Before their connection with a specialized service provider, a majority of labor trafficking victims had for significant periods of time tried to find work, a place to live, and survive with the looming threat and fear that they could be arrested and deported for being unauthorized. This threat became real for 14 percent of the victims in our case data,52 who were either jailed or put into deportation proceedings for being unauthorized rather than being identified as victims of labor trafficking (most of these survivors were unauthorized as a result of their visas expiring during their labor trafficking). Victims who had entered the United States through temporary work visas and those who entered without authorization and were later trafficked reported equally negative treatment by immigration officials and/or being jailed and placed into deportation proceedings.
Although some victims were caught up in deportation proceedings, their eventual connection to one of the specialized service providers in our sample meant that the service provider was able to intervene. Although service providers could not stop the deportation proceedings, they could apply for alternative forms of immigration relief, support the survivor in his or her testimonies before
immigration judges, and advocate for survivors before law enforcement and immigration officials. These experiences were traumatizing and revictimizing for survivors, and the prevalence of labor trafficking victims who were never identified and were instead jailed and deported remains unknown. After detailing the abuse he suffered at the hands of his trafficker, the following survivor’s response to our interviewer’s question regarding whether he received immigration assistance in the form of continued presence or a T visa was poignant:
Survivor: I don’t understand. . . . They gave me—at first ICE gave me an order of deportation. Interviewer: Okay, so ICE gave you a deportation order?
Survivor: Exactly. And after [service provider] helped me get a work permit and a visa for four years. So that is what they gave me. Right now I need to look into getting my order of deportation removed. I am going before a judge, but it was because my visa had expired. That was the
problem. . . . When they gave me the order that I needed to return to Guatemala, it was January. And my work permit I received in April.
Interviewer: So you stayed in the country after the court because you were waiting for your permit and you knew [service provider] was helping you?
Survivor: Exactly. And the judge told me that I had to wait for the date and because that [work permit] came before, there wasn’t a date. Recently, I had to find another person to help me because they told me that I need to request for them to reopen my case.
Interviewer: And so, how soon after were you able to find a new job?
Survivor: After I couldn’t work because during all of this time, I didn’t have permission from immigration to work so I couldn’t do it because they told me I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t work because practically I was [here] illegal and it was something that was going to affect fixing my immigration status. That is why I went, after the court ended six to five months without a job, because I needed to find some job that—so that immigration didn’t find out. I was the one that wanted to work. (site 2, survivor 6, female, domestic servitude)
The female survivor in the interview below was labor trafficked for nine years and eventually placed into deportation proceedings when her employer (trafficker) filed paperwork to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to extend her employment and was denied due to the low wage they listed. Rather than raising a red flag that the employer was potentially involved in abusive
employment practices (in this case, labor trafficking), the trafficker’s request sent an alert that resulted in placing the victim in deportation proceedings. She waited two years for a T visa, and during this time she was out of status and unable to work. Although the experience was traumatizing, as she’ll later recount, she was thankful for the immigration judge who kept extending her removal while awaiting a response on the T visa.
Interviewer: So you were out of status for those two years [awaiting a T visa]?
Survivor: I have to wait hear for my deportation hearing because the judge who presided in my deportation hearing—she’s so . . . I told myself, “Oh lord, this is really a miracle,” because she extended and extended my stay here.
Interviewer: So she knew your story?
Survivor: Yeah, because she wants to know what happened and knows that I have been a victim of human trafficking. She wants to know the response from the USCIS, if they deny my T visa or grant me a T visa. That’s why when lawyer told the judge that “Your honor, I want to terminate the deportation hearing of [survivor name] because she already received her T visa,” the judge and the clerk of court were smiling; they smiled. (site 1a, survivor 5, female, home health industry)
Although the labor trafficking survivors in our sample who were arrested and placed in jail and/or deportation proceedings by immigration officials eventually received immigration relief, the trauma and revictimization they experienced cannot be understated. Below are just a few of their stories.
They [service provider] offered me the option of talking to a psychologist but I had commented to [name] that when I left [jail], I not only had trauma about what had happened to me in that place but also because I never in my life had been in jail. I didn’t know. . . . It is a jail where there is psychological harm and everything and one feel really bad.
And also discrimination because one does not understand the language, there are a lot of people who scold you in jail, the guards, the police and everything because one does not understand the language and I think there are spaces to correct people but I think that not having a paper should not be a crime that would make someone go to jail because I cried many nights inside those four walls, without knowing what to do. I would say “God, why?!” I have always been a person that has respected the laws and I’ve never had even a single fight. They raised me in my family—I didn’t have the example of my mom hitting my neighbors, no. It was from work to home. And it is really difficult to come to a different country and to be put in jail for not having a document of
identification and all of that, truthfully, was really difficult for me. My first time in a jail. (site 4a, survivor 2, male, agriculture)
The survivor whose deportation hearings were extended pending her T visa described that even though the outcome was eventually favorable, she underwent a lot of stress attending deportation proceedings:
You know what, you know when you are withdrawn, when you are in this water and your head is already down, you have to find a way to not just go down. You have to fight. For me, I’m thinking I still have time. I have to do this. Sometimes the people I have to talk to, they don’t know you. They don’t know your problem and the way they talk to you, it’s so stressful. Sometimes I have to come home just so tired. I cried and cried and cried and then after that I am okay again. . . . That’s why I really want to tell my story. But some days I’m so emotional because you remember it. Sometimes you feel like . . . that time . . . what is this . . . vulnerable. (site 1a, survivor 5, female, home health industry)
Other survivors in our sample were not jailed or placed into deportation proceedings, but they still reported negative experiences coming into contact with immigration officials. Below are examples of how immigration officials’ treatment of victims as criminals, as well as their occasional refusal to admit labor trafficking occurs in the United States, affected survivors of labor trafficking years after their experience:
And then the immigration officer talks to me all by myself. Yeah. I am telling you, until now I still, it’s still crossing on my dreams. . . . The immigration officer is like, “Why did you overstay here?” Like he treat me like I commit . . . a felony. And I’m like, “Well the situation asked for it. I am a victim of trafficking.” He’s like, “That’s not true. It’s not happening in the US.” (site 3, survivor 2, male, hospitality)
One young Eastern European woman and her coworkers were victimized in an H-2B visa labor trafficking case that spanned multiple states. The case involved a sophisticated level of document fraud as well, unbeknownst to the victims. Her experience demonstrates how her persistence made a
So let’s say we came to immigration center and they were asking us a lot of questions about these guys about everything that we are kind of in trouble. That the best solution for us is to go home. We lost everything and blah, blah, blah. And I asked him, “Okay. Can I talk to someone else who will be, you know, more helpful than you telling me that I have to go home right now?” He’s like, “Let me contact the guys from [another state connected to trafficking case—state 2] and I’ll see what they can do for you. I will give you a call.” So I was waiting for this call for a week.
He never got to call back, so on Monday I call him and I’m like, “So it’s [survivor name]. You probably forgot about me, but I don’t have money to eat. . . . What do we have to do?” He’s like, “I will call you tomorrow.” So he called us next day and he was like, “Okay. Here is what you can do. You can wait for these people to come to you because it’s 12 different states that are involved in this. It might take a while. Or you can go to [state 2].” And I told him that I don’t have money to go to [state 2]. He was like, “I will take care of your gas.”53 I was like, “Okay.” So we were getting ready to go to [state 2] when we . . .
Oh, and immigration in [state 1] when we first came there they took our passports and every- thing. So we came back to them and we were like, “We’re going to [state 2]. Can I have my passport?” He was like, “No. I can’t give you any papers because you are actually . . . .” Well, he made me sign a lot of papers about me agreed that I broke the law in the state, in the United States when my visa was expired even though I didn’t know about a bunch of this stuff. So he was like, “You basically in trouble now so that’s why I have to take your passport and everything. So you can go to [state 2] and then to do something with you and keep you here and safe I will send them your passports.” So I would try to argue with him, but it didn’t go well. So that’s why I was like, “Okay.”
When the survivor was asked what she did when immigration officials asked her to sign papers that stated she broke US immigration laws, she described how she was threatened with prison:
I didn’t want to, when I didn’t want to sign any papers, so by that time they cast out the Mexican illegal guy [also in front of the official for another matter] and she [immigration official] was like, “Okay, you have two choices: you sign these papers, or you go to the prison with this guy.” I was like, “Okay, let me sign whatever you want.” (site 3, survivor 3, female, hospitality)