Workers in New Orleans Denied Pay, Proper Housing and Threatened with Deportation

In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina whipped the Gulf Coast region, companies like Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root - a Halliburton subsidiary - and EEC Operating Services were given huge contracts by the federal government to clean up hurricane debris and start rebuilding the area. Undocumented immigrants and other economically marginalized people were lured to the region by promises of work and good pay. But it turns out that many of those workers have never been paid and have little recourse in collecting their promised checks. Some undocumented workers were even threatened with deportation when they demanded their pay.

An article on Salon.com stated that the problem is "a shadowy labyrinth of contractors, subcontractors and job brokers, overseen by no single agency, that have created a no man's land where nobody seems to be accountable for the hiring-and abuse of these workers."

* Tina Susman, a reporter for Newsday. She followed the case of a group of homeless men from Atlanta who went to New Orleans to work and never got paid.
* Bill Chandler, president of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance. Their group has filed complaints against five subcontractors in the Gulfport region on behalf of workers who weren't paid for the cleanup that they did.

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