More than 100 migrant farm workers in the southeast U.S. were freed from the \u201cshackles of modern-day slavery\u201d when federal agents broke up a transnational crime ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two-dozen people, including illegal aliens, were indicted<\/a> last month on 54 counts of international forced labor trafficking, mail fraud, money laundering and other charges. The indictments, announced in Georgia, charged that H-2A agricultural visas were fraudulently used to smuggle foreign nationals from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras into the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Agents heading up \u201cOperation\nBlooming Onion\u201d (OBO) said workers in the field were forced to pay for\ntransportation, food and housing while their identification documents were\nwithheld. Laborers \u201cperformed physically demanding work for little or no pay \u2026\nhous[ed]in crowded, unsanitary and degrading living conditions, and\nthreaten[ed]with deportation and violence.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cExploitation of the workers\nincluded being required to dig onions with their bare hands, paid 20 cents for\neach bucket harvested, and threatened with guns and violence to keep them in\nline,\u201d officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conspirators alleged to have\nreaped more than $200 million from the scheme were also accused of raping,\nkidnapping and attempting to kill some workers or their families. At least two\nlaborers died while working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The $200 million haul is intriguing, says David North<\/a> of the Center for Immigration Studies, noting, \u201c[It] was not taken from corporations or banks. It was extracted a few dollars at a time from wages not paid to farm workers and from other moneys extorted from those workers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That suggests OBO may be understating the number of workers abused in this scheme. \u201cTo get that much from farm workers there would have to be a lot of them,\u201d North figures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever the number, the Biden administration deserves credit for bringing home this multi-agency investigation that began in 2018. Likewise, it\u2019s encouraging that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has backed off a misguided plan<\/a> to halt collection of wage data necessary to establish pay rates for H-2A workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For all Donald Trump\u2019s jawboning\nabout immigration, his USDA under political appointees like former Secretary\nSonny Perdue were hostile to positive enforcement changes on agricultural guest\nworkers, says Preston Huennekens, FAIR\u2019s government relations manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n