Georgia gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson wants voters to see him as the kind of Republican who will help Donald Trump crack down on immigration.
His campaign ads are blunt. He promises to get tough on immigrants who break the law and has made immigration one of the defining issues of his campaign.
But there is an uncomfortable complication: a healthcare company owned by Jackson has been accused of trafficking immigrant workers.
Avant Healthcare Professionals, part of Jackson’s healthcare business empire, recruits nurses from overseas and brings them to the United States to work in hospitals.
A lawsuit filed by foreign-born nurses accused the company of luring immigrant workers to America with promises of opportunity, only to put them into restrictive contracts, pay them less than nurses employed directly by hospitals and threaten them with massive financial penalties when they tried to leave.
The nurses’ attorneys went further, alleging that Avant’s practices violated federal laws prohibiting human trafficking and forced labor.
The plaintiffs described Avant’s employment system as “essentially indentured servitude.”
On June 22 — just days after Jackson became the Republican nominee for governor, Avant agreed to a settlement that would provide more than 5,000 current and former immigrant workers with a share of a $3 million payout while waiving certain unpaid fees. A judge approved the settlement in July.
The settlement did not include an admission of wrongdoing, and Avant emphasized that no court found its business practices unlawful.
But politically, the timing and the allegations are difficult to ignore.
Jackson is running as an immigration hardliner while a company he owns has faced a lawsuit alleging that immigrant workers were subjected to contracts and practices so coercive that they amounted to trafficking.
That contradiction deserves considerably more attention than it has received in Georgia’s governor’s race.
Jackson, 72, entered the governor’s race in February and quickly established himself as one of the state’s most aggressive voices on immigration.
He spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money during the Republican primary, using provocative advertising to separate himself from the pack.
In one of his campaign ads, Jackson stares directly into the camera and promises that immigrants who break the law under his watch will be “deported or departed.”
In another, he says: “I don’t care if you’re a Muslim or a Mongolian. You don’t have the right to force your culture on our country.”
His campaign says his target is illegal immigration, not legal immigrants.
Campaign spokesman Garrison Douglas said Jackson’s focus is on “criminal illegal immigration and following the law.”
He also defended Avant’s workers, emphasizing that the nurses recruited by the company come to the United States legally, wait years for their opportunity, learn English, pay taxes and work in a profession facing a serious shortage.
Douglas said Avant settled the lawsuit to avoid the cost of continued litigation and focus on filling critical nursing vacancies.
But when asked whether Jackson supports additional visas for legal foreign workers, his campaign did not answer.
That’s an important omission because legal immigration isn’t some peripheral issue for Jackson’s business.
It’s part of the business.
Jackson is the founder of Jackson Healthcare, a massive healthcare staffing operation that includes roughly 20 companies involved in recruiting and placing medical workers.
The business supplies hospitals and clinics with nurses, physicians, administrators and other workers.
Jackson’s political biography makes his business success central to his appeal. His campaign describes his rise from Georgia’s foster care system to leading a roughly $3 billion healthcare conglomerate operating across all 50 states.
Avant Healthcare Professionals became part of that business in 2018, when Jackson Healthcare acquired the company and described it as a pioneer in the international recruitment and placement of healthcare professionals.
Florida business records list Rick Jackson as Avant’s manager.
The company had already faced federal scrutiny in 2013, when the Justice Department accused it of discriminating against American workers through job postings that favored foreign workers.
Avant settled that case, agreed to change its hiring practices and paid a $27,750 fine.
But the allegations that emerged later were far more serious.
Nurses say they were trapped
Latoya Lewis came to the United States from Jamaica in 2021. Lucinda Byron, who is originally from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, began working at a South Dakota hospital in 2022.
Both signed multi-year contracts with Avant.
According to their 2023 lawsuit, the women eventually found themselves in an arrangement they considered extremely restrictive.
They alleged they were paid substantially less than nurses employed directly by hospitals, had limited time off and had little opportunity for advancement.
Then they tried to leave.
That’s when the allegations became particularly explosive.
According to the complaint, Avant threatened workers with fees designed to recover the company’s costs for recruiting them and bringing them to the United States.
The lawsuit also alleged that staff threatened to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement and gave workers the false impression that leaving Avant could jeopardize their immigration status.
Byron was allegedly told she owed Avant $41,832 after leaving and had only 30 days to pay it.
The nurses’ lawyers argued that the contracts and the company’s efforts to enforce them violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Avant denied the allegations.
The company argued that recruiting foreign nurses involves substantial costs and that the contracts were legitimate agreements. Avant also argued that nurses were free to leave — and that the fact some did leave undermined the claim that they had been subjected to forced labor.
A federal judge nevertheless declined to dismiss the trafficking claims.
The case eventually moved to state court in Florida and became a class-action lawsuit.
More than 5,000 workers were covered by the settlement
In November, the parties reached a preliminary settlement after identifying **5,219 current and former Avant healthcare workers** who qualified for the class.
The agreement established a $3 million payout.
A judge approved the settlement in July.
Avant has stressed that the settlement isn’t an admission of wrongdoing and that most workers receiving money will get approximately $500 or less. Others will have fees waived without receiving additional money.
But the allegations were serious enough to survive an attempt to have the trafficking claims dismissed, and serious enough that thousands of workers ultimately became part of a settlement.
And that makes Jackson’s political rhetoric about immigration worth examining much more closely.
Jackson’s company needs immigrants
Here’s where the political contradiction becomes especially difficult to miss.
Jackson’s campaign has built its identity around tightening immigration.
His company, meanwhile, has built part of its business around bringing immigrants into the United States.
And Avant has sometimes fought the Trump administration precisely because of policies that make it harder to bring foreign workers into America.
In 2020, Avant sued the Trump administration over visa delays affecting nurses it was attempting to recruit from the Philippines. The company eventually withdrew the case after the visas were approved.
Earlier this year, Avant executives also criticized the impact of Trump’s new visa policies and expressed support for a lawsuit challenging a proposed $100,000 H-1B visa fee.
In a March video, Avant executive Lesley Hamilton said the fee would be an enormous financial burden if the company attempted to recruit the same volume of nurses it had brought in the previous year.
Jackson’s campaign was asked how he could effectively partner with Trump on immigration while his own company has opposed some of the administration’s immigration policies.
The campaign did not respond.
The nursing shortage argument
Avant says there’s a simple reason it recruits foreign nurses: America needs them.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the United States will have roughly 190,000 openings for registered nurses every year over the next decade.
Avant argues that legal immigration is an important tool for filling those positions and addressing the country’s nursing shortage.
But labor advocates argue that hospitals have a financial incentive to use staffing companies that recruit foreign workers.
They said those workers are often paid less than nurses hired directly by hospitals, meaning American nurses can end up competing against cheaper foreign labor.
“It brings down wages for everybody,” they said.
CNN asked Jackson’s campaign whether his company helped American hospitals fill positions with foreign workers that might otherwise go to American nurses at higher wages.
The campaign didn’t respond.
And that’s the question sitting at the center of Jackson’s campaign:
If immigrant workers are a threat when they cross America’s borders illegally, what are they when a company owned by a Republican candidate actively recruits them to fill American jobs?
Jackson has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign.
But his own healthcare business has spent years navigating — and profiting from — the legal immigration system.
Now that business has also been accused of trafficking immigrant workers, with the allegations surviving an effort to dismiss them and culminating in a $3 million settlement involving more than 5,000 workers.
Jackson may want Georgia voters to see him as the politician who will draw a harder line on immigration.
But before they do, they might reasonably ask what that line looks like inside his own business.
