Opening arguments begin today in a federal lawsuit brought by the SPLC on behalf of guest workers from India who were lured to a Mississippi shipyard by false promises of permanent U.S. residency only to find themselves forced into servitude and living under guard in an overcrowded, unsanitary labor camp. The New Orleans trial is part of a seven-year legal battle against Signal International, a marine services company that operates in Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. The trial, to be held before a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, is the first in a series of suits spearheaded by the SPLC that together comprise one of the largest human trafficking cases in U.S. history.