Posted on: Saturday, November 13, 2004

Human trafficking alleged in Nanakuli

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

A Tongan man testified yesterday before a federal judge that he was brought to Hawai'i for odd jobs and farm labor and ended up in conditions approaching slavery, in what has been described as a human-trafficking scheme devised by a 52-year-old Waipahu man.

Lueleni Fetongi Maka is charged with six counts each of human trafficking, involuntary servitude, forced labor, alien harboring and alien smuggling, and five counts of unlawful use of documents.

At yesterday's hearing before U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway, witnesses testified that Maka used passports of U.S. citizens to bring Tongan nationals into Hawai'i: seven men who arrived between May and August 2001 and lived on Maka's pig farm in Nanakuli.

The men allegedly worked for Maka's pig-farming and landscaping businesses until January 2003, when the first of the victims was arrested for immigration violations. The investigation led to Maka's indictment in June 2003.

One of the seven workers, Francis "Sesi" Tautua'a, spoke through an interpreter yesterday about how the men slept on dirty mattresses, worked from dawn until dusk, received weekly pay that ranged up to $240 — but sometimes got nothing — and at times were forced to catch and eat dogs because their food stores had not been replenished.

Assistant U.S. attorney William Shipley asked Tautua'a how late the men would work.

"Sometimes we worked after the sun went down," he said.

The $240 weekly pay he was promised seemed like a lot of money at the time, Tautua'a said, but he added that he rarely got the full amount and was told that some was withheld to be sent back to his family in Tonga.

In the beginning, he said, he assumed Maka had brought him to Hawai'i with all the legal passports and visas. Maka had handled all the paperwork at immigration checkpoints after the flight to Honolulu, he said.

"At that time my, trust was on him, so I wasn't scared," Tautua'a said. "But I (was) scared later because I realized I'm here illegally."

The court also heard from Kuhio Barrios, a Hawai'i resident who sometimes worked for Maka and who told how his U.S. passport was among those used to bring in the Tongan workers.

Although Barrios did not live on the farm, he also described the conditions, including cooking facilities limited to a small gas stove; the long work hours; and dwellings he described as plywood "shacks."

He said he witnessed Maka chasing Tautua'a and beating him for more than a half-hour one day because a mirror on the company truck had been broken.

Federal public defender William Domingo asked Barrios whether some of the men had girlfriends who occasionally stayed with them, and Barrios said that sometimes happened.

Domingo asked whether the farm gate was sometimes unlocked.

Barrios said that it was, although he added that there were other gates along Hakimo Road as well.

Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.