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Oakville restaurant owner, head chef charged in human trafficking investigation

Oakville restaurant owner, head chef charged in human trafficking investigation

Yahoo18-06-2025
Two Oakville, Ont., men are facing human trafficking charges for allegedly exploiting three Mexican men who worked at their sushi restaurant, Halton police said Tuesday.
Police said they launched an investigation in March after being tipped off that three workers were being exploited at August 8 — a franchise sushi restaurant — in Oakville.
Warrants were carried out at the restaurant and two Oakville homes, police said.
At the homes, "individuals were found living in cramped, overcrowded, and unsanitary conditions," police said in a news release.
"The victims were subjected to control that left them feeling powerless and dependent, with violations extending to their sexual integrity," police allege.
Investigators said more victims came forward following the searches.
A 46-year-old Oakville man who police said owns the August 8 franchise in the town faces a slew of charges, including but not limited to: three counts of trafficking in persons, possession of the property of crime over $5,000, and unauthorized employment of foreign nationals.
The restaurant's 27-year-old head chef also faces human trafficking charges and is additionally charged with three counts of sexual assault.
Both men were arrested last week and are being held in custody pending a bail hearing at the Milton courthouse.
Const. Jeff Dillon, a spokesperson for Halton police, said he couldn't release details about where the victims are now but said several community groups are supporting them.
"It can be a very traumatic circumstance," he said, speaking generally about those swept up in labour trafficking cases, where workers can see their pay or passports withheld, putting them in a bind.
Dillon said he couldn't provide more specifics about this case because it will soon go before the courts.
Dillon said the human trafficking unit is still investigating, and asked anyone with more information to contact them.
The service said in a news release it's possible there are more victims.
CBC is seeking comment from August 8 for this story.
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Trump boasts of deporting the ‘worst of the worst.' LA raids tell a far different story
Trump boasts of deporting the ‘worst of the worst.' LA raids tell a far different story

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Trump boasts of deporting the ‘worst of the worst.' LA raids tell a far different story

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ICE Is Overplaying Its Hand. We've Seen It Happen Before.
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Out of this breach emerged the Compromise of 1850, a grand bargain designed to preserve the Union. Under its provisions, California entered the Union as a free state, but the citizens of other former Mexican territories were left to make their own determinations about slavery. Congress abolished the slave trade, but not slavery, in Washington, D.C. And, in return for these concessions, Southern politicians secured what would prove to be the most incendiary component of the deal: the Fugitive Slave Act (FSA) of 1850. The new act inspired widespread disgust throughout the North. The law stripped accused runaways of their right to trial by jury and allowed individual cases to be bumped up from state courts to special federal courts. As an extra incentive to federal commissioners adjudicating such cases, it provided a $10 fee when a defendant was remanded to slavery but only $5 for a finding rendered against the slave owner. Most obnoxious to many Northerners, the law stipulated harsh fines and prison sentences for any citizen who refused to cooperate with or aid federal authorities in the capture of accused fugitives — much in the same way the Trump administration has threatened to jail persons who impede its immigration raids. Before the FSA, formerly enslaved people were able to build lives for themselves in many northern communities. They found homes, took jobs, made friends, started families, formed churches. But after the FSA, they were permanent fugitives — and anyone who employed them, associated with them or provided them housing were accomplices. Early enforcement made immediate martyrs of ordinary people and pierced the illusion that slavery was just a Southern problem. In 1851 federal agents in Boston arrested Thomas Sims, who had escaped enslavement in Georgia, and marched him to a federal courthouse under guard by more than 300 armed soldiers to prevent a rescue. For Boston, a city whose history was steeped in the struggle against King George's standing army, it was an ominous display. Sims' hearing was, just as the law intended, shambolic, and he was ultimately returned to Georgia. (He would later escape a second time during the Civil War.) Want to read more stories like this? POLITICO Weekend delivers gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun every Friday. Sign up for the newsletter. That same year, Shadrach Minkins, a waiter who had also fled enslavement to Boston, was seized in broad daylight. This time, word traveled fast, and a local 'vigilance committee' — interracial groups formed to monitor and, when necessary, resist enforcement of the fugitive slave law — assembled, with an eye toward liberating the accused man. Awaiting a hearing in federal custody, Minkins was suddenly rescued in a dramatic confrontation witnessed by attorney Richard H. Dana, Jr. 'We heard a shout from across the courthouse,' Dana recalled, 'continued into a yell of triumph, and in an instant after down the steps came two negroes bearing the prisoner between them with his clothes half torn off, and so stupefied by his sudden rescue and the violence of the dragging off that he sat almost dumb, and I thought had fainted. ... It was all done in an instant, too quick to be believed.' Minkins made it to Montreal, where he lived the rest of his life in freedom.

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