NC migrant workers to receive $150,000 in human trafficking lawsuit settlement

In 2020, 13 Mexican visa holders left their hometowns to pick blueberries and blackberries in southeastern North Carolina.

This week, a settlement awarded them a total of $150,000 in response to a human trafficking lawsuit. The farms and the contractors who brought the workers to the U.S. withheld thousands of dollars they were owed, threatened them with deportation if they fled and sexually assaulted one woman, the federal lawsuit alleged.

The lawsuit is just one of several alleging misuse of foreign workers with H-2A visas in North Carolina in recent years, a 2023 investigation by The Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer found.

Issued by the U.S. Department of Labor, H-2A visas allow agricultural workers, mostly from Mexico, to temporarily enter the U.S. The program requires that the farms fund the workers’ transportation, pay them $15.81 an hour (the current rate) and provide clean housing while workers remain in the country up to 10 months at a time.

Many North Carolina farms rely on visa holders to fill jobs local residents won’t take. And most farms deliver on their promises.

But that didn’t happen according to the case against farm labor contractors Valentino Lopez, Jr. and Gilberto “Beto” Lopez, brothers who sent the 13 workers to Hannah Forrest Blueberries and Ronnie Carter Farms, both in Sampson County.

“Nothing that was promised was ever fulfilled,” one of the farm workers, Jose Cruz Martinez-Morales, said in a statement. “I was totally deceived. They had made promises, and they failed to deliver on them. In my personal experience, I was afraid.”

After travel costs and paying as much as $5,200 in illegal fees to make their way to North Carolina, the 13 H-2A visa holders were left in debt and at the mercy of farm labor contractors, the 2022 lawsuit stated.

The workers were promised $12.67 an hour — the required federal rate for H-2A visa holders at the time. Some were paid less than $7.25, the minimum wage, the lawsuit stated.

The contractors threatened to deport anyone who fled, the suit said. And in one instance, a contractor pulled a knife and sexually assaulted a worker who he said did not pay her recruitment fee, the lawsuit said.

The woman escaped two weeks later, leaving the camp in the middle of the night. As many as eight other workers would also run from the camp, the lawsuit said.

“With this case, my coworkers and I put ourselves in danger,” said Marisol Florencio-Gutierrez, another plaintiff. “And, with the news of these settlements, other workers can also see that they can defend themselves and that they do not just have to do what their employer tells them to.”

Long hours, little pay

The Observer and N&O’s reporting last year found that only four states, Florida, California, Georgia and Washington, had requested more H-2A workers than the 88,000 North Carolina asked for since mid-2019.

Migrants harvest crops, run farm equipment and drive heavy machinery, often under the blazing North Carolina sun. Sometimes they’re housed in rundown shacks with broken windows and no running water or air conditioning, according to lawsuits.

Reporters found nine federal lawsuits filed since 2017 — including the one against the Lopez brothers and Sampson County farms — that alleged abuse within the H-2A visa program.

Many alleged patterns of abuse outlined in the case against the brothers.

▪ Farm labor contractors, third parties between growers and workers, search poor Mexican towns for workers interested in earning substantially more on U.S. farms.

▪ Contractors illegally force some workers to pay hundreds or thousands in fees and travel costs to North Carolina, in some cases not delivering on promises that they’ll be reimbursed.

▪ Some workers are made to work longer hours for minimum wage. Others are given fewer work hours than they were promised.

▪ Contractors or farm owners sometimes take workers’ documentation, preventing migrants from leaving. Some make them work second jobs. Some physically or sexually abuse the visa holders, the lawsuits allege.

“Our office has seen a marked increase in cases involving human trafficking in agriculture, particularly in eastern North Carolina, in recent years,” said Aaron Jacobson, supervising attorney for Legal Aid of North Carolina, a nonprofit law firm.

In 2019, researchers with the U.S. Department of Justice interviewed 400 migrant workers in North Carolina, most of whom held H-2A visas. About a quarter of them had faced some type of employment abuse, such as intimidation.

Nearly 18% said they were “trafficked” to other jobs at other locations and about 5% said the amount of work available was different than was promised, the study found.

Banned from the H-2A program

Valentino Lopez violated federal H-2A program rules before the this week’s settlement, records show.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division fined the Valentino Lopez more than $62,500 in civil penalties and recovered more than $58,000 in wages owed to 72 H-2A visa holders, according to the Department of Labor.

Between 2020 and 2021, Valentino Lopez failed to pay migrants’ transportation costs, didn’t pay them for a few weeks of work and charged them up to $8,000 in illegal fees, the DOL investigation found.

“Workers in the H-2A program come to the U.S. legally to help agricultural employers meet seasonal demands and earn good wages to help support their families at home,” Wage and Hour Division District Director Richard Blaylock said at the time. “Valentino Lopez chose to exploit and intimidate dozens of workers and charge fees illegally, and now has been held accountable.”

The Valentino Lopez is no longer allowed to participate in the H-2A program, according to DOL records .

Hannah Forrest Blueberries and Ronnie Carter Farms, meanwhile, must create and distribute a sexual harassment policy, hang workers’ rights posters at their camps, prohibit the confiscation of workers’ passports and better supervise how contractors reimburse workers for fees and travel costs, according to a Legal Aid press release.

A message left for Hannah Forrest Blueberries was not returned. Ronnie Carter Farms and an attorney for the Lopez brothers could not be reached.