The Great Escape : Algonquin Books : 9781643755755 : 1643755757 : 01 Feb 2024 : "An eye-opening look at the world of global itinerant workers . . . The Great Escape is a must-read." ?The New York Times Book Review The astonishing story of immigrants lured to the United States from India and trapped in forced labor?told by the visionary labor leader who engineered their escape and set them on a path to citizenship. In late 2006, Saket Soni, a twenty-eight-year-old Indian-born community organizer, received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker in Mississippi. He was one of five hundred men trapped in squalid Gulf Coast ?man camps,? surrounded by barbed wire, watched by guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Recruiters had promised them good jobs and green cards. The men had scraped up $20,000 each for this ?opportunity? to rebuild hurricane-wrecked oil rigs, leaving their families in impossible debt. During a s