Kidnapping?
The workers, from Veracruz, MX came to work for Southwest Shipyards in Channelview, Texas - just east of Houston. They paid between $1,500 and $2,000 to come to the U.S. on HB2 temporary visas. The company did not pay what they originally offered in addition to deducting much of their pay for room and board. They left Channelview and traveled to Mississipi, where they were told by the Pascagoula, Miss. Sheriff that Southwest Shipyards "owned them."
It has become common knowledge on the Gulf Coast that many immigrant workers (especially those in New Orleans) have been mistreated, not paid for their work, and even not given food by companies who recruited them.
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Workers Say Miss. Police Kidnapped Them
By HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, August 23, 2007
(08-23) 04:25 PDT Jackson, Miss. (AP) --
Thirty Mexican nationals with visas to work in the U.S. claim police in Pascagoula kidnapped and threatened them with arrest or deportation if they did not return to an employer.
The workers, backed by the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups, said Wednesday that Pascagoula Police Capt. George Tillman threatened to send them to jail if they didn't return to work for a recruitment company.
The workers plan to file a lawsuit accusing Tillman of "kidnapping, kidnapping with intent to enslave, false imprisonment, human trafficking, and violations of the workers' civil and constitutional rights," they said in a news release.
Enrique Garcia, 41, one of the workers, said Tillman told the workers the company "owned" them..
For complete article:
http://nuevomundo.revues.org/
Photo: Braceros registering in El Paso, ca. late 1940s. http://www.farmworkers.org/bracero5/contrata.GIF
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