Jon Ossoff, Democratic senator for the state of Georgia, urged the federal government on Tuesday to take measures to prevent more cases of "slavery" among immigrants who move to work in US fields with temporary H-2A visas.
" Human rights abuses against migrant workers due to the government's failure to properly administer the H-2A visa program
are unacceptable
," the senator told Noticias Telemundo.
Ossoff sent a letter on Tuesday warning of the situation of these agricultural employees to the departments of Homeland Security, Labor and State.
These visas allow temporary vacancies in the US agricultural sector to be filled with workers from other countries.
The senator launched the alert after a terrible case of exploitation was uncovered in Georgia, the state he represents in Congress, in November 2021. Operation Blooming Onion, known as such by the prosecutors in charge of the investigation, discovered that more Hundreds of immigrants were exploited on farms in South Georgia for years.
The workers, who came from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras thanks to H-2A visas, were
threatened with gunshots, lived in unsanitary conditions, were hardly paid, without their passports
and feared deportation if they complained.
A worker moves a bucket of onions on a farm in Lyons, Ga., in 2011.David Goldman/AP
The Department of Justice assured at the time that two people died due to the subhuman conditions in which they worked and one more was repeatedly raped, kidnapped and survived assassination attempts.
Ossoff stressed that this "forced labor, slavery, physical and sexual abuse are unfortunately not rare in the United States" and that similar situations of abuse occur in his state and the rest of the country.
The senator pointed out that, to prevent more cases of human trafficking and exploitation of immigrants like this, federal authorities must inspect more the companies and recruitment agencies that use these H-2A visas.
“What we are seeing is that the Administration of the H-2A visa program is leaving some employers and some contractors with
too much room to abuse the system and to avoid compliance with basic labor and human rights standards
,” Ossoff said.
In the letter, he called for a thorough review of these visas to make it easier to detect subhuman conditions.
His request is not aimed at legislative reform, but rather more action within federal agencies and more answers on the investigations surrounding the H-2As, and he gave them a March 31 deadline to obtain them.
Afraid to report abuse
Operation Blooming Onion also demonstrated these workers' fear of reporting abuses, as those who exploit them present them with a difficult dilemma:
if they complain, they will be fired, deported, and not recruited in the future
.
"If we don't die of COVID, of hunger yes."
Farm workers ask for help due to the pandemic
Jan. 24, 202203:28
“Access to justice is really impossible in practical terms for a lot of these workers,” Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, told NBC News at the time. .
Costa said the scope of this investigation is “evidence of the scale of law breaking that is occurring in these programs and the ability of employers, traffickers and recruiters to act unscrupulously because they know that for the most part no one is investigating what they're doing."
The National Human Trafficking Hotline, which received confidential calls from victims in Georgia at the time, serves immigrants in this situation in several languages through the number
1-888-373-7888
and the email help@humantraffickinghotline.org
Noticias Telemundo Investiga also has a confidential mailbox where you can present your case:
ntinvestiga@nbcuni.com
