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Indian workers protest their treatment as they walk off the job at Signal International in Pascagoula.

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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana -- A federal labor trafficking case involving Signal International in Pascagoula is set to for trial Monday in New Orleans.

The major case involves guest workers from India who say they were lured to the U.S. by false promises of permanent U.S. residency and paid large fees to obtain jobs at shipyards in Pascagoula and Orange, Texas, after of Hurricane Katrina.

This trial represents the first in a series of suits spearheaded by the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of hundreds of Indian workers.

Opening arguments are expected to begin Monday after a brief jury selection.

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in 2008 against Signal on behalf of 12 workers, and it seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

The 12 plaintiffs are Kurian David, Sony Vasudevan Sulekha, Palanyandi Thangamani, Maruganantham Kandhasamy, Hemant Khuttan, Andrews Issac Padaveettiyl, Dhananjaya Kechuru, Sabulal Vijayan, Krishnan Kumar, Jacob Joseph Kadakkarappally, Kuldeep Singh and Thanasekar Chellappan.

The workers say they were forced into involuntary servitude and living under guard in an overcrowded, unsanitary labor camp.

They are represented by Crowell & Moring LLP, the SPLC, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Sahn Ward Coschignano & Baker PLLC and the Louisiana Justice Institute.

There are at least five other similar cases against Signal in Mississippi and Texas courts, representing an unprecedented effort by some of the nation's most prestigious law firms to prosecute, on a pro bono basis, multiple human trafficking lawsuits against Signal.

Two additional firms at that time also sued Signal in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas -- one case on behalf of 17 guest workers and the other on behalf of 33 other workers.

In August 2013, five other suits were announced on behalf of 60 other workers.

The lawsuits allege that Signal trafficked more than 500 Indian workers to its Pascagoula and Orange facilities after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The suit claims the foreign workers were assigned to the most dangerous and difficult jobs and were threatened with financial ruin and adverse immigration action if they pushed back.

According to the SPLC, Signal used the U.S. government's H-2B visa guest worker program to import employees to work as welders and pipefitters after Hurricane Katrina scattered its workforce.

Hundreds of Indian men paid Signal's recruiters as much as $25,000 for travel, visa, recruitment and other fees after they were told it would lead to good jobs, green cards and permanent U.S. residency, the suit claims, and many of the workers sold their houses and other valuables and took out high-interest loans to come up with the money.

When the men arrived at Signal in late 2006 and early 2007, they discovered that they would not receive the green cards as promised, the suit says.

The workers claim Signal forced them to pay approximately $1,050 per month to live in isolated, fenced labor camps, where as many as 24 men shared a single trailer with only two toilets.

They say Signal officials told them they would deduct the "man camp" fees from their paychecks even if they found their own housing.