Justice probing claim of being chained in
By John Lantigua, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 21, 2003
The U.S. Justice Department has begun to investigate a new case of slavery in Florida involving a group of undocumented Mexican farmworkers who say they were forcibly detained and threatened with violence by labor contractors.
The facts of the case were first made public in an article in The Palm Beach Post Dec. 7, part of the newspaper's recent series, Modern-Day Slavery.
In that article, a 28-year-old Mexican man said that on more than one occasion in late 2002, he and other migrant tomato pickers were locked inside a trailer in the town of Wimauma, in Hillsborough County, by a family of farm labor contractors who claimed the workers owed them money. Those alleged debts were smuggling fees the workers incurred while being transported clandestinely into the U.S. from Mexico.
The man, who used the alias Jose Moreno, claimed he and the other laborers had to work off those debts before they could change jobs, were chained in the trailer at times and threatened with violence if they tried to leave. Such actions violate anti-slavery laws.
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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/news_f35e42e03786009e004f.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Cuban "exiles," the Fanjuls who own sugar cane plantations in South Florida got in trouble with the government for their loathesome, barbaric working conditions into which were thrown desperately poor laborers from the Caribbean islands, just like the set-up they (Fanjuls) had back in Cuba, before the revolution.
They and those like them serve as proof that some "human beings" will do absolute filth to their fellow man if the law can't, or won't prevent them.
South Florida is a magnate for these people.