Wouldn’t it be something if the anti-US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agitators who disrupt illegal alien roundups paused to think about the abjectly cruel and grossly exploitative shadow underworld they are upholding by their actions? As the street posturing continues to garner sympathetic big-box media attention, another case of massive labor abuse involving vulnerable “migrant” workers has quietly reared its sinister head.
“A federal grand jury returned a 35-count indictment, unsealed [on Feb. 20], charging three Mexican citizens for trafficking Mexican farmworkers into forced labor and harboring them in the United States after their visas expired for the defendants’ financial gain,” the Justice Department (DOJ) announced late last month. The criminal ring involved is extensive, impacting farms in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.
As usual, the case centers on gross misuse of the system allowing foreign workers into the United States.
‘Force Them to Labor in Inhumane Conditions’
“Three individuals have been indicted for exploiting the H-2A visa program to lure vulnerable workers from Mexico to the United States with promises of legitimate employment, only to then confiscate their identity documents and force them to labor in inhumane conditions,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division revealed.
The alleged abuses once again bring to the fore ugly accusations of slave labor in modern America that have tragically become a norm over the first quarter of the 21st century.
“Martha Zeferino Jose, 42, a permanent resident of the United States and citizen of Mexico, owned and operated Las Princesas Corporation (Las Princesas), a farm labor contracting company based in Washington, North Carolina[,] that recruited workers from Mexico to come to the United States on temporary H-2A agricultural visas,” the DOJ detailed.
Her partner in the venture was Jose Rodriquez Munoz, “a citizen of Mexico illegally residing in the United States,” along with her son, Jeremy Zeferino Jose.
The department outlined what it stated was the fate that awaited these Mexican nationals:
“Recruiters working for Las Princesas allegedly charged the workers significant fees for the opportunity to come to the United States, saddling them with debt before they even arrived. “Once the workers were in the country, the defendants allegedly confiscated their passports, visas, and identification documents to prevent them from leaving. The workers were then allegedly compelled to perform physically demanding labor at farms and plant nurseries across three states under degrading conditions. “According to the indictment, the defendants made the workers labor for extensive hours without adequate breaks or access to water; housed them in crowded, unsanitary residences that lacked heat, air conditioning, hot water and bedding; failed to pay required wages; withheld food; and denied medical care.”
One can’t help wondering how much of a chuckle the profitable operators involved in this disreputable employment system enjoy as they watch fawning television news coverage of angry leftists harassing ICE agents working to dismantle the illegal immigration colossus that allows them to tap into this exploited cheap labor pool.
