US farmers on trafficking rap

The US Department of Justice has indicted two farm operators and a labour recruiter for exploiting 44 Thai farm workers in Hawaii.

Alec Souphone Sou and Mike Mankone Sou, owners of Aloun Farms, and Thai labour recruiter William Khoo have been charged with engaging in a conspiracy to commit forced labour and visa fraud, the department said.

The three conspired and devised a scheme to hire 44 Thai workers by enticing them to come to Aloun Farms in Hawaii where they were promised lucrative jobs.

The owners refused to pay them the wages, and told them if they left, they would only go home to debt.

They worked at the farm from April 2003 to February 2005.

"They arranged for the Thai workers to pay high recruitment fees, which were financed by debts secured against the workers' family property and homes. After arrival at Aloun Farms, the Sou defendants confiscated the Thai nationals' passports and failed to honour the employment contracts," according to the indictment. The defendants also face charges of visa fraud conspiracy by making false representations in documents filed to obtain employment visas.

The Honolulu Advertiser reported in its online edition on Saturday that the workers were forced to pay recruitment fees of up to $22,500 (765,000 baht). The workers were told to borrow a high-interest loan from a bank affiliated with the recruiting companies if they were unable to pay the fee.

The Sou family were immigrants from Laos via a refugee camp on the Thai-Lao border and settled in Hawaii in the late 1970s.

The paper also quoted prosecutors as saying the Thai workers were housed in a two-storey home surrounded by a chain-link fence, and concrete wall secured by a locked gate.

"Eleven of the workers later were moved to remote storage containers with no air-conditioning or indoor plumbing. The men were told not to socialise with outsiders," the newspaper reported.