Latino Media Gulf Coast president Grace McCaffery says ST Engineering has laid off about 45 employees from Chili.

"They have kind of organized together because they cannot get answers from the company," McCaffery said. "They tell me that the HR director has deferred them to an attorney and neither one of them returns their phone calls and trying to get answers about the situation. They were told they were being laid off for an indefinite amount of time, but they were going to get paid for two weeks. After about the third week, they started getting phone calls that they were being let go."

She said the workers expected long-term employment and sold their homes and jobs. "Most of them actually had a military career in their country, and they took the retirement. They went into retirement to accept this job, expecting it to be long-term because that was inferred to them when they were being recruited. And now just after a year, they're being told they've got to go back."