"The Great Escape"

Written by Saket Soni and subtitled "A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America", The Great Escape is the first-person account of an Indian-born community organizer who, over the course of three years (2007- 2010), fought relentlessly for the freedom of 300 Indian workers brought to America by fraud and kept here as unfree laborers.

Over the past two decades, the reality of human trafficking has reached the consciousness of more Americans. Many Americans now know that young girls, both native-born and brought from elsewhere, are are trafficked as commodities and compelled to trade sexual services for the financial gain of their pimps.

But Soni's book shows a different face of human trafficking, one in which skilled laborers beg and borrow to scrape together tens of thousands of dollars to pay a "broker" to come to work in the United States (without a work visa) on the promise of green cards. Once here, the laborers in The Great Escape found themselves kept under guard in housing worse than they had experienced in India or the Middle East. After seeing "rent" deducted from their paychecks, the workers eventually came to realize that the promise of green cards was a fraud. Only modest remittances could be returned to their immediate families in India, which, in turn, left them deep in debt to their extended families or money lenders.

Soni, originally from India but having lived abroad and in the United States for many years, dedicated himself to protecting undocumented aliens from the oppression and violence they suffered as a result of their illegal status. He had worked to free many individuals from sex trafficking and oppressive (and illegal) working conditions. He had never, however, worked to rescue 300 men working for a single employer.

Soni's account of the nighttime breakout, hiding in a post-Katrina New Orleans, marching to Washington, hunger strikes, political negotiations, and raising money to feed his shrinking band is a gripping tale. The narrative of his long-standing efforts, conflicts from without (with ICE, the FBI, and the US Department of Justice) and within his group of escapees until final success is gratifying.

The story of Soni's ultimate breakthrough with John Cotton Richmond, an attorney with the Department of Justice who had worked in India for several years with International Justice Mission, is greatly encouraging. His years-later meeting with Alvin Ladner, his arch-nemesis from ICE, then suffering from dementia, adds a coda of forgiveness. 

The Great Escape is an excellent book and I encourage folks to read it for themselves. Deep gratitude to daughter Rachel for giving it to me for Christmas.