Human Trafficking

Highlights of Our Work

The L'Amande Bakery workers and their families, Congressman Ted Lieu, and Advancing Justice-LA staff at a press conference in June 2016 discussing the T visas that Advancing Justice-LA obtained for the workers and their families.

In 2016, Advancing Justice-LA and its pro bono co-counsel Latham & Watkins LLP obtained a $15.2 million judgment in favor of a group of eleven Filipino workers who were trafficked to the United States to work at L’Amande Bakery, high-end French bakeries in Southern California owned by Ana Moitinho de Almeida and her husband Gonçalo Mointinho de Almeida. The workers were fraudulently lured by their employer to the United States from the Philippines on E-2 visas and then subjected to abusive and exploitative working conditions, including workdays as long as 17 hours and wages as low as three dollars an hour. The Almeidas used threats of debt, deportation, and financial ruin in the Philippines to maintain their economic exploitation of the workers. After the workers arrived in the United States, the Almeidas threatened them with a significant debt of $11,000 each unless they agreed to work under these illegal conditions for at least three years. Advancing Justice-LA also obtained for all of the workers T visas, which provides victims of human trafficking temporary legal status and work authorization and allows them to bring their families to the U.S.