Line 3 workers caught in sting

Pine Knot News

The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's human trafficking investigators task force announced on Feb. 19 that seven people were charged following arrests during a human trafficking operation in Itasca County. Two of the men charged were working on the Line 3 project with a subcontractor, Enbridge said.

Investigators with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension led the three-day operation in partnership with the Tribes United Against Sex Trafficking task force and the Itasca County Sheriff's Office. The operation ran Feb. 17-19.

During the operation, suspects chatted with undercover agents and investigators on several sex advertisement websites. Investigators arrested the suspects as they arrived at an arranged meeting place for a commercial sex crime. All were booked into the Itasca or Pennington county jails.

Of the Line 3 workers, who have since been fired by their contractor, Matthew Ty Hall, 32, of Mount Pleasant, Texas, was charged with solicitation of a person believed to be a minor and Michael Kelly West, 53, of Rolla, Missouri, was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit and solicitation to engage in prostitution.

The other five men were from northern Minnesota and face similar charges.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approved Line 3's permits with conditions that included developing a human trafficking prevention plan. Enbridge said all workers go through training.

Jobs dearth

Enbridge is under scrutiny for where its employees are coming from. It promised Line 3 would create about 8,600 jobs with 6,500 of them local over a two-year period, or 75 percent. It said it would create 4,200 union construction jobs with half of them filled from local union halls.

According to Enbridge's jobs report in the last quarter of 2020, as reported to the utilities commission, only 33 percent of the 4,632 workers employed on the project were from Minnesota and they worked only 28 percent of total hours.