USALI affiliated scholar Aaron Halegua was quoted in a recent Axios article about the conditions of Chinese laborers working on Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects. The article, “Report: Chinese workers overseas trapped in state-backed projects,” was based on a recent research report by China Labor Watch, a U.S.-based nonprofit. China Labor Watch found that overseas Chinese laborers have been subjected to deceptive job ads, passport retention, withheld wages, physical violence, and lack of contracts. Halegua said labor outsourcing has been a major factor in abuse:

"These firms should not be permitted to simply outsource the exploitation of the workforce and then plead ignorance," Aaron Halegua, a New York-based lawyer and an expert on labor rights and human trafficking, told Axios.

Halegua and Jerome A. Cohen, founding director emeritus of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute, published a Washington Post op-ed on this topic in April 2019 titled “The forgotten victims of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.”