Through her work with the Georgia Legal Services Program, Solimar Mercado-Spencer is providing free legal representation to victims of an alleged “modern-day slavery” operation on South Georgia farms. As news spread of the federal investigation that uncovered the abuses — which authorities say included at least two instances of workers being forced to dig for onions with their bare hands, under the threat of gun violence — Mercado-Spencer says she heard different versions of the same question: “Should I stop buying Georgia onions?”
A boycott of crops grown by exploited migrant labor would be difficult to put in practice, in large part because it is not clear which farms were the scene of crimes described in the explosive Nov. 22 indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia.
Most of those charged were farm labor contractors or recruiters — middlemen-type figures who found workers in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras and brought them to Georgia under the H-2A program, a temporary visa for seasonal agricultural labor. Many farmers who needed the workers got them through the contractors, making it difficult to prove if farmers are legally liable for the abuses investigators found.
Out of 24 defendants with alleged ties to the “forced labor trafficking ring” of farmworkers, just two are explicitly identified as business owners: Charles King, the owner of Kings Berry Farms and Stanley McGauley, the owner of Hilltop Packing. Both are residents...
By Dean Aubrey Caratiquet As part of an intensified campaign against the spread of falsehoods that continue to undermine the integrity of the government and pose a threat to national security, PCO...