‘Nearly broke me’: Migrant workers accuse Michigan farm of trafficking, forced labor in suit ⋆ Michigan Advance

Photo by Anna Gustafson

When Feliciano Velasco Rojas and Luis Guzman Rojas left their homes in Mexico and traveled to North Carolina for work in 2017, they did so to support their families and earn enough money to pay for sick relatives' medication.

Instead, they faced a nightmare situation in which they were trafficked from North Carolina to First Pick Farms, a blueberry farm in West Olive, Mich., where they were forced to work seven days a week with no breaks and no time off, according to a federal lawsuit filed June 9 by the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, Farmworker Justice and Farmworker Legal Services.

“It was something very painful; it was to a certain degree mentally painful,” Velasco Rojas said in a statement. “We are accustomed to work, but when we were transported to Michigan we were exhausted mentally and physically.”

He continued, explaining that the plaintiffs' family members, including some of whom were ill, “were also affected” because the men had taken the jobs in North Carolina to “try to earn enough for their medications.”

However, they “were not able to earn enough” for that medicine when they were working in Michigan, Velasco Rojas said.

“Additionally, the conditions, being unable to rest because we had to sleep on the floor, nearly broke me,” he said.

First Pick Farms, which is located just south of Grand Haven in West Michigan, did not respond to a request for comment.

With visas provided to temporary agricultural workers, known as H-2As, Velasco Rojas and Guzman Rojas worked in North Carolina for a few weeks before they were woken up in the middle of the night and forced onto a bus headed for First Pick Farms, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan in Grand Rapids.

Alongside a group of about 30 other migrant workers, Velasco Rojas and Guzman Rojas were told they had no choice but to travel to First Pick Farms – if they complained, their traffickers said, immigration authorities would be called, according to the lawsuit.

After distributing false identification to the workers, Antonio Sanchez, a field supervisor at First Pick Farms and the only employee specifically named in the suit, transported the workers to Michigan, the lawsuit says. There, they were forced to pick blueberries for up to 12 hours every day with no breaks, according to the suit. Those who were trafficked from North Carolina to Michigan were also forced to repay Sanchez for the cost of the false identification and transportation. When they weren't working, the trafficked laborers were made to stay in a house where they slept on the floor with more than 30 other people, the suit says.

In the 12-count complaint accusing First Pick Farms of human trafficking and forced labor, the suit's plaintiffs are requesting a jury trial and that the two workers be awarded damages for “past, present and future medical expenses, wage loss, physical and emotional distress, mental anguish, humiliation and embarrassment.” The groups that filed the lawsuit do not have the authority to bring criminal charges.

“No employee should be made to work under threat of their employer,” said Gonzalo Peralta, a staff attorney for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC), a nonprofit that provides legal services to Michigan's immigrant communities.

“I applaud our plaintiffs for having the courage and bravery to bring this case forward,” continued Peralta, who is a member of MIRC's immigrant worker rights team. “This [labor trafficking] is much more common than people believe it is.”

The groups that filed the lawsuit note that “agricultural workers have historically been exploited, which is why the federal government passed the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act to protect these susceptible groups of workers who travel long distances to pick the fruits and vegetables that form so much of the food supply.”

Despite this federal legislation, migrant agricultural workers are one of the populations most at risk of labor trafficking in the U.S., according to the immigrant rights groups that filed the lawsuit. Traffickers typically use recruit practices that involve threats related to immigration status, deception and illegal fees that trap the workers in debt, the organizations said in a press release.

MIRC noted in the release that it has “repeatedly seen these patterns of labor exploitation and trafficking of agricultural workers in a wide range of settings, from blueberry farms to greenhouses to dairies.”

Even when workers have legal documentation, as Velasco Rojas and Guzman Rojas did, laborers remain vulnerable to being trafficked, said Dorian Slaybod, a staff attorney with Farmworker Legal Services, a Kalamazoo-based nonprofit that provides legal services to migrant and seasonal farmworkers throughout Michigan.

“As we continually see, farmworkers are not safe from exploitation even when they follow all established legal protocol,” Slaybod said. “A lack of oversight allows bad actors to take advantage of workers and encourages employers to ignore civil and human rights violations.”

Peralta said it's difficult to know how many individuals are victims of labor trafficking in Michigan, but he emphasized it's a pervasive problem among the thousands of migrant workers in the state's agricultural landscape. Migrant Legal Aid, a nonprofit based in Grand Rapids, reports there are about 94,000 migrant workers and their family members in Michigan.

“Society needs to recognize how pervasive of a problem labor trafficking is,” Peralta said.

“The public needs to compel political action,” he continued. “… You have the Department of Labor and state departments of labor to investigate these issues, and they should be empowered and given resources to investigate [labor trafficking].”

Trent Taylor, a staff attorney for the national farmworker advocacy organization Farmworker Justice, also emphasized the need to address labor trafficking at a national level.

“The workers in this case were victims of some of the most horrific working and living conditions, which is all too common in agricultural work,” Taylor said. “They have demonstrated tremendous courage in coming forth and speaking out about their experiences. While the workers are seeking redress for the injuries they suffered in the court, policy change is needed to correct these endemic labor issues in our nation's agricultural industry.”

Peralta said there needs to be growing demand from the public for the political landscape to change. Currently, he said, employers have far more power than workers – especially foreign laborers who are frequently taken advantage of.

“There are political priorities when it comes to labor law enforcement,” Peralta said. “I think we have a very effective employer-focused narrative. Employers are put on a pedestal. That tends to allow people to skirt the fact that there are unscrupulous employers.”