficking ring charged about $100 for each encounter, of which the girls were paid between $30 and $40, police said.
Florida passed the Safe Harbor Act in April to give law enforcement the option of delivering children who are forced into prostitution to a safe house instead of arresting them. The law also increases civil penalties for people who orchestrate the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Yet even with more attention on this issue, much of the support to help human trafficking victims still functions in an ad hoc way, with different organizations focusing on different kinds of victims.
Veitia wants the LoF center to be a resource to pick up where other services have left off, teaching life skills to victims and educating the community about this issue. Instruction will follow the model established by the Fields of Hope program in North Carolina that reaches out to victims with concrete skills and opportunities “to turn a profit in something that isn’t sex,” Veitia said.
Anna Beard suffered two years of abuse before she was able to move in with a friend and escape. Her abuser died in 2009 without ever paying for his crime. When Beard went to his family’s house to get some of her stuff, she found out that the Polaroid pictures she thought were just for him were part of a profitable pornography business.
Now, she is looking forward to working with other victims and educating the general public about an issue that too often flies under the radar.
“You have to understand that there are crazy people out there that want to hurt you, but you don’t have to fall for that; you do have a choice,” Beard said as a message to other victims of human trafficking. “I want to show them that you can go from something where you feel so empty and worthless to something where you’re completely restored.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/28/v-fullstory/2873476/for-victims-of-human-trafficking.html#storylink=cpy
Black Market for Body Parts Spreads Among the Poor in Europe
By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: June 28, 2012
BELGRADE, Serbia — Pavle Mircov and his partner, Daniella, nervously scan their e-mail in-box every 15 minutes, desperate for economic salvation: a buyer willing to pay nearly $40,000 for one of their kidneys.
Multimedia
Slide Show
A Growing Black Market for Body Parts
Connect With Us on Twitter
Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
Ian Willms for The New York Times
Ervin Balo, a father of two with his wife, Elivira, tried to sell a kidney to support his family in Kikinda, Serbia, while unemployed. More Photos »
The couple, the parents of two teenagers, put their organs up for sale on a local online classified site six months ago after Mr. Mircov, 50, lost his job at a meat factory here. He has not been able to find any work, he said, so he has grown desperate. When his father recently died, Mr. Mircov could not afford a tombstone. The telephone service has been cut off. One meal a day of bread and salami is the family’s only extravagance.
“When you need to put food on the table, selling a kidney doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice,” Mr. Mircov said.
Facing grinding poverty, some Europeans are seeking to sell their kidneys, lungs, bone marrow or corneas, experts say. This phenomenon is relatively new in Serbia, a nation that has been battered by war and is grappling with the financial crisis that has swept the Continent. The spread of illegal organ sales into Europe, where they are gaining momentum, has been abetted by the Internet, a global shortage of organs for transplants and, in some cases, unscrupulous traffickers ready to exploit the economic misery.
In Spain, Italy, Greece and Russia, advertisements by people peddling organs — as well as hair, sperm and breast milk — have turned up on the Internet, with asking prices for lungs as high as $250,000. In late May, the Israeli police detained 10 members of an international crime ring suspected of organ trafficking in Europe, European Union law enforcement officials said. The officials said the suspects had targeted impoverished people in Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
“Organ trafficking is a growth industry,” said Jonathan Ratel, a European Union special prosecutor who is leading a case against seven people accused of luring poor victims from Turkey and former communist countries to Kosovo to sell their kidneys with false promises of payments of up to $20,000. “Organized criminal groups are preying upon the vulnerable on both sides of the supply chain: people suffering from chronic poverty, and desperate and wealthy patients who will do anything to survive.”
The main supply countries have traditionally been China, India, Brazil and the Philippines. But experts say Europeans are increasingly vulnerable.
An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 kidneys are illegally sold globally each year, according to Organs Watch, a human rights group in Berkeley, Calif., that tracks the illegal organ trade. The World Health Organization estimates that only 10 percent of global needs for organ transplantation are being met.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the director of Organs Watch and a professor of medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, said the attempt by poor Europeans to sell their organs was reminiscent of the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when chronic joblessness created a new breed of willing sellers.
Trade in organs in Serbia is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But that is not deterring the people of Doljevac, a poor municipality of 19,000 people in southern Serbia, where the government refused an attempt by residents to register a local agency to sell their organs and blood abroad for profit.
Violeta Cavac, a homemaker advocating for the network, said that the unemployment rate in Doljevac was 50 percent and that more than 3,000 people had wanted to participate. Deprived of a legal channel to sell their organs, she said, residents are now trying to sell body parts in neighboring Bulgaria or in Kosovo.
“I will sell my kidney, my liver, or do anything necessary to survive,” she said.
Hunched over his computer in Kovin, about 25 miles from Belgrade, Mr. Mircov showed a reporter his kidney-for-sale advertisement, which included his blood type and phone number.
“Must sell kidney. Blood group A,” the ad said. “My financial situation is very difficult. I lost my job, and I need money for school for my two children.”After six months of advertising, Mr. Mircov said, his days are punctuated by hope and disappointment. He said a man from Mannheim, Germany, had offered to fly him to Germany and cover the transplant costs. But when Mr. Mircov tried to follow up, he said, the man disappeared.
A woman from Macedonia offered $24,000 for a kidney from his partner, Daniella, but that was $12,000 below her asking price. She noted that she has blood type O, which can bring a $12,000 premium on the organ market because the blood is safe for most recipients.
Mr. Mircov said he had no fear about an eventual operation or legal strictures forbidding organ sales. “It’s my body, and I should be able to do what I want with it,” he said.
Government officials insisted that Serbia was not so poor as to reduce people to selling their body parts, while police officials said not a single case of organ trafficking in Serbia had been prosecuted in the past 10 years. Experts who study illegal organ sales said prosecutions were rare because transplants usually took place in third countries, making them difficult to track.
Dr. Djoko Maksic, a leading nephrologist who runs the transplant program at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, expressed disbelief that illegal organ selling was taking place in Serbia, saying every potential donor was scrutinized and vetted by a hospital committee consisting of doctors, ethicists and lawyers.
But Milovan, 52, a former factory worker from a rural village in southern Serbia, said he “gave” his kidney to a wealthy local politician who, in return, put him on his company payroll and offered to buy him medication. The kidney was extracted at a public hospital in Belgrade, he said, with both men using forged donor cards indicating they were brothers.
Debt-ridden, Milovan, who declined to give his last name for fear of being ostracized by his neighbors, lamented that the recipient had recently cut him off, and his family said he had spent his money so quickly that he was reduced to selling eggs at a local market.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/world/europe/black-market-for-body-parts-spreads-in-europe.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
Published: June 28, 2012
BELGRADE, Serbia — Pavle Mircov and his partner, Daniella, nervously scan their e-mail in-box every 15 minutes, desperate for economic salvation: a buyer willing to pay nearly $40,000 for one of their kidneys.
Multimedia
Slide Show
A Growing Black Market for Body Parts
Connect With Us on Twitter
Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
Ian Willms for The New York Times
Ervin Balo, a father of two with his wife, Elivira, tried to sell a kidney to support his family in Kikinda, Serbia, while unemployed. More Photos »
The couple, the parents of two teenagers, put their organs up for sale on a local online classified site six months ago after Mr. Mircov, 50, lost his job at a meat factory here. He has not been able to find any work, he said, so he has grown desperate. When his father recently died, Mr. Mircov could not afford a tombstone. The telephone service has been cut off. One meal a day of bread and salami is the family’s only extravagance.
“When you need to put food on the table, selling a kidney doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice,” Mr. Mircov said.
Facing grinding poverty, some Europeans are seeking to sell their kidneys, lungs, bone marrow or corneas, experts say. This phenomenon is relatively new in Serbia, a nation that has been battered by war and is grappling with the financial crisis that has swept the Continent. The spread of illegal organ sales into Europe, where they are gaining momentum, has been abetted by the Internet, a global shortage of organs for transplants and, in some cases, unscrupulous traffickers ready to exploit the economic misery.
In Spain, Italy, Greece and Russia, advertisements by people peddling organs — as well as hair, sperm and breast milk — have turned up on the Internet, with asking prices for lungs as high as $250,000. In late May, the Israeli police detained 10 members of an international crime ring suspected of organ trafficking in Europe, European Union law enforcement officials said. The officials said the suspects had targeted impoverished people in Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
“Organ trafficking is a growth industry,” said Jonathan Ratel, a European Union special prosecutor who is leading a case against seven people accused of luring poor victims from Turkey and former communist countries to Kosovo to sell their kidneys with false promises of payments of up to $20,000. “Organized criminal groups are preying upon the vulnerable on both sides of the supply chain: people suffering from chronic poverty, and desperate and wealthy patients who will do anything to survive.”
The main supply countries have traditionally been China, India, Brazil and the Philippines. But experts say Europeans are increasingly vulnerable.
An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 kidneys are illegally sold globally each year, according to Organs Watch, a human rights group in Berkeley, Calif., that tracks the illegal organ trade. The World Health Organization estimates that only 10 percent of global needs for organ transplantation are being met.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the director of Organs Watch and a professor of medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, said the attempt by poor Europeans to sell their organs was reminiscent of the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when chronic joblessness created a new breed of willing sellers.
Trade in organs in Serbia is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But that is not deterring the people of Doljevac, a poor municipality of 19,000 people in southern Serbia, where the government refused an attempt by residents to register a local agency to sell their organs and blood abroad for profit.
Violeta Cavac, a homemaker advocating for the network, said that the unemployment rate in Doljevac was 50 percent and that more than 3,000 people had wanted to participate. Deprived of a legal channel to sell their organs, she said, residents are now trying to sell body parts in neighboring Bulgaria or in Kosovo.
“I will sell my kidney, my liver, or do anything necessary to survive,” she said.
Hunched over his computer in Kovin, about 25 miles from Belgrade, Mr. Mircov showed a reporter his kidney-for-sale advertisement, which included his blood type and phone number.
“Must sell kidney. Blood group A,” the ad said. “My financial situation is very difficult. I lost my job, and I need money for school for my two children.”After six months of advertising, Mr. Mircov said, his days are punctuated by hope and disappointment. He said a man from Mannheim, Germany, had offered to fly him to Germany and cover the transplant costs. But when Mr. Mircov tried to follow up, he said, the man disappeared.
A woman from Macedonia offered $24,000 for a kidney from his partner, Daniella, but that was $12,000 below her asking price. She noted that she has blood type O, which can bring a $12,000 premium on the organ market because the blood is safe for most recipients.
Mr. Mircov said he had no fear about an eventual operation or legal strictures forbidding organ sales. “It’s my body, and I should be able to do what I want with it,” he said.
Government officials insisted that Serbia was not so poor as to reduce people to selling their body parts, while police officials said not a single case of organ trafficking in Serbia had been prosecuted in the past 10 years. Experts who study illegal organ sales said prosecutions were rare because transplants usually took place in third countries, making them difficult to track.
Dr. Djoko Maksic, a leading nephrologist who runs the transplant program at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, expressed disbelief that illegal organ selling was taking place in Serbia, saying every potential donor was scrutinized and vetted by a hospital committee consisting of doctors, ethicists and lawyers.
But Milovan, 52, a former factory worker from a rural village in southern Serbia, said he “gave” his kidney to a wealthy local politician who, in return, put him on his company payroll and offered to buy him medication. The kidney was extracted at a public hospital in Belgrade, he said, with both men using forged donor cards indicating they were brothers.
Debt-ridden, Milovan, who declined to give his last name for fear of being ostracized by his neighbors, lamented that the recipient had recently cut him off, and his family said he had spent his money so quickly that he was reduced to selling eggs at a local market.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/world/europe/black-market-for-body-parts-spreads-in-europe.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Purchase With a Purpose: Check out this great new organization
Purchase With Purpose®!
iSanctuary is a social enterprise that employs young women rescued from human trafficking in both India and the U.S. through the production and sale of fashion jewelry. With programs in Orange County, California, and Mumbai, India, iSanctuary provides survivors with necessary tools for reintegration: education, medical assistance, life skills counseling, and financial stability.
iSanctuary’s India program employs girls ages 15-25, who have been rescued from the commercial sex trade and taught the skill of making beautiful handmade jewelry. Proceeds are set aside for the girls, enabling them to become self-sufficient once they transition out of shelters, and helping them to regain a sense of dignity, self-worth, and hope.
In Orange County, women rescued from human trafficking in Southern California are provided with professional development opportunities and employment within the iSanctuary jewelry business. iSanctuary’s goal of helping human trafficking survivors heal, thrive, and reintegrate is made possible through the generosity and selfless devotion of time and resources from community members, partner organizations, volunteers and advocates.
Find them on Facebook or visit their website at www.iSanctuary.org to learn more about how you can directly support the growth and healing of survivors today.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Safeguarding Children: Lead Up to the London Olympics
Safeguarding Children: an Introduction to Child Trafficking
Key agencies anticipate a rise in the number of children trafficked into the UK around the London Olympic Games, which begin on 27 July. Therefore, it is imperative that practitioners understand the associated risks for this vulnerable group of children.
ECPAT UK provides training on safeguarding child victims of trafficking for practitioners who work with or make decisions about children, or anyone who may come across children at risk of trafficking.
Our courses range from introductory to specialist subject areas and can be tailored to meet the needs of the group. ECPAT UK training workshops promote a multi-agency approach, are inclusive, participatory and designed to encourage information sharing between individuals and organisations. ECPAT UK training follows the safeguarding framework for training as laid out in ‘Working Together’ (2010).
Safeguarding children: An Introduction to Child Trafficking – one-day course: 9.45am to 4pm
19 July 2012 - event reference number: 190712
18 September 2012 - event reference number: 180912
16 October 2012 - event reference number: 161012
15 November 2012 - event reference number: 151112
13 December 2012 - event reference number: 131212
Cost per participant is £75. Prices include refreshments and a sandwich/light buffet lunch, together with event materials.
Please click here for a booking form.
Child Trafficking Training - for Groups 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Working Together training framework)
Target audience: This is an introductory course and is aimed at those in regular contact with children and young people including: social care, education and health professionals; foster carers and residential staff; police and Youth Offending Teams; housing; UK Borders Agency; Trading Standards and Environmental Health; and volunteers.
This one-day course is designed for those with some knowledge of safeguarding children. The course will give participants basic knowledge of the issues surrounding children who may have been trafficked, into and within the UK. Participants will gain a better understanding of how to identify, protect and support child victims of trafficking.
Aim of the course
To introduce participants to the subject of child trafficking and develop skills to enable better identification, referral and working with children who may have been trafficked.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the session participants will be able to:
• Define the concept of child trafficking and outline the general issues with regards to trafficking
• Explain trafficking within the context of safeguarding
• Recognise the impact of trafficking on victims
• Identify possible indicators that a child may have been trafficked
• Know the obstacles to identification
• Demonstrate how existing legislation can be used to protect trafficked children
• Describe how Children’s Services respond to a suspected case of child traffickinghttp://www.ecpat.org.uk/content/safeguarding-children-introduction-child-trafficking
Key agencies anticipate a rise in the number of children trafficked into the UK around the London Olympic Games, which begin on 27 July. Therefore, it is imperative that practitioners understand the associated risks for this vulnerable group of children.
ECPAT UK provides training on safeguarding child victims of trafficking for practitioners who work with or make decisions about children, or anyone who may come across children at risk of trafficking.
Our courses range from introductory to specialist subject areas and can be tailored to meet the needs of the group. ECPAT UK training workshops promote a multi-agency approach, are inclusive, participatory and designed to encourage information sharing between individuals and organisations. ECPAT UK training follows the safeguarding framework for training as laid out in ‘Working Together’ (2010).
Safeguarding children: An Introduction to Child Trafficking – one-day course: 9.45am to 4pm
19 July 2012 - event reference number: 190712
18 September 2012 - event reference number: 180912
16 October 2012 - event reference number: 161012
15 November 2012 - event reference number: 151112
13 December 2012 - event reference number: 131212
Cost per participant is £75. Prices include refreshments and a sandwich/light buffet lunch, together with event materials.
Please click here for a booking form.
Child Trafficking Training - for Groups 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Working Together training framework)
Target audience: This is an introductory course and is aimed at those in regular contact with children and young people including: social care, education and health professionals; foster carers and residential staff; police and Youth Offending Teams; housing; UK Borders Agency; Trading Standards and Environmental Health; and volunteers.
This one-day course is designed for those with some knowledge of safeguarding children. The course will give participants basic knowledge of the issues surrounding children who may have been trafficked, into and within the UK. Participants will gain a better understanding of how to identify, protect and support child victims of trafficking.
Aim of the course
To introduce participants to the subject of child trafficking and develop skills to enable better identification, referral and working with children who may have been trafficked.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the session participants will be able to:
• Define the concept of child trafficking and outline the general issues with regards to trafficking
• Explain trafficking within the context of safeguarding
• Recognise the impact of trafficking on victims
• Identify possible indicators that a child may have been trafficked
• Know the obstacles to identification
• Demonstrate how existing legislation can be used to protect trafficked children
• Describe how Children’s Services respond to a suspected case of child traffickinghttp://www.ecpat.org.uk/content/safeguarding-children-introduction-child-trafficking
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Anti-Child Trafficking Effort of Note in Minnesota
Minnesota kicks off a new initiative to rescue child sex slaves. CNN's Deborah Feyerick reports:
http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=us_t4#/video/us/2012/06/19/cfp-feyerick-us-midwest-trafficking.cnn
http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=us_t4#/video/us/2012/06/19/cfp-feyerick-us-midwest-trafficking.cnn
Monday, June 25, 2012
Global Freedom Center Update
Quick update! We were so pleased to attend Secretary Clinton's release of the annual Trafficking in Persons report this week. We took a great photo of her listening to Raimi Vincent Paraiso who leads a child trafficking NGO in the Republic of Congo - check it out on Facebook and while you're there please like the page to help us spread the word.
Our latest resource available is Educating Our Way Out of Trafficking. http://globalfreedomcenter.org/EducatingOurWayOutofTrafficking.pdf
Educators from all levels are just beginning to embrace their role to prevent and identify human trafficking and prepare tomorrow's anti-trafficking professionals. The examples in this fact sheet provide a glimpse at some of the promising human trafficking interventions within the field of education and and the potential for growth within the global anti-trafficking community.
We have also updated the Global Freedom Center website - let us know what you think! Become part of the 5/20 Campaign - training 5 million professionals by the year 2020 to identify and prevent human trafficking. We are actively seeking partners who are in need of this critical information.
Finally, we appreciate all of the wonderful feedback we have received about our coverage of human trafficking on Facebook and Twitter. We highlight all forms of trafficking occurring around the world, motivating strategies to combat trafficking, new solutions devised by anti-trafficking professionals, and ideas on how you can be involved. Join us!
Again, many thanks for your support and look for more resources coming soon.
Warmly,
Kelly Heinrich & Kavitha Sreeharsha
Saturday, June 23, 2012
It doesn't have to be trafficking to be exploitative and wrong
This is an excellent report that highlights the exploitation in legal avenues of immigration like our guestworker programs. For example, this story:
Daniel Castellanos Contreras
Daniel was among the first guestworkers to arrive in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He
and 300 others were brought to the U.S. on H-2B visas by Decatur Hotels, LLC. The workers
found themselves in horrific conditions, and started to organize. Their legal fight became a
battleground for the rights of guestworkers throughout the United States.
My name is Daniel Castellanos. I am from Lima, Peru, and I am a father and husband. I came to
the United States on an H-2B visa but became an organizer. I am one of the founding members
of NGA, a membership organization of guestworkers who came together to fight exploitation
after Hurricane Katrina and grew to become the national voice of guestworkers in the United
States.
Just after Katrina, I saw an ad in a Peruvian newspaper—an employer in New Orleans was
looking for workers. My family was desperate for money. The economy of Latin America pushes
us into hopelessness and vulnerability—the kind of vulnerability that Americans are just
beginning to understand. We are forced to wander far from our families in search of jobs. I
responded to the advertisement.
Recruiters for Patrick Quinn III, a New Orleans hotel giant, promised us good jobs, fair pay, and
comfortable accommodations. They asked for $3,000 as payment for the opportunity to work in
the United States. I plunged my family into debt to pay the fees.
When I came to the United States, I found that all the promises they made were false. Patrick
Quinn had brought about 300 workers from Peru, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic on H-2B
visas. We were living in atrocious conditions and were subjected to humiliating treatment. When
we raised our voices, we were threatened with deportation—and because of the terms of the H-
2B visa, we could not work for anyone else.
I found out that in order to receive H-2B visas, Patrick Quinn had to convince the Department of
Labor that he could not find a single U.S. worker willing or able to do the work he was offering.
When I arrived in New Orleans, I found that his hotels were full of displaced African
Americans—survivors of Hurricane Katrina—who were desperately looking for work. Quinn
had received a multi-million dollar contract from FEMA to house Katrina survivors in his hotels.
If Quinn needed workers, all he had to do was to go to his own hotel and offer people work.
Instead of hiring workers from the displaced and jobless African American community, he sent
recruiters to hire us. At around $6.00 an hour, we were cheaper. As temporary workers, we were
more exploitable. We were hostage to the debt in our home countries; we were terrified of
deportation; and we were bound to Quinn and could not work for anyone else. We were Patrick
Quinn’s captive workforce.
But Patrick Quinn underestimated us. We built an organization and filed a major federal lawsuit
against him. Two days after the lawsuit was filed, Quinn retaliated by firing me. I fought back,
and the National Labor Relations Board ordered him to reinstate me.
10
Meanwhile, we heard stories—some much worse than our own—of other guestworkers who
were being stripped of their dignity by employers across the Gulf Coast. Employers were holding
workers captive in labor camps, confiscating their passports, subjecting them to surveillance,
leasing workers for a profit in violation of morality and the law, and trafficking workers into
conditions of imprisonment. We called it modern-day slavery and decided to fight. With over
150 H-2B workers from labor camps and industries across the Gulf Coast, we founded a
membership organization called the National Guestworker Alliance.
http://www.guestworkeralliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Leveling-the-Playing-Field-final.pdf
Daniel Castellanos Contreras
Daniel was among the first guestworkers to arrive in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He
and 300 others were brought to the U.S. on H-2B visas by Decatur Hotels, LLC. The workers
found themselves in horrific conditions, and started to organize. Their legal fight became a
battleground for the rights of guestworkers throughout the United States.
My name is Daniel Castellanos. I am from Lima, Peru, and I am a father and husband. I came to
the United States on an H-2B visa but became an organizer. I am one of the founding members
of NGA, a membership organization of guestworkers who came together to fight exploitation
after Hurricane Katrina and grew to become the national voice of guestworkers in the United
States.
Just after Katrina, I saw an ad in a Peruvian newspaper—an employer in New Orleans was
looking for workers. My family was desperate for money. The economy of Latin America pushes
us into hopelessness and vulnerability—the kind of vulnerability that Americans are just
beginning to understand. We are forced to wander far from our families in search of jobs. I
responded to the advertisement.
Recruiters for Patrick Quinn III, a New Orleans hotel giant, promised us good jobs, fair pay, and
comfortable accommodations. They asked for $3,000 as payment for the opportunity to work in
the United States. I plunged my family into debt to pay the fees.
When I came to the United States, I found that all the promises they made were false. Patrick
Quinn had brought about 300 workers from Peru, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic on H-2B
visas. We were living in atrocious conditions and were subjected to humiliating treatment. When
we raised our voices, we were threatened with deportation—and because of the terms of the H-
2B visa, we could not work for anyone else.
I found out that in order to receive H-2B visas, Patrick Quinn had to convince the Department of
Labor that he could not find a single U.S. worker willing or able to do the work he was offering.
When I arrived in New Orleans, I found that his hotels were full of displaced African
Americans—survivors of Hurricane Katrina—who were desperately looking for work. Quinn
had received a multi-million dollar contract from FEMA to house Katrina survivors in his hotels.
If Quinn needed workers, all he had to do was to go to his own hotel and offer people work.
Instead of hiring workers from the displaced and jobless African American community, he sent
recruiters to hire us. At around $6.00 an hour, we were cheaper. As temporary workers, we were
more exploitable. We were hostage to the debt in our home countries; we were terrified of
deportation; and we were bound to Quinn and could not work for anyone else. We were Patrick
Quinn’s captive workforce.
But Patrick Quinn underestimated us. We built an organization and filed a major federal lawsuit
against him. Two days after the lawsuit was filed, Quinn retaliated by firing me. I fought back,
and the National Labor Relations Board ordered him to reinstate me.
10
Meanwhile, we heard stories—some much worse than our own—of other guestworkers who
were being stripped of their dignity by employers across the Gulf Coast. Employers were holding
workers captive in labor camps, confiscating their passports, subjecting them to surveillance,
leasing workers for a profit in violation of morality and the law, and trafficking workers into
conditions of imprisonment. We called it modern-day slavery and decided to fight. With over
150 H-2B workers from labor camps and industries across the Gulf Coast, we founded a
membership organization called the National Guestworker Alliance.
http://www.guestworkeralliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Leveling-the-Playing-Field-final.pdf
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