House bill aims to strengthen state's labor trafficking laws – Minnesota Lawyer

The only successful labor trafficking conviction in Minnesota was against subcontractor Ricardo Batres — but a new bill that garnered unanimous approval in the state's House of Representatives looks to tighten and clarify laws and punishment for the practice.

HF 42 will make it easier to prosecute labor trafficking crimes and sets clear sentencing guidelines. The House approved the bill last Thursday and the Senate's companion bill has passed committee but still needs a floor vote.

The current laws are too specific for law enforcement to take action, advocates say.

“The way our labor trafficking law was written made it very difficult to bring cases,” said Madeline Lohman, a senior researcher with The Advocates for Human Rights, a Minnesota-based organization that helped bring the bill forward.

The bill sets labor trafficking-related definitions for things like debt bondage, forced or coerced labor and infliction of harm.

It also sets higher penalties for labor trafficking where the victim is a minor, is severely injured or killed or the trafficking occurs over an extended period of time.

Lohman said prosecutors have been hesitant to take on trafficking cases because of the lack of legal guidelines around the crime. This leaves a lack of basis for plea bargains and there's no way to reassure victims that there will be a consequence.

The issue came to a head in the Batres case. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in early 2020 to nine months in the work house with eligibility for work release or electronic home monitoring after four months.

“I remember the victims just being like, ‘why did we even participate in this?'” Lohman said. “He's out again right away, he knows we testified against him, he's going to be angry at us. We've made ourselves less safe, and we didn't even really get any justice.”

Rep. Sandra Feist (DFL-New Brighton) championed the bill with the help of The Advocates for Human Rights and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office along with support from other labor trafficking advocates. She's an immigration attorney and felt it was important to protect undocumented immigrants.

“It's horrendous. From outright abuse to families going hungry to people being laid off,” said Adam Duininck, director of government affairs at North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters. “It's just a really dark and unfortunate underside of the construction industry.”

Some victims face physical abuse, like a nanny in Woodbury who had lost 60 pounds in about half a year because “they starved her,” Lohman said. Some die, like a worker on a job site in Lakeville. Others face threats of deportation — even legal immigrants with work visas tied to their employer.

Lohman said the issue is likely more prevalent than is known. A state survey for 2015 and 2016 interviewed service providers and law enforcement, with service providers saying they saw about 50-60 labor trafficking victims a year and law enforcement saying they saw three.

The state then received a grant and offered training on trafficking response. In the next survey, service providers identified 400 victims and law enforcement identified 25. Lohman doesn't believe it's because of an explosion of trafficking instances, but increased awareness.

“When you look for it, it's there,” she said, adding that people who hire subcontractors should feel empowered to ask how they employ their workers. “Everyone who is hiring businesses has an opportunity to do a little investigation to make sure they're not contributing to this.”

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