Five Immokalee, Fla., residents pleaded guilty in federal court Sept. 2 to charges of enslaving Mexican and Guatemalan workers, brutalizing them, and forcing them to work in farm fields.
This is among six federal slavery cases the CIW has helped prosecute, freeing more than 1,000 people. The Florida-based group of farmworkers receives strong support from the PC(USA) and other faith groups.
The 17-count indictment settled by guilty pleas alleged that ringleaders Cesar Navarrete and Geovanni Navarrete held more than a dozen people in boxes, trucks, and shacks for more than two years, chaining and beating them, forcing them to labor in fields in Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina and sinking them in increasing debt.
Coalition member Gerardo Reyes said in a statement, “The facts that have been reported in this case are beyond outrageous — workers being beaten, tied to posts, and chained and locked into trucks to prevent them from leaving their boss. How many more workers have to be held against their will before the food industry steps up to the plate and demands that this never – ever – occur again in the produce that ends up on America’s tables?”
It was the seventh case of modern-day slavery to emerge from Florida’s fields over the last 10 years in what Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy called “slavery, plain and simple.”
Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete face up to 35 and 25 years in prison, respectively, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release announcing the convictions. The other defendants face a range of 10-25 years in prison, the press release said.
Previously, co-defendant Jose Navarrete entered a guilty plea for conspiracy to harbor and to harboring undocumented foreign nationals for financial gain as well as possession of false documents, identity theft and re-entry after being deported, the Justice Department said. He faces up to 37 years in prison.
Sentencing was scheduled for various dates in September and December.
“In this case, we are given yet another example of how human trafficking of all kinds victimizes vulnerable human beings,” said Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department is committed to vigorously prosecuting those who engage in this criminal conduct.”
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, a member of the Senate Labor Committee, issued a statement [www.ciwonline.org/Sen_Sanders_on_Slavery_Verdict.html] regarding the case in which he promised to introduce federal legislation “to end a loophole in current law which enables growers to avoid taking responsibility for what happens on their fields when workers are being enslaved.”
Earlier this year Sanders visited the CIW, which is based in Immokalee, Fla., calling their living conditions “among the worst in the agriculture industry.” His Jan. 18 visit came the day after a federal grand jury released the indictment against the five defendants.
CIW works to improve the lives of its mostly immigrant members, many of whom do low-wage labor in Florida’s fields. The coalition is also considered one of the most respected anti-slavery groups, helping the Department of Justice to successfully investigate and prosecute federal slavery cases and educating NGOs worldwide about the farmworkers’ human-rights-based approach for countering slavery.
In recent years, the CIW has scored a number of hard-fought, high-profile victories for workers’ rights. Burger King, McDonald’s, and Yum! Brands Inc. agreed to a coalition-supported penny-per-pound pay increase for tomato workers. Yum! signed on in 2005; McDonald’s in 2007 and Burger King in May of this year.
The deals also call on the companies to work with the CIW to establish a code of conduct for their suppliers.
The Yum! Brands agreement followed a nearly four-year CIW-led boycott of Mexican-style fast-food giant Taco Bell, which is owned by Yum! Brands. The PC(USA)’s 214th General Assembly in 2002 endorsed the Taco Bell boycott and called for discussions involving Taco Bell, its tomato suppliers,
and CIW representatives.
In 2006, the PC(USA)’s 217th Assembly approved a resolution calling for ongoing work with the CIW in the campaign to get fast-food and grocery corporations to ensure the human rights of farmworkers harvesting their tomatoes by partnering with the CIW and advancing the precedents established in the Yum! Brands-CIW agreement.
The Florida slavery case “brings to light just how extreme abuses in the agriculture industry can be,” said Brigitte Gynther, coordinator of Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida, a partner organization of the CIW that was founded to provide faith-based support and solidarity for the coalition.
She told the Presbyterian News Service, “That’s why it is so important to have codes of conduct and monitoring systems and things like that, which Taco Bell and Burger King and McDonald’s are now working to develop while other companies still somehow manage to turn a blind eye to those abuses.”
