Head Down: Part II

Latino USA

My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last year, President Joe Biden outlined his plan to reduce the number of migrants seeking asylum at the Southern border. His administration, Biden said, would help “American farmers bring in seasonal agricultural workers from Northern Central American countries under the H-2A visa program.”

What does that mean for a program that’s already plagued with wage theft and abuse?

In the last installment of our two-part investigative series “Head Down,” we shift the focus to look at the systems put in place by the U.S. government and why they’re constantly failing foreign agricultural workers in the H-2A visa program. As a result, we uncover millions of dollars in stolen wages that, instead of being returned to the workers, end up in the coffers of a U.S. government agency.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Futuro.
0:07.0	Futuro, investigate.
0:10.0	Futuro. Futuro, invest it.
0:15.0	Hey, today's episode is the second in our two-part special, Head Down.
0:20.0	So we recommend that if you haven't listened to part one, you press pause right now,
0:24.0	go back to your feed and listen to episode one.
0:31.0	In November 2021, the Department of Justice revealed the results of a three-year investigation in Southeast Georgia.
0:38.0	It was called Operation Blooming Onion.
0:41.0	Two dozen people have been indicted after the feds busted what they call a modern-day slavery ring.
0:47.0	The defendants are accused of forcing Mexican and Central American migrant workers to dig for crops bare-handed at gunpoint.
0:55.0	The workers were held in cramped, unsanitary quarters, and fenced workcams with little or no food, limited plumbing, and without safe water.
1:09.0	The government alleged two migrants died, and others were raped.
1:13.0	They were legally working here.
1:16.0	Prosecutors said that the migrants had been recruited and enslaved by U.S. employers who took advantage of them
1:23.0	through a government program for temporary workers.
1:27.0	The program that gives them visas called H2A is supposed to have over sites in place to keep these things from happening.
1:35.0	But according to prosecutors, the labor contractors turned criminals fraudulently obtained tens of thousands of these H2A visas for workers in a period of five years.
1:46.0	Allegedly, in addition to all of the horrendous physical and emotional abuse, the workers got little to no pay.
1:53.0	And in many cases, they were sold.
1:56.0	Yes, you heard that right. They were sold to work in other farms.
2:01.0	The construct of slavery may have been taking a new form, but stories such as these out of South Georgia, or a stark reminder that slavery is still alive today.
2:17.0	This case is extreme and rare, but we found that the H2A program is actually plagued with systematic problems.
	...

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