When a Georgia man visited their Guatemalan community, locals were drawn to his promise of good-paying agricultural jobs.
But according to a federal lawsuit, the people who took up the man’s offer and traveled to the U.S. on seasonal work visas in 2022 didn’t find the economic opportunity they expected at the South Georgia berry farm. Instead, the men were caught in an “international human trafficking scheme” that sunk them into debt, according to a lawsuit filed last month in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
“At multiple times throughout their employment, Plaintiffs suffered from hunger because they could not afford to buy sufficient food,” the complaint reads.
The men in question are 12 Guatemalan workers, indigenous Maya who speak Kaqchikel.
According to the lawsuit, they were housed in an unsanitary labor camp that frequently lacked functional plumbing. They were paid less than promised, and made to take out loans to cover bogus recruitment fees, the suit claims. In addition, workers were allegedly threatened with deportation should they stop working, or even walk outside the labor camp’s premises.
The lawsuit is the latest allegation of abuse that centers on the H-2A agricultural guest worker program, which allows migrant farmworkers to legally live and work in the U.S. for a limited time to help with crop harvests.
In Georgia, temporary H-2A guest workers, almost all from Latin America, account for a critical wedge of the agricultural workforce. Last fiscal year, a high of 43,436 workers crossed the border to legally come work in the state, according to federal data. That’s up from around 10,000 just 10 years ago. Georgia is currently the second biggest user of the H-2A program nationwide, trailing only Florida.
The suit accuses two men of benefiting from the forced labor: the contractor who hired and managed them and the Bacon County farmer whose land on which they worked and lived.
Javier Guerrero, the contractor, was the workers’ direct employer and tormentor, according to the suit. He had allegedly traveled to Guatemala to help with recruitment.
Wesley Shane Wade, head of Shiloh Berry Farms and Guerrero’s business partner, owned the blueberry and blackberry farm — including the housing. Per the lawsuit, he “knew or should have known” that workers were being mistreated and not properly paid, and that their living conditions were not up to code.
Neither Guerrero nor Wade responded to calls and emails from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution requesting comment.
According to labor advocates, the H-2A program is ripe for worker exploitation because those visas are nontransferable, tethering workers to their employers. If guest workers run into a bad situation, they are largely unable to seek alternative employment and keep their status.
Georgia became the face of H-2A program abuse in 2021, when law enforcement indicted two dozen people in a case of what investigators called “modern-day slavery.”
The Georgia Legal Services Program, the pro bono legal services provider representing the Guatemalan workers, did not provide a comment.
Alleged violations of H-2A rules
The H-2A program is meant to be a last resort for employers who are unable to fill their labor needs with local workers.
By design, participating in the program is onerous and expensive, since employers are required to provide guest workers free housing and free transportation to and from work. Federal rules also dictate how much H-2A workers must be paid — back in 2022, there was a required minimum wage of $11.99 per hour in Georgia.
According to the complaint, the Guatemalan nationals were charged recruitment fees, which is something the H-2A program strictly prohibits. They also were allegedly not reimbursed for the cost of airfare and travel, visa processing, attorney costs, job training, and more — all requirements under H-2A rules.
As a result, workers had to exhaust their savings to come to Georgia, according to the complaint, borrowing money from family, friends, banks and loan sharks, often at high interest rates. One plaintiff, Celso Mayorga-Hernandez, provided a recruiting agency contracted by Guerrero with the paper title to his mother’s land as collateral, to ensure he would complete his term working in Georgia.
“Defendant Guerrero knew that Plaintiffs were reliant on his employment to repay the debts he and his recruiters required them to incur in violation of the employment contract and the H-2A regulations,” the complaint reads.
Charging unlawful recruitment fees is not an uncommon practice. In late 2023, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution spent time among farmworker communities in South Georgia, where local advocates reported that recruitment fees in the thousands of dollars had become the standard.
Making enough money to pay back the loans was made difficult by wage theft, the Guatemalan workers allege.
During the time spent on the Georgia berry farm from April through July 2022, the H-2A workers weren’t paid the promised minimum hourly wage, according to the complaint. In addition, they had one hour per day allegedly deducted from their wages, despite them not being given one-hour breaks. To make matters worse, per the lawsuit, the workers weren’t given adequate access to food or water on the job, despite the arduous nature of their labor.
When one of the Guatemalan workers fainted from heat exhaustion, the field supervisor did not offer medical aid or assistance, the complaint says.
Various immigration-related threats were allegedly used to keep workers in line.
“During Plaintiffs’ employment, Defendant Guerrero told Plaintiffs that leaving the [job] early would bar the worker and their family members from obtaining a U.S. visa in the future,” the complaint reads. “Despite the intolerable conditions, Plaintiffs continued to work for Defendants because they feared retaliation.”
When Guerrero got wind that some of the workers had begun seeking legal advice, he allegedly terminated their contracts.
The suit seeks damages and punitive penalties against the two men because it says the workers were caught up in a scheme that relied on false promises to recruit them, forced them to live in substandard conditions, kept them in a constant state of financial destitution and limited their movements.
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