Thread: FL-Farm bosses in Immokalee plead guilty in slavery scheme

IMMOKALEE
Farm bosses in Immokalee plead guilty in slavery scheme
Posted on Thu, Sep. 04, 2008reprint print email

BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com
Five farm bosses have pleaded guilty to a scheme to enslave Mexican and Guatemalan nationals as agricultural workers in southwest Florida, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Cesar Navarrete, Geovanni Navarrete, Villhina Navarrete, Ismael Michael Navarrete and Antonio Zuniga Vargas were convicted of harboring undocumented immigrants for profit and identify theft in the farming community of Immokalee, authorities said.

Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete also pleaded guilty to beating, threatening, restraining and locking workers in trucks to force them to work.

They face up to 35 and 25 years in prison, respectively. The other defendants face 10 to 25 years in prison.

Previously, codefendant Jose Navarrete had pleaded guilty to harboring undocumented foreigners for profit. He faces up to 37 years in prison.

According to prosecutors, the defendants were accused of paying the workers minimal wages and driving them into debt, threatening physical harm if they left before their debts were repaid to the Navarrete family.

''In this case, we are given yet another example of how human trafficking of all kinds victimizes vulnerable human beings,'' said Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.

This case was investigated by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI, assisted by the Collier County Sheriff's Department. Victim assistance was provided by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. It was prosecuted by the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida.



http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida ... 71209.html

Story in earlied thread at
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-93942-0.html

Yes America is a dangerous country, and more dangerous are the folks that speak your language and take advantage of those who believe coming here illegally will be a wonderful way of taking advantage of the American people to send remittances home better think again.
Even those from all over the world coming here legally, finding a job and overstaying their visitors' visas can find themselves in a similar situation.
In the 1980s my parents and I rescued 15 kids from Finland who thought they were legally coming to work in restaurants and improve their English for the summer, but ended up working in restaurants and sleeping on mattresses strewn with dried vomit in what could be called an enclosed room in a warehouse. And sometimes, the kids had no place to sleep as the mattresses were rented out during the day to bums who had no intention of getting out of bed.