Austin News

A hearing date has not yet been set in the Texas Attorney General’s Office accusations that an Austin private school's founder intentionally withheld information and records in a human trafficking investigation.

The status of the case filed by the attorney general against Austin Eco Bilingual School Founder Adriana Rodriguez in Travis County District Court earlier this month was listed as "pending," according to online access of court records this past weekend.

The district court judge to whom the case is, or will be, assigned was not listed in the online search.

The case was filed May 5 by Assistant Attorney General John Ramsey, asking the district court to compel Rodriguez to cooperate in a civil investigation into alleged labor trafficking in the private school's two locations in north and south Austin.

Among other things, the attorney general's office wants Rodriguez and the school to provide a list of all past and present employees and documents that allegedly have been withheld.

The attorney general's office sent its civil investigative demand to Austin Eco Bilingual School in February of last year and its human trafficking investigation apparently began sometime before that date.

Criminal charges are not mentioned in the attorney general's 14-page filing, which accuses Rodriguez of "labor trafficking" employees in violation of state law.

School employees reported that Rodriguez threatened "them with arrest or deportation in order to force them to continue working at the school," the filing alleged.

Rodriguez also habitually recruited teachers "with uncertain immigration status, no legal status, or status that binds them to Austin Eco Bilingual School for legal residency," the filing said. Rodriguez then used those statuses to threaten teachers who stepped out of line "to have them deported, arrested and/or separated from their children," the filing said.

Shortly after the case was filed, one of the attorneys representing Rodriguez and the school referred to the allegations as "silly" during an interview for a KXAN news report.

“This is not more of a human trafficking organization than my law firm is,” Austin attorney Randy Leavitt told KXAN.