The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America

In late 2006, Saket Soni, an Indian-born community organizer, received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker in Mississippi. He was one of five hundred men trapped in squalid Gulf Coast “man camps,” surrounded by barbed wire, watched by guards, crammed into cold trailers, and watched by guards. The men had scraped up $20,000 each for this “opportunity” to rebuild hurricane-wrecked oil rigs in return for promised green cards. Soni and the workers devised a bold plan:The Great...