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Slavery: Collier county’s connection
Modern-day slavery reaches from Immokalee farm fields to prostitution in Golden Gate

By Janine Zeitlin

Sunday, January 29, 2006

With only two bags of chips to sustain them for four days, more than a dozen immigrants were smuggled into Arizona and later forced to work in Immokalee tomato fields.

A man used the threat of witchcraft to pluck a girl from her Guatemalan village. He later kept her in his clutches in Immokalee.

Mexican females were shuttled through Southwest Florida to have sex with as many as 30 men a night.

Detectives are still investigating a case in which Mexican females — one 13, the other 23 — sought help from Immokalee law enforcers in August after they said they were promised work picking berries and instead told they’d be prostitutes.

Experts blame the insidious spread of human trafficking in Collier County on what draws most people to this corner of Florida.

There’s money — wealthy residents can snip expenses with indentured servitude.

There’s sun — unscrupulous hotel, spa or restaurant owners leaning on thriving tourism can cut corners with forced labor.

There’s a bevy of unskilled jobs — such work attracts immigrants who are easier to exploit. Many don’t know their rights or may fear calling authorities if they’re here illegally.

Such cases put Collier on the map for trafficking long before most agencies had heard of the crime.

The Cuello case

Abel Cuello Jr. was an Immokalee farm labor boss whose victims said he and his accomplices trapped 24 workers in a single trailer with physical and psychological threats and forced them to work in 1999.

Guilty: One felony count of conspiracy to violate U.S. laws barring involuntary servitude, harboring illegal aliens and failing to ensure migrant safety during transportation; sentenced to 33 months in prison and 24 months of supervised release.

Status: Released from prison in February 2002. Until recently, worked as a crew leader for Ag-Mart/Santa Sweets in Immokalee.

The smuggler, known as “El Chacal,â€