Investigative Reporting was designed to follow a specific topic (ours was labor trafficking in NC, specifically how it affected the farming and meat-packing industry) with opportunities to work with data, public records, multimedia storytelling, etc. I chose to follow a lawyer and focus on farming and immigrant communities.

Labor Trafficking is a Huge Issue in the US; One NC Lawyer is Working to Combat That 

Written on April 29, 2024

The National Human Trafficking Hotline is a 24/7, confidential, multilingual hotline for victims, survivors, and witnesses of human trafficking. You can call 1-888-373-7888 or text 233733 to talk to an anti-trafficking advocate.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — For as long as Adam Roberts can remember, he’s always wanted to be a lawyer. From an early age, he demonstrated the art of arguing on someone’s behalf; he constantly found himself in trouble after advocating for his peers at Newberry Academy in Newberry, South Carolina.

“My parents always said I should stop worrying about what was happening to other students,” Roberts said. Instead, the opposite happened. His advocacy developed into a passion.

After a short interest in studying international business at Newberry College, Roberts decided to redirect and enroll in Elon University School of Law. He started with a dream to work in criminal defense, but while in school, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA)—a similar policy to Deferred Action for Children Arrivals (DACA)—was reversed by the Trump administration.

Roberts said his reaction to the reversal of DAPA was sudden and unexpected, especially after being raised in a conservative home and small southern town. He started reflecting deeply about why he felt so strongly about such an important policy for immigrants and refugees being taken away.

Around the same time as the DAPA repeal, Roberts studied abroad in China. It was an eye-opening experience compared to the small-town life to which he was accustomed.

After the trip sparked new revelations, he began working with Elon University’s School of Law Refugee and Immigration Center in Elon, North Carolina, as a law student and researcher.

Roberts finally settled on immigration law and is a current partner at Chapman & Roberts, an immigration law office based in Greensboro, NC.

Most clients come to his office looking for help with filing for legal status and citizenship. On every client’s first visit, Roberts asks a series of questions to get to know them and understand what kind of help they need.

Clients tend to range from farm workers to fast food and construction workers. Each of their individual experiences with labor, their time in the country, and how they got to the U.S. is unique.

Most of the clients that Roberts works with never considered themselves to be victims of labor trafficking or exploitation. But his intake questions got them thinking. The more their stories unfold, the quicker Roberts can help them. When new clients have been victims of exploitation or trafficking in violation of U.S. law, Roberts knows the appropriate steps to take.  

Julie Taylor, the Executive Director of the National Farmworker Ministry, said growers and farm owners typically rely on trafficking — oftentimes unintentionally — as a way to find workers because of lax labor laws and difficulty obtaining work visas.

“Most of the time they don’t even realize they are victims,” Roberts said of his clients, adding that the definition of trafficking is loose when it comes to the intersection of immigration and trafficking.

The North Carolina Department of Administration (DOA) defines human trafficking as “a crime by which people profit from the control and exploitation of others for the purposes of commercial sex acts, labor, or services.”

That definition is then divided into three categories by purpose: trafficking for sex, for labor, and domestic servitude. Sometimes there is intersectionality, but the DOA has tried to make its criteria and definitions for the different trafficking situations clear.

Roberts said the criteria are good in theory, but that trafficking often happens domestically, or to migrants who are already in the U.S. Law enforcement is typically trained to make major busts like what we see in movies, and policies are funded based on this idea that trafficking cases consist of large groups working together, when in reality, it can be the owner of a local pizza restaurant.

Most of the time, local law enforcement, in Roberts’ experience, just has blanket solutions to these domestic trafficking cases, and there is a lack of education efforts. Both to law enforcement and the public.

Roberts believes this lack of education directly leads to a lack of accountability.

When asked, three North Carolina law enforcement agencies, the Alamance County Sheriff’s Department, the Durham County Sheriff’s Department, and the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department — all declined to comment on how they train officers and handle trafficking cases.

Four more, the Carrboro Police, the Chapel Hill Police, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Department, and the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department, said via email that they don’t deal with any labor trafficking cases, nor do they have any kind of trafficking training for their officers.

To Roberts, an apparent lack of communication among different law enforcement offices also impacts the way that complaint reporting for potential trafficking cases is managed. He has cases that require support or regular reporting with the Department of Labor or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Definitions vary between agencies, and that affects who ends up contacting Roberts and how they deal with any given case. Responses from the FBI, he says, to reported trafficking complaints are not as common as the Department of Labor at a state and federal level.

The most common misconception when it comes to labor trafficking definitions is what constitutes “trafficking,” Roberts said.

Julie Taylor also agrees with this sentiment and explained that most law enforcement agencies believe trafficking is when a victim is brought over to the US, and they focus on unpaid wages or suspicious payments.

“In reality, victims can already be in the US and then trafficked to farms, manufacturing plants, restaurants, or wherever,” Taylor said.

From Taylor’s experience working directly on farms, labor trafficking becomes apparent when there is constant mistreatment of employees, including manipulation, gaslighting, intimidation, or scare tactics, and there is a continuous distinct cycle of this.

Roberts said law enforcement should be trained to know the signs and what to ask.

They could consider whether an alleged trafficker called the victim racist names, if they carried a gun, if they employed only foreign employees who lacked legal status, and if they ever made threatening comments about compensation.

Taylor said these are common tactics faced by farm workers who have been trafficked and that there tends to be an emphasis on manipulating employees by saying they will never be able to find better-paying jobs. It’s also common, she said, for traffickers to threaten to remove any accommodations like housing or vehicle use, often provided to immigrant workers.

To Taylor, the biggest concern is employee harassment. Over her almost 30 years as an advocate for workers' rights, she’s collected a plethora of stories from farmworkers related to poor living conditions, inaccessible health clinics, and exploitative bosses.

“And there’s no effort in North Carolina to help or talk about it,” Taylor said. “It’s just too underground.”

Both Taylor and Roberts said the most distinct and important thing to know about trafficking is that it is a cycle. If victims say it’s happening but law enforcement only focuses on wage theft and how they are paid, the alleged traffickers or employers are never truly stopped.

They will continue to pay out lawsuits, continue to hire undocumented individuals, and will continue to use manipulation to get free labor.

“Victims will get fed up and quit, but the trafficker will only start the process again,” Taylor said.

When Roberts sends reports to both the DOL and the FBI, he says he never hears back from the FBI. However, if the DOL responds, they send an acknowledgement of receiving the report and then request a phone call directly to the client to get more details.

In Roberts’s experience, they typically ask the client questions focused on what the office or department defines as trafficking rather than the details of the specific case. Sometimes, he said, their questions are unrelated to what actually happens in domestic trafficking schemes.

For example, they will ask how long the client has been in the US, what their education level is, and questions about their family.

“Which has nothing to do with why I reported on my client’s behalf,” Roberts said.

On an off chance he does get a somewhat decent response, they only ask for pay stubs or records.

To Roberts, a focus on big busts and improper payment while ignoring much smaller, domestic cases at the local level is misguided and leads to complacency.

The Charlotte FBI office, he alleges, has responded just once to trafficking complaints he’s filed (of about 50). This one case involved a child sex trafficker, which Roberts said made clear that the issue “is their main focus.”

Yet when he filed reports with the Virginia FBI, their office contacted Roberts immediately for two cases dealing with labor trafficking.

Both offices and the DOL declined to comment on this story, saying they take labor trafficking reports seriously, but with the nature of the cases, they are apprehensive about discussing specifics.

Roberts said he gets frustrated because trafficking rarely ever involves big busts and improper payment, but rather happens at a much smaller, domestic, and local level.

“These kinds of things happen in homes and farms,” Roberts said. “And it is always behind closed doors.”

Despite the frustration and daunting work, Roberts said he remains optimistic—or tries to be—for clients and cases. He also says he is determined to find creative changes in immigration law and continue making big differences in people’s lives. No matter how small it may seem.

Roberts believes change does not have to just come from policy either; it takes patience, education, and conversation to begin seeing something like immigration differently.

“The world is bigger than your small town,” Roberts said.