In late 2006, Saket Soni, then a 28-year-old community organizer, received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker in Mississippi. He was one of 500 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. 

In The Great Escape, Soni traces the extraordinary escape he and the workers engineered, their march on foot to Washington, DC, and their 23-day hunger strike. Along the way, ICE agents try to deport the men, company officials work to discredit them, and politicians avert their eyes. But none of this shakes the workers’ determination to win their dignity and keep their promises to their families. 

Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of twenty-first-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the lives of the immigrant workers the United States increasingly relies on to rebuild after climate disasters. The Great Escape is the gripping story of one of the largest human trafficking cases in modern American history—and the workers’ heroic journey for justice."

Praise for The Great Escape

  • "Saket Soni’s The Great Escape is a revelation: into the underbelly of America’s broken immigration system; into the forces of globalization that move millions of people from the poor to the rich countries without regard for their welfare; into one man's epic struggle to obtain justice for the powerless. The book has the pacing and suspense of the best fiction, but is a true story, told with empathy and humor and wisdom. The Great Escape promises to take its place in the annals of the finest narrative writing about migration.”

    Suketu Mehta

    Author of This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto

  • “Saket Soni’s The Great Escape is a gripping, devastating, and powerfully written book, a must-read for anyone interested in the real world stakes of migration, corporate corruption, and federal law enforcement.”

    Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

    Author of: Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

  • “The Great Escape is part crime caper and part epic. Soni pulls off a page-turning marvel revealing the lengths people will go for economic dignity—and the equal lengths others will go to wring profit from hope. This is a book you will never forget.”

    Lauren Markham

    Author of: The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life

  • “A miracle—immensely moving, powerful, beautiful, and true. It reads like a binge-worthy thriller, told with ridiculous skill and Saket Soni’s gigantic heart pounding audibly on every page.”

    Naomi Klein

    New York Times bestselling author of On Fire

  • “I've rarely read a more engrossing tale—and a more powerful reminder that in a strained and stressed world we must embrace human solidarity above all. You will not forget this book, not for a long, long time.”

    Bill McKibben

    New York Times bestselling author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

  • “An urgent book from a master storyteller. Saket hasn't just helped liberate hundreds of trafficked workers—he has also set free an equal number of magical narratives. Right till the end, this extraordinary work is as absorbing as a great novel.”

    Amitava Kumar

    Author of Immigrant, Montana: A Novel

Reviews of

The Great Escape

“An eye-opening look at the world of global itinerant workers who spend years away from home to support their families, “The Great Escape” is a must-read for anyone organizing a union drive across cultural or racial lines, but even readers who have never thought about labor issues before will find themselves sucked into the drama.”

“A harrowing account of a latter-day revolt of people who were essentially enslaved—in 21st-century America. A searing exposé of corporate criminality and its governmental enablers.

Soni and the workers exposed ‘one of the largest human trafficking schemes in US history.’”

“In this revelatory debut, Soni, founder of the labor rights nonprofit Resilience Force, recounts the civil rights crusade of 500 workers from India who were recruited to work for Signal International, an American oil rig builder, under the false promise of a green card. This is a searing account of their harrowing road to justice.”