Trafficked in America

Directors Daffodil Altan and Andrés Cediel’s PBS-aired Frontline documentary—produced in conjunction with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism—focuses on a 2014 labor trafficking case involving teenagers from Guatemala whose families paid $15,000 for them to be smuggled into the U.S. Most of the teens were caught and turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which amazingly put them in the custody of accomplices attached to the smugglers. The teens wound up at Trillium Farms, an egg production operation in Ohio, where they labored in near-slavery conditions and were threatened with violence against their families back home. A Trillium executive appears on camera to insist that the company had no idea there were trafficked Guatemalan teens working at their facility, while the HHS division that placed the teens in Ohio refused to discuss the matter. Although this particular case occurred four years ago, it resonates in today’s volatile immigration debate, raising questions about any kind of responsible oversight within the federal bureaucracy. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)