Three Mexican citizens have been indicted for “trafficking Mexican farmworkers into forced labor and harboring them in the United States after their visas expired” for financial gain, the Justice Department says.
The indicted individuals exploited the H-2A visa program “to lure vulnerable workers from Mexico to the United States with promises of legitimate employment,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a news release. However, they allegedly confiscated their passports, visas and identity documents to prevent them from leaving.
Recruiters working for the company run by the defendants allegedly charged the workers “significant fees” to come to the U.S., “saddling them with debt before they even arrived,” the DOJ release said.
The events allegedly took place between August 2021 and July 2022 on farms in Virginia, Florida and North Carolina.
