Threats, violence used to keep immigrant farmworkers in line, indictment says

Federal investigators say they’ve uncovered a new conspiracy to exploit migrant farmworkers in Georgia, further cementing the state’s role as a site of recurring labor violations in agriculture.

In an indictment unsealed on Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia, authorities described a ploy to profit off Mexican farmworkers by fraudulently using a seasonal visa program to bring them to South Georgia — and then relying on intimidation, threats and violence to keep workers from leaving.

Once workers’ short-term visas had expired, conspirators allegedly offered to transport them to other locations within the U.S. in exchange for payment, in violation of immigration law.

The defendants are a group of three labor contractors and two associates who brought and supervised the alleged victims through the H-2A visa program, which allows guest workers to come into the country legally for months at a time to help address labor shortages on U.S. farms.

H-2A employers must cover workers’ travel to the U.S., as well as their housing and their daily transportation to the fields.

Federal prosecutors said defendants charged workers thousands of dollars in illegal fees to come work in the U.S., as well as weekly rent, in some cases.

Once workers arrived in Georgia, defendants allegedly confiscated their identification documents, including passports, “to exert control and undue influence over the workers, and to prevent them from leaving,” the indictment says. Defendants also allegedly directed the H-2A visa holders to work on farms and work sites different from those listed in the paperwork they’d previously submitted to immigration authorities.

The “climate of fear” that met workers in Georgia included defendants making threats of violence and “actually harming workers,” according to the indictment.

H-2A workers were allegedly told that Julio Cervantes, one of the defendants, had large dogs and was authorized by a second defendant, Martha Aquino, to shoot anyone who entered her property for the purpose of removing workers. Both Cervantes and Aquino are identified in the indictment as farm labor contractors.

A third defendant, Juan Felipe Romero-Lopez, allegedly occupied a shed near the front of a property in Alma, Georgia, where workers were housed.

“In the shed with Romero-Lopez were firearms. Romero-Lopez was described as surveilling the property from the shed,” the indictment says. Authorities described Romero-Lopez as an unauthorized immigrant from Mexico.

The wrongdoing alleged by the federal investigators concerns applications for H-2A labor filed by defendants from 2022 to 2026, which together resulted in the arrival of nearly 1,000 migrant farmworkers to Georgia.

“Those who exploit immigrant workers and abuse the H-2A visa program for their own financial gain will be held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Margaret Heap for the Southern District of Georgia. “We will continue to partner with our federal, state and local agencies to protect these workers, safeguard the integrity of the H-2A program and prosecute those who turn a lawful employment program into a vehicle for profit and abuse.”

Defendants were indicted for a combined total of 13 counts, including a count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud, seven counts of visa fraud, four counts of encouraging and inducing illegal entry and one count of illegal alien in possession of a firearm.

“Violence and abuse has once again been exposed in the exploitative H-2A guest worker program. Yet at this very moment, some in Congress want to simultaneously expand the H-2A program while reducing oversight and regulations that keep workers safe,” Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers union, said in a statement. “The H-2A program needs enforcement of basic labor standards, not expansion.”

Court records list the contact information for attorneys representing two of the five defendants: Marco Cervantes and Juan Felipe Romero-Lopez. Neither of the attorneys immediately responded to requests for comment.

One defendant still at large

The H-2A program’s propensity for worker abuse stems from a stark imbalance of power, advocates say: H-2A workers cannot easily leave bad employers without losing their legal status.

According to government data, 84% of U.S. Department of Labor investigations into H-2A employers between 2018 and 2023 uncovered at least one violation.

In recent years, South Georgia made national news when federal investigators uncovered a criminal ring that allegedly subjected H-2A workers to “modern-day slavery,” with migrants being forced to dig for onions with their bare hands under the threat of gun violence.

The AJC has reported on claims that contractors hired by farmers to find H-2A workers are regularly charging illegal recruitment fees, putting workers in debt and making them vulnerable to abuse.

In the indictment unsealed Tuesday, federal investigators wrote that, “at various times,” Aquino and another labor contractor defendant, Evangelina Aquino De Galvan, “maintained notebooks and ledgers listing their H-2A workers by name and, in some cases, noting monetary sums next to those names”

The indictment mentions that two victims were each charged $7,500 in illegal fees. A third victim allegedly paid $4,000 to be able to start her farmworker job in Georgia. Her passport was confiscated, and she was told she could leave anytime — for an additional $2,000 fee, investigators claim.