CORRECTED: Our earlier email omitted the caption below!

ABOVE: A Naples Daily News editorial cartoon from the 1990s captured the shock and disbelief of the Southwest Florida community at the exposure of modern-day slavery rings operating out of Immokalee at the time.  Today, more than two decades later,  forced labor has been effectively eliminated on Fair Food Program farms, but the CIW continues to uncover forced labor rings on farms outside the FFP’s protections, where the expansion of the H-2A guestworker program has provided exploitive farm bosses additional power over their employees and renewed opportunity to force workers to labor against their will in recent years.

Associated Press (9/22/21): Farm bosses employing H-2A guestworkers harvesting in Florida and 3 other states "face charges of conspiracy under the RICO Act, conspiracy to commit forced labor, forced labor and conspiracy to obstruct proceedings before departments";

 

Newest indictments underscore extreme vulnerability of temporary agricultural workers as H-2A program expands rapidly on farms across the country;

 

Lack of adequate oversight makes more cases of modern-day slavery inevitable without expansion of enforceable protections like those of the Fair Food Program.

 

 

Last week, federal authorities announced the indictment of three people -- Bladimir Moreno, Christina Gamez, and Guadalupe Mendes Mendoza -- by a grand jury in Tampa for their roles "in a multi-state conspiracy involving the forced labor of Mexican agricultural immigrants."  The news made headlines across the country.  Here are the details, from an ABC News report:

 

Feds: 3 charged in Mexican migrant worker conspiracyThree people have been indicted in a multi-state conspiracy involving the forced labor of Mexican agricultural immigrants

 

 

 By The Associated Press

 September 22, 2021, 8:35 PM

 

 

TAMPA, Fla. -- Three people have been indicted in a multi-state conspiracy involving the forced labor of Mexican agricultural immigrants, federal authorities announced Wednesday.

 

A federal grand jury in Tampa formally charged Bladimir Moreno, Christina Gamez and Guadalupe Mendes Mendoza under a six-count indictment last week...

 

... According to the indictment, Moreno, Gamez and Mendes Mendoza ran a labor contracting company for migrant workers with temporary agricultural visas from 2015 through 2017. Los Villatoros Harvesting subjected multiple Mexican agricultural workers employed in Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina to forced labor, investigators said. The company also harbored migrant workers in the U.S. after their H-2A visas had expired for financial gain and committed visa fraud and fraud in foreign labor contracting, officials said.

 

Moreno and Gamez operated Los Villatoros Harvesting as a criminal scheme, prosecutors said. They're accused of forcing workers to complete hundreds of hours of physically demanding agricultural labor through coercive means, such as imposing debts, confiscating passports, poor living conditions, verbal abuse and isolation, as well as threatening workers with arrest, deportation and physical harm... (read more) 

 

We will continue to follow this case as it makes its way through the legal system.  [Though Los Villatoros Harvesting did not operate on Fair Food Program farms, the CIW's Anti-Slavery Program, which investigates forced labor operations on non-FFP farms and has assisted federal authorities in multiple prosecutions since the early 1990's, was involved in uncovering the Villatoros Harvesting operation in Florida.]

 

 

Guestworkers: A history of exploitation and abuse

 

The H-2A, or "guestworker," program is a federal program of temporary agricultural labor visas designed to address purported farm labor shortages by allowing agricultural employers to contract with foreign workers on a short-term basis.  Its earliest incarnation, known as the Bracero Program, was launched in 1942 in response to labor shortages caused by the Second World War.  The program was fraught with abuse, from racial discrimination to systemic wage theft, that resulted in widespread strikes, Congressional inquiries, and the termination of the program in 1964.  For years, the term Bracero was synonymous with farm labor exploitation.

 

Over on the CIW site today, we unpack the troubling history of the H-2A program, the power dynamics that continue to drive exploitation of guestworkers, and the real solution for ethical food retailers who want to protect human rights in their own supply chains: the Fair Food Program. 

 

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States

If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe.