But Coast to Coast Resources Inc., the Texa

rtgaged his house and borrowed heavily from family members to come up with the money. The fee was the start of a two-year ordeal that has left Mr. Ngo broke and living in exile in Houston. He is one of 50 Vietnamese welders who contend in lawsuits that they were treated like indentured servants in the United States.



A state lawsuit resulted in a $60 million out-of-court settlement against two American companies, but now a federal suit has been filed charging the Vietnamese companies that recruited the welders with taking part in a human trafficking scheme. Through it all, the workers have contended — and the companies have denied — that they were brought here under false pretenses, treated poorly in near isolation and then cast out abruptly long before they expected to finish the work that would have helped them repay their debts. “They want to use our labor as a business, and they want to rip us off,” Mr. Ngo said.



In interviews, four of the men described how they were recruited through Vietnam’s state-sanctioned system for exporting labor and borrowed heavily to pay the required fees. It is a system that the State Department concluded in a 2010 report often leaves workers “highly vulnerable to debt bondage and forced labor.” The four companies involved in the deal have all denied wrongdoing. Officials of the Vietnamese labor-export corporations accused the men of lying this month and denied they had been deceived or exploited. Lawyers for the two American companies who agreed to the settlement also disputed the welders’ assertions that they were underpaid or were kept from leaving their lodgings.



But Tony Buzbee, a lawyer for the welders, said his clients were forced into a form of indentured servitude. Not only did they pay thousands of dollars in fees to Vietnamese companies, but they were charged high prices by their American employers for run-down housing, transportation to work and other expenses. The workers say the American company that arranged for their travel and housing — ILP Agency LLC — also took their passports and kept them isolated, telling them the police would arrest and deport them if they left the building where they lived. The welders said they had paid agents for the Vietnamese government-affiliated companies — Interserco and Vinamotors — fees of $6,500 to $15,000. In return, they said they were promised two and a half years of steady work in the United States, making $15 an hour. Most mortgaged their homes and borrowed from relatives and friends to make the payments in early 2009. Some borrowed from the labor-export companies themselves, handing over the deeds to their houses.



But Coast to Coast Resources Inc., the Texas company that transported them to Houston and hired them out to a shipyard, let them go in February 2009, after only eight months of work, because their work visas had expired and the United States Department of Labor would not renew them, court documents show. The workers owed thousands of dollars they could not repay on the low wages in Vietnam. Most rejected an offer from the owner of ILP Agency to buy them plane tickets home. A few sought help from a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who had come to their door and left a business card. Tammy Tran, a prominent Vietnamese-American lawyer in Houston, came to their aid, suing the American companies on their behalf and arguing, among other things, that their contracts had been breached. She also rallied local churche
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