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Deported without crucial documents and detained before they are paid is how hundreds of migrant workers would describe their experience in the UAE.

According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the UAE acknowledged in early September that it had detained and deported over 400 people for alleged human trafficking, assault, and extortion. 

After being arrested in mass raids on migrant workers in June, Emmanuela Nsobe says she "lost everything." Two months later Nsobe was deported.

Group deportations are frequent in the UAE, and they are commonly paired with migrants being sent home without paychecks they are owed.

Many migrant workers such as Nsobe, who has contacted her former boss for her $245 backpay, cannot start over without their money.

Requests for comment were denied by Nsobe's boss as well as other firms where deportees were employed.

Like the other workers held in June, Nsobe was deported and denied the opportunity to recover her personal belongings, including her ATM card, her degrees, and professional certificates.

A Nigerian 31-year old, Daniel Ojo, claims he was owed $1,225 by his employer before he was deported and his employer stopped responding.

Victorine Edem, a Cameroonian certified nurse, claims her Abu Dhabi employer owes her $1,633.63.

Edem is 7 months pregnant and hopes to leave the UAE after she delivers, hoping she will find her human rights respected elsewhere.

The working class

According to the UN, out of the 10 million inhabitants of the UAE, more than 80% are made up of migrants who send their wages back home. 

Wage theft allegations from migrants are not uncommon. The Business and Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC) disclosed that 67% of its cases from the UAE involve workers being deprived of their wages.  

According to Saeed Alhebsi, director of the human rights section at the UAE Foreign Affairs Ministry, any company in the UAE is required by law to pay employees regardless of criminal convictions or deportation.

Workers, he added, could file a complaint using a government website, mobile app, or toll-free line – or at the UAE's Labour Dispute Center, where they could also talk with a legal counsel.

Not being able to afford a lawyer, or speak the language of the country also pose a challenge that stops migrants from receiving significant help.

Usually, migrants who do not have financial and legal support from international advocates are usually unsuccessful according to Parvathy Devi, a researcher who has worked on wage theft in the UAE.