“These defendants exploited their victims’ vulnerabilities and immigration status, promising them access to the American dream but then turning around and confiscating their passports and threatening arrest and deportation if they did not endlessly toil away for their profit,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“Using coercive, deceptive and fraudulent practices to exploit individuals’ immigration status to engage in a pattern of forced labor for financial gain is appalling,” said U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg for the Middle District of Florida. “Thanks to the diligent work by our human trafficking task force partners, this criminal enterprise was stopped in its tracks.”
Last week’s announcement marks the latest of more than a dozen forced labor prosecutions in which the CIW Anti-Slavery Program helped federal agencies uncover and bring the criminal operation to justice…
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell for the Middle District of Florida sentenced Christina Gamez to 37 months in prison; Efrain Cabrera Rodas, a citizen of Mexico, to 41 months in prison; and Guadalupe Mendes Mendoza, to eight months of home detention. The three defendants were supervisors at Los Villatoros Harvesting LLC (LVH), a labor contracting company that recruited and managed workers from Mexico to harvest produce on U.S. farms through the H-2A “guestworker” visa program. In reality, LVH was a criminal organization designed to systematically exploit vulnerable workers, charging exorbitant recruitment fees in Mexico and holding workers in debt bondage here in the US, confiscating workers’ passports and threatening to deport any worker who spoke out while systematically stealing their wages and lying to authorities. The owner of LVH, Bladimir Moreno, has also plead guilty in federal court to charges of conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and conspiracy to commit forced labor. He will be sentenced on December, 28, 2022.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers assisted the Department of Justice with the case, uncovering and reporting the operation to federal agents after two workers escaped from their employers’ control by hiding in the trunk of a car and called the CIW for help.
Here is an excerpt from the US Justice Department's press release announcing last week’s sentencing:
… According to court documents, the defendants each conspired to operate and manage Los Villatoros Harvesting LLC (LVH) – a farm labor contracting company that brought large numbers of temporary, seasonal Mexican workers into the United States on H-2A agricultural visas – as a criminal enterprise engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity. The enterprise’s racketeering activity included subjecting LVH’s H-2A workers to forced labor, harboring many of LVH’s H-2A workers for financial gain, committing fraud in foreign labor contracting and submitting fraudulent visa related documents to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor....
