HONOLULU ? The forced labor trial of two brothers who run a Hawaii vegetable farm opened Friday with competing claims over who's to blame. Prosecutors say poor Thai laborers were manipulated and deceived, while defense attorneys say the federal government made victims of both the farm's owners and the workers.
Aloun Farms owners Alec and Mike Sou are standing trial on federal charges they brought 44 workers from Thailand and economically trapped them into working on the farm for little pay in bad conditions.
They each face up to 20 years in prison without parole after they backed out of a plea deal last September that came with a five-year maximum sentence.
Attorney Kevonne Small for the U.S. government told the jury the Sou brothers held the workers in their service through lies, threats and intimidation.
"This case is about false promises, broken dreams and greed," Small said. "The workers were entrapped into working on the farm for meager wages."
Thomas Bienert, who represents Alec Sou, argued the government ruined the business arrangement when it failed to renew the workers' guest worker visas.
Without valid visas to work in the United States, Bienert said the workers couldn't earn enough money to repay the debts they incurred to travel to Hawaii, but that wasn't the Sous' fault.
"Everyone's unhappy, but the Sous did nothing wrong," Bienert said. "It was as much a blow to the Sous when they learned the government wouldn't allow them to stay here as it was to the workers."
Federal prosecutors claim the Sou brothers gamed the United States' guest-worker visa system to keep the rural north Thailand laborers on the 3,000-acre Oahu farm, which grows a variety of foods including lettuce, apples, bananas, parsley, watermelon and pumpkin year-round in Hawaii's mild climate.
The workers were led to believe they would receive three years of work for six days a week at $9.42 an hour, after they paid between $16,000 and $20,000 in recruiting fees to get the jobs, prosecutors said. But they learned after arriving in Hawaii they would be paid much less, and their visas lasted only five months.
If the workers complained, they were threatened with deportation, which could cause them to lose their ancestral family lands and homes, prosecutors said.
But the Sous' lawyers say they upheld their end of the bargain.
The Sous provided airfare, meals, housing and promised wages to the workers, and there was nothing they could do when immigration officials declined to renew the laborers' visas, Bienert said.
In addition, the workers could have quit and left the farm at any time during their employment, which Bienert said invalidates claims of forced labor.
The trial may last for weeks, and the government has submitted a list of at least 52 witnesses it plans to have testify, including 18 of the Thai workers. The defense listed 64 witnesses it may call.
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