“This is not the first federal prosecution for forced labor that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has uncovered and helped investigate, but the thirteenth,” CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez told The Packer.

“The truth is, modern-day slavery remains a systemic problem in agriculture, and that problem is only going to continue to grow with the expansion of the H-2A program. But the good news is, it is not a problem without a solution.”

As previously reported on this site, nearly six years ago, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers uncovered yet another sprawling forced labor ring, this time based out of Florida and operating as well in Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia, and North Carolina.  The CIW brought the operation to the attention of federal authorities, and assisted the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in fact finding and investigation in the intervening years. Now, the DOJ has announced that the farm bosses who forced untold scores of farmworkers into forced labor are going to prison – with ringleader Bladimir Moreno sentenced to the better part of a decade – and The Packer, the agricultural industry’s leading trade publication, ran a story on the case’s details.

The Packer’s article on Moreno’s sentencing features quotations from the CIW’s own Lucas Benitez, who highlights the need for a systemic response to the festering problem of forced labor in the US, and on how the CIW’s Fair Food Program could have prevented Moreno’s criminal forced labor conspiracy before it was ever conceived.

Click here to read the full article, or read an excerpt below:

Labor contractor sentenced for forced labor conspiracy of H-2A workers

By KRISTIN LEIGH LORE January 3, 2023

Bladimir Moreno, owner of farm labor contracting business Los Villatoros Harvesting LLC, has been sentenced for leading a federal racketeering and forced labor conspiracy that targeted Mexican H-2A agricultural workers in the U.S. between 2015 and 2017, the Department of Justice recently announced.

On Dec. 29, U.S. District Court Judge Charlene Edward Honeywell of the Middle District of Florida sentenced Moreno to 118 months in prison along with three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay over $175,000 in restitution to the victims.

According to court documents, Moreno owned, operated and managed LVH — a farm labor contracting company that brought large numbers of temporary, seasonal Mexican workers into the U.S. on H-2A agricultural visas — as a criminal enterprise. According to the Justice Department, Moreno compelled victims to work in Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina, and he also engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity that included visa fraud and fraud in foreign labor contracting.

“Human trafficking, including forced labor campaigns that exploit vulnerable workers, is unlawful, immoral and inhumane,” the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a news release. “This defendant abused his power as a business owner to capitalize on the victims’ vulnerabilities and immigration status, luring those seeking a better quality of life with false promises of lawful work paying a fair wage.”

Moreno made false statements in applications to federal agencies for LVH to be granted temporary, H-2A agricultural workers, according to the release. Moreno and his co-conspirators also made false promises to Mexican farm workers themselves to encourage them to work for LVH and then later charged these workers inflated sums to come into the U.S. on H-2A visas, according to the Justice Department.

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

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