Fall 1997 Human Rights Magazine

By Ky Henderson

Immigrants hoping to forge a better life are at the mercy of greedy smugglers

Miguel Angel Flores' is a success story of the most insidious kind, a warped version of the American dream in which he became a modern-day slave master and created a nightmare for hundreds of illegal migrant workers.

He came to the United States from Mexico in the early 1970s as an illegal alien himself, looking for work on Florida's citrus farms. Over the next decade, he found himself deported to Mexico many times, but he seemingly always managed to find his way back to the states.

Eventually, he moved up through the farm worker ranks and became a crew leader, recruiting and overseeing hundreds of illegal aliens. He built his business in both Florida and the Carolinas, becoming a favorite of growers and at his height earning a net income of about $850,000 - not including thousands more in under-the-table dealings officials say. In the process of building his small empire, Flores not only accumulated an extensive criminal rap sheet, he also became a ruthless exploiter, abuser and enslaver of the workers.

But his reign came to an end last November when Flores and two of his cohorts were indicted on 25 counts of enslavement, extortion, and immigration and labor violations. In May, the three men pled guilty in U.S. District Court in Charleston, S.C., to threatening and abusing migrant workers to force them to perform agricultural labor.

"There is no place for slavery in America, or anywhere," Attorney General Janet Reno said at the time.

Flores is behind bars, but he is hardly the only one of his kind. Only a couple of months after Flores pleaded guilty, newspapers all over the country carried news of two slavery rings based in New York City and Sanford, N.C., that exploited deaf Mexican immigrants. While no one argued with Reno's statement that slavery has no place in this country, it appeared that it was nonetheless still making one for itself.

From California to Florida, instances of involuntary servitude pop up every year, and almost all involve illegal immigrants smuggled into the country hoping to forge a better life, only to find themselves hopelessly isolated, without any money, at the mercy of their greedy and tyrannical smugglers.

Mexicans and Central Americans are not the only people who have suffered peonage in the United States in the last couple of years. In Florida, a well-known case involved Francesca Ekka, a 23-year-old woman from Bombay, India, who was brought to the United States on a tourist visa by a wealthy Indian couple who wanted her to be their nanny and housekeeper. Ekka wished only to see America and be able to go to church on Sundays. Instead, she worked 18-hour days seven days a week, wasn't paid, was forced to sleep outside with the family's dog, wasn't given enough to eat, and suffered beatings and burnings.

In El Monte, Calif., more than 70 women smuggled from Thailand were kept in an apartment complex and forced to work 80 hours a week at $1.60 an hour making clothes. The women worked up to 19 hours a day, were guarded around the clock, and were kept inside the complex with razor wire, a spiked fence, and barricades. In 1995 seven Thai nationals pleaded guilty to federal charges including involuntary servitude, harboring illegal aliens and kidnapping.

"How can you possibly be more vulnerable or more exploited?" asks Terri Gerstein, who is representing Ekka and is a member of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. "It's just incredibly brutal and inhumane and something we shouldn't put up with. There may not be irons on people wrists, but it's terrible."

It certainly was, according to a small group of workers who escaped Flores' control and spoke to authorities of the violent, oppressive atmosphere. Their ordeal began when Flores and his men recruited people in Mexico and Guatemala, promising abundant work paying enough money for the workers to send a portion of their earnings back home. Those lured by these promises were then lead by bolleros across the U.S. border to Chandler Heights, Ariz. There, the workers were put in vans and driven across the country to Florida and the Carolinas, without being let out to eat or go to the bathroom.

The five camps Flores oversaw in rural South Carolina were located deep in the woods, far from access to any main road. Workers lived in bunkhouses that amounted to nothing more than large warehouses. They slept on the floors, and only some had mats. There was no running water, workers had to use outhouses, and the only ventilation came from one door. Pistoleros, or gunmen, armed with semiautomatic weapons, were stationed at every possible exit.

When there was nothing for the workers to eat, they were forced to risk beatings and sneak into the fields in the middle of the night to steal corn. The pistoleros would have parties, drink heavily, shoot off guns and verbally abuse the workers. Women were sexually abused, sometimes in front of others. If anyone tried to escape, Flores' henchmen would go after them. If caught, the laborers were brought back to the camp, where they were beaten and pistol whipped as an example in front of the others.

"The big thing was the feeling of fear, that the henchmen were these big tough guys, and if you tried to cross them you would pay for it," says Ruben Chavez, a West Palm Beach, Fla., paralegal and investigator who was instrumental in bringing Flores down. "The workers had no choice but to live with it or take a chance and make a run for it."

But it was more than just the threat of physical violence that kept Flores' workers, and others like them, from running away. Because illegal immigrants fear deportation, those exploiting them often tell them that if they run away, authorities will immediately send them back home. And the prospect of leaving without any money, any friends, or any knowledge of the language is also daunting. Factors like these kept Ekka from leaving her ordeal until the couple threatened her with death.

Flores charged his laborers a hefty smuggling fee of hundreds of dollars in addition to the ridiculously high prices of the inadequate food and shelter. Workers were told that when they paid off their debts, they would be allowed to leave. But laborers typically made only a small fraction of minimum wage, and work was not nearly as abundant as had been promised them in their home countries. It was almost impossible for them to ever pay off their debt.

While the violence and threats of violence Flores resorted to are not extremely common amongst crew leaders, laborers are still continually exploited by their employers. It's common knowledge that illegal aliens work for scant wages all over the South. It's the reason why 20 years ago, the going price for a bushel of oranges in central Florida was about $.70 or $.75, and today, without adjusting for inflation, the going price is about $.65. In that time, citrus profits have more than doubled.

That's not to say there weren't similar farm labor practices back then. The only real difference is in the changed faces of exploited farm workers. In the '70s and '80s, virtually all peonage cases involved East Coast farm workers, most of whom were African-American. Recruited from big cities, they were taken to camps and given drugs and alcohol so they would quickly run up debts. When they tried to leave, they were also brought back at gunpoint and beaten as examples. In the midst of Congressional hearings on the situation, the Justice Department imprisoned more than 20 people, which helped curtail the exploitation of the workers.

Some argue that there are no longer enough American workers to fill jobs, but most labor statistics indicate that's really not true. In north Florida, for instance, there are about two American farm workers for every farm labor job, says Migrant Farm Worker Justice Project lawyer Gregory Schell, who represented illegal aliens from Flores' camp for the Belle Glade, Fla., organization. Yet illegal aliens are still viewed by many as a necessary part of farm labor, an attitude highlighted by the fact that raids on known camps seldom take place during the harvest season.

"A lot of these immigration ills are based on the supposition that there's nobody out there to work, so we just have to tolerate the situation," Schell says. "It's not by accident that (the Department of) Immigration tends to wait until the season's over to start clearing out laborers, because if they didn't, growers would go crazy and complain to their member of Congress."

Typically, people convicted of indentured servitude violations receive sentences of only a few years, and while they're in prison, family members often take over the business to keep it afloat because of the huge profits to be made. Chavez says that when Flores was arrested, others like him filled in the void he left, although chances are they don't use his degree of violence.

The real solution to end the reign of crew leaders and sweatshops, analysts say, is to make big business responsible. As the law stands now, growers, retailers, and manufacturers have no liability for civil rights abuses as long as they hire crew leaders, who agree to recruit, supply and supervise the cheap labor. In Flores' case, the grower actually owned the camps, and after Flores was caught, no effort was made by the Labor Dept. or other authorities to collect the last paychecks the grower owed the laborers.

In most instances, crew leaders are only one step removed from the workers they hire and supervise. When the Justice Dept. comes down hard on them, Chavez says, it only deals a blow to small-time operators. Fines issued to crew leaders - and Flores received more than his fair share throughout his years as a leader - are viewed as no more than another business expense, paid off and quickly forgotten.

But holding growers responsible for labor violations would be a different story. "They've got a business to run, they're established, they're well-known in the community," Chavez says. "They should have to answer to public pressure and operate their businesses ethically. People shouldn't have to suffer and be held in slavery just because they're from another country and growers can get away with it."

Ky Henderson is a writer in Chicago.

As published in Human Rights, Fall 1997, Vol. 24, No. 4, p.12-13.