Farm bosses in Immokalee plead guilty in slavery scheme (Florida)

Source: Miami Herald

Five farm bosses have pleaded guilty to a scheme to enslave Mexican and Guatemalan nationals as agricultural workers in southwest Florida, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
Cesar Navarrete, Geovanni Navarrete, Villhina Navarrete, Ismael Michael Navarrete and Antonio Zuniga Vargas were convicted of harboring undocumented immigrants for profit and identify theft in the farming community of Immokalee, authorities said.

Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete also pleaded guilty to beating, threatening, restraining and locking workers in trucks to force them to work.
They face up to 35 and 25 years in prison, respectively. The other defendants face 10 to 25 years in prison.

.....

According to prosecutors, the defendants were accused of paying the workers minimal wages and driving them into debt, threatening physical harm if they left before their debts were repaid to the Navarrete family.
''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 Civil Rights Division.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/top-stories/story/671209.html

I suggest a novel penalty: A flatbed semi, with stocks and pillories on it. Put these guys in those devices and drive them all over the country, so all and sundry can see the error of their ways and not emulate them.

real nice. Disgusting.

The world is replete with people enslaving/selling their own people into slavery/forced marriage. Nothing uniquely American at all.

We are slaves of the insurance companies, the banks, the mortgage companies, credit cards companies.... we work to pay them..

Any society that uses currency is enslaved. I do pay these companies, but I live frugally enough to keep some for myself. Americans have just gotten used to consumerism.

Currency is not a synonymous of debt. Consumerism may be the principal promoter of modern debt slavery.

Somebody check Jeb Bush's donor list.

There were some Navarettes back in the '70s involved with some terrorist plots against Cuban targets (planes IIRC). It would be interesting to chase down whether it's the same family. (for all I know Navarette could be as common as Smith, so this is just a suggestion for research, not an actual accusation)

Paying minimum wage and driving them into debt? Surely this article jests.

:hi:

I've gotta learn how to use that sarcasm smiley.