Migrant workers who flocked to New Orleans to rebuild the city after Hurricane Katrina were routinely cheated out of wages and faced other abuses while the U.S. Department of Labor made little effort to police the contractors employing them, a Southern Poverty Law Center attorney told a House subcommittee today.

Mary Bauer of the Southern Poverty Law Center testified on June 7 before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor about the widespread abuse of foreign guest workers, who are systematically cheated out of wages and denied the most basic protections of the marketplace, such as the right to change jobs.

The shackling of teenage girls at a Mississippi juvenile prison has shocked state officials and prompted calls for immediate closure of the facility. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) attorneys first exposed the incident in a letter demanding that officials investigate and immediately rectify abuses, unsafe conditions and violations of federal law at Columbia Training School, the state's juvenile prison for girls.