United States v. Lee

BACKGROUND

Lee owned and operated a garment factory in American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the United States UNITED STATES v. LEE 19969 located in the South Pacific. Lee recruited individuals from Vietnam, China, and American Samoa to work at the factory. Once the workers arrived in American Samoa, Lee controlled most aspects of their lives, including when and whether they could leave the compound, eat, or be paid.

Initially, Lee’s actions included incidents of imprisonment, starvation of his workers, and deportation threats. Lee pre- vented workers from leaving the compound for several days at a time. In addition, Lee fed workers so sparingly that they were forced to sneak out of the compound in search of food. At trial, the workers’ imprisonment and starvation claims were corroborated by individuals outside the compound. For example, on at least two different occasions, individuals observed Vietnamese women behind barbed-wire fences cry- ing for food and help. Although those events prompted Amer- ican Samoa authorities to investigate the factory conditions as early as May 1999, Lee obstructed these investigations by threatening to deport, or…