A farmworker covers his face as he works at a flower farm in Santa Paula, Calif. | Marcio Jose Sanchez, File/ AP Photo
04/14/2022 05:30 PM EDT
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia described it as “modern-day slavery.”
A human smuggling ring allegedly trafficked over 200 workers from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to provide labor on south Georgia onion farms, according to a federal indictment. They obtained agricultural worker visas for their victims and then forced them to perform physically demanding labor for little or no pay and live in squalid conditions. Members of the ring sold or traded some workers among themselves and sexually assaulted some.
Some died as a result of the workplace conditions, the indictment alleges.
It wasn’t until one worker reported the abuses in 2016 that the federal government caught on, launching a five-year, multi-agency investigation dubbed Operation Blooming Onion. Now, 24 defendants — who were operating and receiving visas until 2021 amid the federal investigation — are awaiting plea and court proceedings. Three defendants in related cases have been sentenced to federal prison.
The blockbuster nature of the abuses uncovered in Georgia, and the level of impunity with which the violators operated for so long, have drawn renewed attention to the flaws in the federal agricultural visa program, even as demand for farmworkers has intensified amid a historically tight labor market. And it is testing...
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