Ryann Gerber Jorban joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to discuss how labor exploitation functions as a hidden form of modern-day slavery, and how community collaboration, empathy, and survivor-centered strategies are critical in addressing labor trafficking.

Ryann Gerber Jorban is a seasoned prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, where she has served since 1998. With a background in sociology from UC Riverside and a law degree from the University of Michigan, she has devoted her career to seeking justice for vulnerable communities, including children, the elderly, and survivors of abuse and human trafficking. In her role as Deputy in Charge, she leads both the Economic Justice and Labor Justice Units, focusing on wage theft, labor exploitation, and fraud. Ryann is nationally recognized for her survivor-centered approach, combining legal expertise with a deep commitment to collaboration, trust building, and meeting survivors’ foundational needs. She was also a featured speaker at the 2025 Ensure Justice Conference, where she shared her insights on labor trafficking and the exploitation of children.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women. Justice in Orange County, California. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice. Make a difference in ending human trafficking.

[00:00:22] Today I am joined by Ryann Gerber Jorban, a seasoned prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. She has served there since 1998. With a background in sociology from uc, Riverside, and a law degree from the University of Michigan, she has devoted her career to seeking justice for vulnerable communities, including children, the elderly survivors of abuse.

[00:00:54] Human trafficking victims in her role as deputy in charge. She leads both the economic justice and labor justice units focusing on wage theft. Labor exploitation and fraud. Ryann is nationally recognized for her survivor-centered approach, combining legal expertise with a deep commitment to collaboration, trust building, and meeting survivors foundational needs. We were honored to have Ryann join us as a speaker at this year’s. Ensure Justice Conference 2025. She shared her insight on labor trafficking and the exploitation of children.

[00:01:39] Well, welcome to the ending Human Trafficking podcast, Ryann Gerber Jor. What is it like to be deputy in charge?

[00:01:49] Ryann Gerber Jorban: it’s basically the same as being a deputy district attorney, but with more work.

[00:01:54] Sandie Morgan: More work. Oh, I thought it would be more fun because you’d have more power. I liked the in charge part of your title.

[00:02:01] Ryann Gerber Jorban: the in charge part is nice. It’s very funny. In our office, deputy in charge is actually the lowest level of management. I think they give us that in charge part. So, we feel power even though we have very little. But, I. I will say it is the fun always feels bad when you’re talking about, crime and victims, but it is the most fun I have ever had in my career.

[00:02:24] it’s fulfilling. It’s exciting. It’s a little crazy, but it’s definitely the best job I’ve had so far in the DA’s office and I’ve loved all 26 years of my life in the DA’s office. So that’s saying a lot.

[00:02:37] Sandie Morgan: Oh, I love that. And for our listeners, she is smiling while she’s saying that, and I’ve known Ryann for a while now and her smile is very authentic. And Ryann, your deputy in charge, full title is Economic Justice and Labor Justice Units. So explain why that is such a fun job. Yeah.

[00:03:00] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Yeah, so I’m part of, um, so I work for LA County District Attorney’s office, part of our consumer protection Division. It’s the bigger division and we protect consumers from all kinds of levels of fraud. And, back in, 2017, uh. Jackie Lacey, who was the DA at the time, and a wonderful human being. she, started the, what we called at the time, the Notario Fraud Unit, and we now call it the Economic Justice Unit because it’s more expansive in what we cover, but it was basically protecting vulnerable communities from fraud that is.

[00:03:38] Pointed at them because of their vulnerabilities. Their vulnerabilities make them, much more likely to be victimized, than other people. And, I got to be the first, da. I had a boss and then it was me. I was the first trial lawyer in there. And it was the, it was amazing.I’ve worked with vulnerable victims as a sex crimes and domestic violence and child abuse prosecutor for most of my career.

[00:04:01] And so this was a natural. Shift and no one was really helping these people in the same way that we were, and I was really proud of that.

[00:04:08] Sandie Morgan: I love that. So that’s a good way to segue, into where our conversation is gonna go today.

[00:04:16] You’ve called labor exploitation, a form of modern day slavery. Can you unpack what that means in your work and why the public should even care?

[00:04:29] Ryann Gerber Jorban: So we tend to get, very focused on the word trafficking. And Sandie, you’ve heard me say this, like ad naum, trafficking’s important trafficking. Is a powerful way to move our messaging. But what we have to understand is labor exploitation is a spectrum, and on one end is trafficking. On the first end is not being paid what you’re owed, but it’s, even though it’s a spectrum, it’s very short journey from one to the other.

[00:04:56] and so when I say labor exploitation, we don’t treat workers and give them their rights and protect them. In the workplace, we are treating them as less than human. And no one deserves to be treated as less than human. I don’t care what you’ve done. everything we read from the Constitution to the Bible to philosopher says, how we treat the least of us is what we will be measured by.

[00:05:22] And so I truly believe that. So, The, the labor exploitation, leads us to dehumanize those who work and those who work are why we exist. So, that’s my little philosophical part of that. but the bigger part is labor exploitation’s a crime and you’re stealing from people. I don’t like that. I, I’m, I’m not a big fan of that.

[00:05:45] Sandie Morgan: All right. So I love how you pulled in the moral aspect, and I hope that your words and the knowledge in what we’re learning today about this will help our listeners and generally our public to be able to identify why they care about labor trafficking. Because as you and I have talked about, sex trafficking gets a. Lot more of the attention and it deserves attention. But labor trafficking deserves the same level of attention, and we can do a better job reporting and being eyes and ears in our community.

[00:06:31] So let’s talk about wage. These sound like kind of boring things. Again,

[00:06:38] labor trafficking doesn’t have all of the sexy conversation, that we sometimes come to expect in the human trafficking conversations.

[00:06:50] So let’s talk about how do wage theft and force labor show up in Los Angeles County, and then we’ll move into what can we do to better identify those crimes?

[00:07:06] Ryann Gerber Jorban: So, there’s certain. Areas that are ripe for wage theft and, and forced labor. they tend to be lower paid. They tend to need a lot of workers. They tend to have, a lot of, movement across workers, and especially in LA County or Southern California. They’re going to be primarily filled.

[00:07:29] Not primarily, but very largely filled by people who are either undocumented or undocumented. So their power is very low, right? and their need is very high. And when you have high need and low power, you are extremely vulnerable to being mistreated, and In LA County, we see a lot of that, of course in construction, car washes,restaurants, healthcare,these are areas where we really can have a huge.

[00:08:03] Problem that no one sees, right? Because you go into a illicit massage business, you’re gonna see what’s going on. You go into a restaurant, you’re not necessarily gonna see that the dishwasher’s not being paid more than $5 an hour, and that dishwasher doesn’t have a choice, right? He can’t get a job ’cause he’s here undocumented.

[00:08:24] He has a family back either back in his home country or here that he has to.

[00:08:31] He, is at the absolute power of his employer who can fire him, who can choose to pay him or not pay him that day, and who can threaten to have him deported if he is not happy with him.

[00:08:46] Sandie Morgan: Wow. All of that sounds like the definition of coercion.

[00:08:50]

[00:08:50] Ryann Gerber Jorban: There’s two definitions that work. We see a lot of debt bondage, which is where somebody says, you owe me this money and you have to work for me till you pay it off, or, I owe you this money and I’m not going to give it to you until X date occurs and you have to continue to work for me Until then, so it’s.

[00:09:09] I’ll gladly have you work today, but I’ll pay you next Tuesday.

[00:09:12] Sandie Morgan: Hmm.

[00:09:13] So let me ask this because you’re talking about,

[00:09:16] $5 an hour, and the minimum wage here in California right now is $16 an hour,

[00:09:24] Ryann Gerber Jorban: so we have a case that we just settled that was a garment worker case, and the garment workers were working 55 hours a week and be making, roughly five to $6 an hour.

[00:09:36] Sandie Morgan: Wow. So here’s the question people ask me in general community settings. So if they’re getting paid, then I can’t report it as human trafficking, even if it’s not at minimum wage. So what’s that gray area? Does the fact that they are getting paid $5 an hour eliminate a trafficking case?

[00:10:04] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Not at all. So what you’re being paid actually is less, of an issue as to how you are being controlled. So labor, forced labor trafficking is the somebody having to work based on force fear or coercion force is what we tend to think of traditionally, right? They’re in

[00:10:29] Sandie Morgan: White van kidnapped.

[00:10:32] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Yeah. and, and we have that same mindset with sex trafficking too, by the way.

[00:10:36] I’ve done sex trafficking, so I’m real familiar with both ends of that spectrum. But, we’re not talking about chained up people at the side of the road. Okay. Or in a field being beaten. So force is there. There’s lots of violence. There’s guns, there’s threats, there’s, I have, I have one case right now where they threatened to murder them, but that is not the primary driver here.

[00:11:01] The primary is gonna be the fear. I’m going to call ice. I’m gonna have your children taken away by DCFS. I know someone in the mafia or in the organized crime who’s going to do something to you. or, your family back home will pay for this. So that’s the fear. And then the coercion is controlling them somehow, keeping their visas, keeping their documents.

[00:11:30] Holding onto their pay, saying to agricultural workers. We see this a lot in ag. Um,I’ll pay you when the, when the, when the, the harvest is done. So these people are working 6, 8, 10 weeks, but they’re not getting paid till the end of that time

[00:11:49] and

[00:11:49] they can’t leave if they walk away from that work.

[00:11:53] They’re not gonna get what they’re already owed. and of course by the time you get to the end of that, they don’t have a lot of power to get that money back ’cause they can’t take the work back, right? So they take whatever they can get. So coercion, controlling them and, exploiting their vulnerabilities and their desperate need, is what keeps people enforced labor.

[00:12:18] And it’s that imbalance of power that creates an opportunity for someone to exploit or abuse another person. And we see that across the spectrum in family violence, in child abuse. In, worker complaints, but here it is significantly amplified by the extreme vulnerability. When we’re talking about children who are in this space, kids who have been rescued from labor trafficking often are unaccompanied refugee minors. or the children of undocumented, or as you say, not fully documented, parents. Can you use some of the elements of the case you worked on with the Guatemalan youth to give us a little better understanding there?

[00:13:21] Yeah, we were involved, uh, tangentially in that case, but I’m very aware of it. I helped, I, I actually spoke to them about kind of what their rights were and things and, so. Chicken processing plants in LA County. There’s a large number of them who knew

[00:13:39] Sandie Morgan: I know. It was a big surprise for me

[00:13:41] too.

[00:13:42] Ryann Gerber Jorban: And, for whatever reason we see across the country in meat and chicken processing and egg processing, a large number of Guatemalan.

[00:13:52] migrants who are working in those areas, and there’s often a lot of labor trafficking. And that’s a, maybe we could talk about that topic another time about why, but, the, here in LA County we had that, we had a case that was handled by the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. And when they went in, they found, migrant teens.

[00:14:16] I believe the age range was 14 to 17. working in this chicken processing plant cleaning. Cutting chicken into pieces, things like this. And all of these kids have been brought up here as unaccompanied minors.and if you think about the vulnerabilities of an adult.

[00:14:34] Then you add that to being a 15-year-old kiddo who thinks that, who not only thinks, but is truly their family’s only hope back in Guatemala.

[00:14:44] So, you know, they screw up here. Their family in Guatemala loses their land at best, loses their lives at worst. Right? And my 15-year-old can barely wipe down the counters. Don’t tell her I said that. We won’t let her hear this part, you know, and,

[00:15:02] And, if I threaten her, with losing her ability to go out on the weekend, that works really well.

[00:15:08] I can’t imagine what these kids feel. I can’t imagine the terror and pressure they feel.

[00:15:15] Sandie Morgan: So that’s a great segue into one of the things that I love about you, because you can imagine, and, and I think we could define that capacity to imagine that trauma, that pain as empathy that really marks your leadership with a victim centered approach. So.my first question about how you put survivors first as you build a case around human needs, I’ve heard you speak about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

[00:15:53] in relation to the victims. so how does that actually shape your legal strategy?

[00:16:02] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Yeah. So, you know, Maslow’s Triangle is the idea that we have to have certain base needs met in a, in progression before we can get to a higher level of. Ability to work in the world, right? So if you don’t know where you’re going to eat, what you’re going to eat that night, or as a mom, I always go back to my kids.

[00:16:24] If my, I don’t know how I’m feeding my kids that night, I’m not really gonna care about self-esteem. Like, like it’s not gonna be high on my level ’cause I have these basic needs. So when I’m building a legal case, I need to recognize that the people who are being mistreated. Are just trying to survive at these lower levels of Maslow’s Triangle, and I don’t have that experience.

[00:16:47] I am blessed. I don’t know what that feels like. and so I need to be sure that I’m, keeping that in mind. So when I build a case, what I try to do is build the case without the victim or our, our person who’s being, mistreated to carry the case.

[00:17:08] Are not my primary witness. My primary witness is gonna be other things that I can prove without their participation or with minimal participation.

[00:17:17] So not did they abuse you, but did you get to have a lunch break? I can build a case on the failure to pay someone for their lunch break. Break, and then once they are. Once we file that case and we’re doing well with it, and they get stabilized. They get case management and services and a, a job and immigration services, and they now know where they’re going to eat.

[00:17:43] They have a safe place to live. Their kids are safe now they are high enough on Maslow’s to help me. With a much more serious case. So my belief is we try the case we have in front of us, we don’t put it on the shoulder of our victims. And then as we give our victims the support and stabilization they need through our partners in the nonprofit world, then we utilize their strength to build a a, a more serious case if possible.

[00:18:11] Sandie Morgan: So using this legal strategy, how effective has that been in For me, the real justice part of this is more focused on. How the victims, receive restitution. I know it’s good to put the bad guys in prison, but, how effective has this strategy been in that respect, because that is a survivor first focus.

[00:18:41] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Yeah. So when we, are doing these cases, our primary interest is getting our, survivors. Two things when we first come into contact with them. you know, best practice and we’re still working on this. I am a work in progress, Lord knows, um, literally, Is making sure that we are working with our nonprofit partners who work with these communities.

[00:19:03] I am, can’t tell ’cause voice, but I am a white, middle class suburban mom who literally drives a minivan and used to go to soccer games. Now I go to band. I am a band mom, right? I do not have the cultural knowledge of other communities outside of mine. None of us do. We know our culture. So for our own cultural intelligence, which is a thing, we have to utilize people who have that cultural intelligence to assist us.

[00:19:32] it is arrogance and hubris to think that we can understand somebody else’s culture well enough to. give them what they need culturally and supportively. But by going to a community organization, I love working with the Thai Community Development Center. ’cause even though Thai is in their name,they understand this and they have people from all different cultures who can help the subsets of people.

[00:19:56] They help.

[00:19:57] Sandie Morgan: The Thai CDC, helps stabilize provide case management and provide legal structure for our victims, and that allows us to, move them up Maslow’s Triangle in a culturally appropriate way. When we try to do that without the cultural appropriation, it’s not gonna work. But when we do that, we are putting them first in their needs first.

[00:20:22] Ryann Gerber Jorban: And I think I got off topic.

[00:20:24] Sandie Morgan: No, you’re good. You’re good. And,

[00:20:26] Ryann I’ve heard you use this phrase before and to kinda sum up this, putting survivors first part of our conversation, you said you want to build a case with a survivor instead of around them. what does that look like in real life?

[00:20:49] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Slight,

[00:20:50] tangent. You know, we talk a lot about the words victim, survivor, rescue, all of these things. We’re not the center of these cases. It, it’s not what we need. We should be focusing on in these cases, it’s what the person who went through it needs that we should be focusing on. And so when I say with, I need to meet the survivor where they are, I cannot force them to meet the me where I need them to be.

[00:21:17] That’s just unrealistic and that’s why we can’t do a lot of these cases. So if where they are is they can’t help me. That’s absolutely fair. they owe me nothing. and so, understanding where they are from and having empathy for where they are and making sure that they have the support they need, is my primary goal.

[00:21:38] So when we settle these cases, or when we prosecute these cases, our number one interest is what can we do if our victims are not able to help us? Okay? Because that doesn’t mean the person should get to walk just because they picked particularly vulnerable people. Okay? In fact, the opposite second. What can we do?

[00:22:01] What can we provide? Who can we partner with to make sure that our victims are supported and that this bad thing that happened to them turns into their opportunity to have a better life?

[00:22:13] Sandie Morgan: That’s so good and such a great segue to the

[00:22:17] next aspect.

[00:22:18] I wanna

[00:22:19] talk about the collaboration and community trust that, and you’ve already started that a little bit with Thai CDC, but beyond just that, who else do you need in order to help, especially these foreign national victims, unaccompanied refugee minors? what part of the community needs to be at the table?

[00:22:46] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Wow. That’s a big question, Sandie. I mean, it, it’s really broad, right? We need, we need law enforcement. I mean, we often hear from. Certain settings, law enforcement’s the enemy. No. An educated, trained law enforcement is actually a great resource because they see what people are going through on the street.

[00:23:05] Very few of us do, right? So we need law enforcement, we need government agencies. here in LA County we have the Office of Grant Affairs. It’s a great agency that pulls from different parts of LA County government to provide what immigrants need to thrive in our community. When you have a. Third of your community being immigrants, you can’t just say, we’re not going to pay attention to them, right?

[00:23:27] You need nonprofits like, TCDC, but also like, day laborers, uh, Lon, the National Day Laborers Association. You need unions that provide people a upwardly mobile and protected workplace. You need, um, churches. You need synagogues, you need, mosques, all of who provide, especially in the thing strings, no strings attached.

[00:23:54] No expectation of what that person will give back support to their community, especially culturally. Community needs,embassies are great resources because of course they know who their people are. Everybody has a role in this. everyone can can help if for no other reason than demanding that workers are paid fairly.

[00:24:19] So if you see, if you go into a place and the workers don’t seem to be being treated fairly, turn around and walk out.

[00:24:26] Sandie Morgan: vote with your feet.

[00:24:28] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Absolutely. I found out the restaurant that we used to go to for brunch most Sundays with our kids, I found out they had had a huge labor issue. They had threatened their workers. They, they were fined a half a million dollars.

[00:24:42] they did all these cheating. We haven’t gone back. It’s very easy. I still don’t have a good waffle place, but it’s still very easy.

[00:24:50] Sandie Morgan: Oh, that’s, that’s good.

[00:24:52] That’s good. So when I’m out in the community and I want to

[00:24:58] do a better job of, for instance, our faith communities, you mentioned mosques and synagogues and churches. What is the kind of information we can give them? I had this conversation yesterday with someone with some influence in their faith community.

[00:25:18] It’s like, but what do I tell them? I mean, your class is eight weeks long they want like an eight minute version.

[00:25:27] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Right. You know, I think part of it is treatment. If people are being treated well in a business, when you walk in, if the employees are being treated respectfully, if management is standing up for the employees, if you see management coming up and saying it’s your break time, I mean it, it sounds really silly.

[00:25:46] But you know, we have people who work, who report to us working 12, 16, 16 hours and no breaks. Like somebody noticed that. Okay. So that’s part of it. Just we know what kindness versus niceness looks like. Nice is what they show to the customer. Kindness is what they show to their employees, right?

[00:26:06] So kindness.so there’s that. one of the issues I’m facing is I’m, I’m heading two task forces, around the fires. One, the, I call them the Rebuild LA task forces.

[00:26:17] One of them is for building fraud. But the other one is for labor exploitation because we know that laborers in disaster areas are, there’s up to a 70% chance that they will be, exploited for their work and a 30% chance that they will be, uh, that there’s trafficking involved. Okay? So that’s huge. If you are getting a contract done on your house and somebody comes in with a much lower bid than everybody else, you gotta ask yourself why?

[00:26:46] Because. The wood is gonna be the same for everybody. the nails are gonna be the same for everybody. What is the variable? The variable’s gonna be the workers, and so you can ask them, can I see your workman’s comp certificate? Can you know? How do you pay your people? You know what? What is the pay rate you give your workers or your subcontractors, or what do you require from them?

[00:27:10] We may pay more. Upfront, but that’s where we get back to the moral thing. We know that our houses aren’t built on the back of somebody who has been mistreated.

[00:27:21] Sandie Morgan: That is a great. Way to approach this understanding that it’s actually does come back on us as consumers to ask those questions. We do have responsibility in the story to be wise stewards of of our resources. I often go back to when I first started working in this space and someone explained to me the reason why they were buying a product that I proved to them was being produced by slave labor.

[00:27:58] I. In another country and they said to me, well, we have a very small budget and I’m trying to practice good stewardship. And my response was, is it good stewardship if we save money, buta parent in really dire circumstances, can’t afford to buy the books for his son to go to school or the shoes for his daughter to walk the mile to school. It’s better stewardship to invest in people rather than things. So I

[00:28:38] Ryann Gerber Jorban: that.

[00:28:39] Sandie Morgan: Um, if we could go on and on and we will have another conversation. I am sure. I love being part of the labor trafficking subcommittee. I often feel like I have nothing to contribute because I’m not law enforcement, I’m not an attorney.

[00:28:56] And yet at the same time, what you are talking about in these closing moments of today’s episode. Is how important a community is around people and we can all do something there.

[00:29:12] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Absolutely. And I, I, I have to disagree with your general premise that you do not add. Um, you are bringing in. Students who think that they want one thing and are learning that what they are experiencing in the world is very different from what other kids their ages are experiencing. And I, I suspect that if I know you, you do it very subtly.

[00:29:35] You don’t hit ’em over the head with it, you just let them see. What the realities are. And I, I, I’m guessing that your students at the beginning and at the end have very different viewpoints of what they are experiencing. And it’s so important, especially when we’re talking about justice programs. When we talk about criminal justice, we tend to focus on the criminal, and not the justice.

[00:29:59] And the justice isn’t just for the criminal. In fact, it shouldn’t be. It should be for the entire community. We should find just. Outcomes for those who are involved, whether they are the criminal ’cause. I am a big believer in the Constitution and, and all of the, and them having their full rights and again, respect even for what they have done wrong, but also justice for those who have been caught in this and have no choice.

[00:30:27] whether it’s through, forced criminality or being a victim of,you know, a criminal, we need to make sure that we recognize that there’s two sides to that phrase, and I think you do an excellent job of showing both sides of that, that the criminal needs to have their justice, but also the victim does as well.

[00:30:50] And we can do both of those very easily in our system.

[00:30:53] Sandie Morgan: And we can do it together. Thank you so much, Ryann, for being on our podcast today. Oh.

[00:30:59] Ryann Gerber Jorban: Oh, I loved it. Thank you for having me.

[00:31:02] Thank you so much, Ryann, for sharing your insights and expertise with us. Listeners, if you’re interested in hearing more from Ryann, including her impactful presentation at Ensure Justice, we included the YouTube link in the show [email protected].

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[00:31:47] Better protect our communities. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to stay up to date. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back in two weeks.