El Cajon couple accused of trafficking housekeeper

A handwritten note asking a nurse for help has led to labor trafficking charges against an Iraqi couple who are accused of forcing an Indonesian housekeeper to work without pay in their El Cajon apartment.

Her rescue a few days later is the first time in more than five years the woman, referred to in court documents only as W.M., has been free of indentured servitude, authorities said Friday.

“Today’s arrests bring to light the sad reality of modern day slavery,” Dave Shaw, special agent in charge for U.S. Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego, said in a statement. “... Forced labor, which often involves individuals who are held in isolation, degraded, and most alarming — stripped of their basic human freedom — has no place in a modern society.”

Firas Majeed and his wife, Shatha Abbas, pleaded not guilty in San Diego federal court Friday. They are charged with forced labor, trafficking and confiscating a passport.

The housekeeper pleaded for help in a note to a nurse on March 18, and the note made it to homeland security agents, according to the complaint.

Agents went to the apartment on Mollison Avenue days later on the ruse of an immigration compliance check and spoke to the housekeeper, whose age was not released. Once away from her alleged captors, she explained through an interpreter what her life has been like over the past five years.

She said she sought a job through an employment agency in Indonesia and began to work for an Iraqi man, Dr. Haider Kubba, and his large extended family in Dubai in 2010. She lived with them, working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, for five years, the complaint says.

She cleaned, did laundry, cooked and took care of the children — but was not allowed to leave the house on her own, with the doors and windows being locked while Kubba went to work, she said, according to the complaint. The exception was being allowed to take the trash out, with permission.

The housekeeper said she was never paid for her work, although her employers sporadically sent unknown amounts money to her mother in Indonesia, and some years had passed without payments.

Kubba kept all of her travel documents, including her passport, she told authorities.

When her two-year contract with the family was up, she told the family she wanted to return to Indonesia. She got little response, and was finally told she’d have to pay her own way back. About a year later, she discovered the front door had not been locked while her boss was at work, and she hailed a taxi to the Indonesian Consulate.

But Kubba was called, and he took her back to his house after promising the consular officials that he would pay her and allow her to return to Indonesia after three months, the complaint says.

But that promise was broken. After two more years, she was told she had to go to the United States to care for the ailing father of Kubba’s wife. W.M. said she was again promised that if she complied for two months, she’d be allowed to return to Indonesia, the complaint says.

She flew to the U.S. in November and lived with Kubba’s wife’s extended family in El Cajon, including the wife’s sister, Abbas, and her husband, Majeed. She said she again took up the same housekeeping duties, working 16- to 18-hour days under the constant watch of the family. And again, she said, she was not paid.

She said she was verbally abused in both households, and that Abbas had once pushed her.

While the doors weren’t locked at the El Cajon apartment, she told agents she didn’t know where to turn for help in the United States. She said she didn’t have access to her passport, didn’t know where to catch a cab, didn’t speak English.

She is currently in protective custody at a local shelter for trafficking victims.

When agents later interviewed the family about W.M.’s claims, they said they held her salary at her request, and that one of the family members, who is blind, was mentally keeping track of what W.M. was owed, according to the complaint. Majeed told investigators that W.M. only worked eight hours a day, five days a week.

Majeed said W.M. had a work contract but refused to provide a copy to agents, the complaint states. Majeed, 44, was arrested, while Abbas, 38, was allowed to remain free until Friday’s hearing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Tenorio said in court Friday that Majeed and Abbas have been in the U.S. as permanent legal residents for the past two years and don’t appear to be employed.

The judge set bail at $10,000 each, an amount be secured by the signature of a financially secure adult. Abbas was allowed to remain free for a week while she worked out how to post the bond.

The couple listened to the proceedings with help from an interpreter. Abbas and her supporters declined to speak to a reporter after the hearing.

Prosecutors said victims, like W.M., are often overwhelmed by fear, aren’t familiar with the U.S. culture and don’t speak English, preventing them from reaching out for help. Some don’t self-identify as victims and blame themselves. That, and many other factors, can make such cases difficult to investigate and prosecute, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Labor trafficking prosecutions in the U.S. are much fewer than sex trafficking cases, according to a 2015 report by the U.S. Department of State. In fiscal year 2014, of the 208 federal human trafficking prosecutions, 18 involved labor trafficking.