A criminal network, along with a Georgia farm, is accused in a class action lawsuit of operating a labor trafficking scheme that federal prosecutors have called “modern-day slavery” that used the H-2A visa program to import foreign workers and force them into United States farm jobs.
The lawsuit, brought by three of the foreign H-2A visa workers who were allegedly trafficked, accuses Maria Leticia Patricio — the matriarch of what the Justice Department is calling the Patricio transnational criminal organization — and her associates Enrique Duque Tovar, Jose Carmen Duque Tovar, as well as Georgia-based MBR Farms of operating and being complicit in a $200 million labor trafficking scheme that started in at least 2015.
According to the lawsuit, Patricio and her associates recruited foreign nationals through the H-2A visa program that allows U.S. farms to hire an unlimited number of foreign workers every year for American agricultural jobs. As Breitbart News has chronicled, the program is often used to replace Americans and preserve the low cost of farm labor.
Among other claims, the lawsuit alleges that Patricio and her associates of requiring foreign H-2A visa workers to pay exorbitant fees to travel to the U.S., withholding their wages once they started work at MBR Farms, forcing them to live in squalor, and threatening them with deportation and violence if they called authorities.
The lawsuit alleges:
Upon arrival in Georgia, the Plaintiffs and other class members were housed in a motel. The motel appeared abandoned, with broken windows, dirty rooms, unkempt beds, and no hot water. They each shared a room with multiple other workers. The Plaintiffs and other class members each stayed in the motel for the first part of their stay in Georgia, some for only three days, but others for up to one month. [Emphasis added]
After moving out of the motel, the Plaintiffs and other class members were housed in four trailers in a small trailer park. One of the four trailers was empty. The trailers were also dirty and run down with no air conditioning or heat, and holes in the floor. The roofs leaked when it rained. There were rats and cockroaches. Each trailer housed between 15–18 workers, with only a single bathroom. Some of the trailers had no beds, so the workers were forced to sleep on the floor. In other trailers, the workers slept in bunk beds.
[Emphasis added]…
The Traffickers threatened or conspired to threaten the Plaintiffs and other class members with significant debt to prevent the Plaintiffs and other class members from leaving the Traffickers’ employment, in that the Traffickers would require the Plaintiffs and other class members to pay a certain amount of money to Traffickers to be released from the contract. Because the Traffickers did not pay the Plaintiffs and other class members all their earned wages, and because Plaintiffs and other class members had to pay for travel and recruitment expenses, Plaintiffs and other class members had little or no money while in Georgia. [Emphasis added]
Patricio and her associates “reaped more than $200 million from the illegal scheme,” the lawsuit claims, and allegedly laundered the money “through cash purchases of land, homes, vehicles, and businesses; through cash purchases of cashier’s checks; and by funneling millions of dollars through cash deposits made at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tampa, Florida.”
Meanwhile, MBR Farms is accused of conspiring with Patricio and her associates.
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The class action lawsuit is the second to be brought against the Patricio transnational criminal organization for the alleged labor trafficking scheme.
In November 2021, as Breitbart News reported, 24 individuals were indicted by a federal grand jury for the scheme which prosecutors called “modern-day slavery.” Many of those indicted in the federal case are illegal aliens.
The case is Hernandez v. Patricio, No. 5:23-cv-00023 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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