thousands of foreign farmworkers had been illegally charged fees by labor contractors to work in the U.S. Some were forced to pick crops for little to no pay in what prosecutors described as a form of modern-day slavery.
Federal investigators seized a trove of passports that they say had been confiscated from farmworkers by the defendants. Obtained by ProPublicaMany farmers speak only English. So they end up hiring contractors to bring foreign laborers to the U.S. and oversee their work.
That outsourcing can shield farmers from responsibility for — or even awareness of — harm against their workers.
Labor regulators have repeatedly failed to make sure that contractors do what the government requires them to do: keep workers safe and pay them what they’re promised.
ProPublica also reached out to over 30 of America’s largest grocery and fast-food chains to ask why they haven’t joined the Fair Food Program or expanded their limited participation. None of the companies answered questions about the program.
by 2030, there could be a need for up to 500,000 H-2A workers — roughly triple the number requested in 2016, the year that President Donald Trump was first elected.
there’s a bill proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers that would require farmers to stop working with recruiters who charged laborers an illegal fee to obtain an H-2A visa.
‘Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2025’’
https://gray.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/gray.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/lofgre_001_xml.pdf
shall offer family housing to workers with families if such workers are engaged in agricultural employment that is not of a seasonal or temporary nature. The worker may reject such an offer.
Wow so you are not required to provide housing if the labor is seasonal? fascinating.
up to 500 aliens may be issued visas or otherwise provided H–2A nonimmigrant status under paragraph (1) in a fiscal year for range sheep or goat herding.
Some of America’s largest supermarkets (Walmart, Whole Foods) and fast-food chains (McDonald’s, Burger King) participate in the Fair Food Program. The corporations’ participation was originally limited to a select set of crops, such as tomatoes. Some of their commitments since have grown to include more crops. Other big buyers, like Kroger, Publix and Wendy’s, have not participated in the program..... still less than a tenth of the more than 300,000 H-2A workers in the U.S.
Georgia was more reliant on H-2A workers than any other state.
Mendoza said that if she had it in her mind to leave his operation, she’d have to do so without her passport. She wasn’t getting it back.... He was charging some applicants thousands of dollars for the chance to get an H-2A visa...... he’d bring in more and more workers that the farmers didn’t actually need, just to get those up-front fees. He’d even bring her to meetings with King.... Mendoza crammed a couple dozen people — workers and their children — into a trailer. She noticed that a few didn’t have enough money to eat. Sofi believed that the workers were being shorted. She remembered Mendoza occasionally picking up calls in the middle of the night, alerts that people were escaping.... Still, she told him no. It didn’t matter. Month after month, closed up in his house with him, he did what he wanted to her.....I’ll call immigration, she remembered him saying. I’ll have you deported. Only after she signed did he explain what the document was: a marriage license.... Sofi took some of Mendoza’s money and the keys to his car and drove the children to a gas station to get them some food. Mendoza caught wind of it and tracked her there. He took the car and made her and the children walk back. And he beat her for what he saw as her defiance.... She recalled him telling her over the phone that if she didn’t stay with him, he would kill her son. She feared that with all his connections in Mexico, it was possible he could. She arranged with her parents for the child to be hidden far away....
On a small wooden table, objects were arranged in an offering of sorts: fruit, cigarettes, a bottle of tequila, flickering prayer candles. In the middle was a photo, placed upside down, of the woman who’d been kidnapped. She was holding a bouquet of yellow roses and a box of chocolates. Looming over the photo was a statue of La Santa Muerte, known among law enforcement as a saint invoked to protect criminal acts. There was blood — what he later learned was the victim’s blood — smeared on the statue’s scythe
Mendoza was indicted in September 2020 for sex trafficking. It was the first big indictment of what was known as Operation Blooming Onion, which exposed widespread abuses of H-2A workers across Georgia.
His charge was followed by a flurry of others — including forced labor and money laundering — against two dozen other participants in what the federal government described as a sprawling, transnational criminal organization. It was one of the largest H-2A trafficking investigations ever.
Mendoza made more than $25,000 a month by charging workers unlawful fees before he would submit their H-2A applications. They also turned up evidence that he’d inflated the number of workers he needed so he could collect more of those up-front fees and that he’d sold the labor of some of the additional workers to farmers not authorized to participate in the program.
prosecutors alleged that defendants filed petitions seeking more than 71,000 H-2A visas, leading to thousands of applicants getting approved when there was no legitimate job for them. They also estimated that the operation raked in more than $200 million in profits by illegally charging workers thousands of dollars to get a visa and by having them work for other, unauthorized employers, not all of them farms, which violates their H-2A contract. One of those workers died of heat stroke after working on a farm where he wasn’t supposed to be.
“How many times did he rape you?” the prosecutor asked.
“Many,” Sofi said.
“How long were you with him, do you remember?”
“One year.”
“And during that year, did he rape you on a weekly, monthly or daily basis?”
“Whenever he wanted to.”
The prosecutor turned to the day of the kidnapping. It was a day that made Sofi fear she’d never see her son again — or, worse, that she’d see her son killed.
this year has led to arrests of undocumented farmworkers — who account for over 40% of all field laborers — and sparked enough fear to convince others to no longer show up to work. If farmers are squeezed further by the shortage of farmworkers, the H-2A program can fulfill that demand. There’s no limit to how many visas can be issued.
.... she couldn’t stretch her $450-per-week paycheck to cover rent, utilities and car insurance — let alone send any money to Mexico for her older son’s tuition, uniform and shoes. The stress wore her down. She developed facial paralysis, but the nursing home wouldn’t give her time off to address it. Then she slipped and broke her ankle. She couldn’t walk, much less work, until she recovered from surgery. Without health insurance, the bills piled up, roughly $24,000. The one thing that could help her — the more than $16,000 in court-ordered restitution for unpaid H-2A wages — had yet to materialize.
............
extreme stress and fatigue can severely weaken your immune system and trigger vascular spasms. This makes the facial nerve susceptible to viral inflammation—such as the herpes simplex virus—resulting in Bell's palsy
Sofi hasn’t been able to finish her and her son’s applications for green cards. After paying $1,000 for the required medical exams, she couldn’t come up with the $400 to cover vaccines or a reference letter from an employer.
