“The Great Escape”: Saket Soni on Forced Immigrant Labor Used to Clean Up Climate Disasters in U.S.

For Labor Day 2023, we rebroadcast our interview with author and organizer Saket Soni, who discusses the plight of workers who are hired by corporations to clean up after hurricanes, floods, blizzards and wildfires. Soni’s book, “The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America,” focuses on hundreds of Indian workers who were brought to the United States with false promises and subjected to grueling working conditions at a shipyard in Mississippi. When one of those workers called Soni in 2006 for help, it set off an extraordinary chain of events that led to their escape from the work camp and brought national attention to the issue. “As disasters have grown, this workforce has grown. And these workers do all this without legal protections, without legal status,” says Soni, a longtime labor organizer and the director of Resilience Force, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrant workers who help rebuild communities after climate disasters. Transcript: Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Support independent media: Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: