Speaker 1: Futuro Investigatsuro Investila. When Diego and Mario planned their escape,
Speaker 1: they knew they'd have to do it in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night.
Speaker 2: The city.
Speaker 3: Stamenos Bhilao or Los car de la Casa.
Speaker 1: When the bosses were less vigilant and when all the
Speaker 1: other workers were in their rooms sleeping. It was a
Speaker 1: warm night in May twenty eighteen, in a town near Raleigh,
Speaker 1: the capital of North Carolina. It was eerily quiet. As
Speaker 1: they each packed a single bag, they couldn't carry much
Speaker 1: on their long walk in the dark, so they only
Speaker 1: took some of the clothes they had brought with them
Speaker 1: from Mexico.
Speaker 3: Na Massa Ramovlo in Dispensalle, but Noya mar La Tenion
Speaker 3: de Tolos.
Speaker 1: Diego and Mario had only walked the dirt road out
Speaker 1: of the camp once before, and it was during the day.
Speaker 1: It could be risk getting out to the main road
Speaker 1: at night. Two guys alone who were not from there,
Speaker 1: they could seem suspicious.
Speaker 4: They were terrified.
Speaker 3: Salimo Como poquel Espuru Campo.
Speaker 2: Caminas assisting lamp.
Speaker 1: They walked in the dark, using their cell phones to
Speaker 1: light up the way. Scraggly brambles with thorns lined their path,
Speaker 1: taking every step with trepidation, knowing that the snakes they'd
Speaker 1: seen before could be nearby.
Speaker 2: Jack Uando.
Speaker 3: Esperan moment position Timosella.
Speaker 1: Once they were close to the main road, they spotted
Speaker 1: the getaway car. The people who had promised to help
Speaker 1: them escape were actually there. Diego and Mario were overcome
Speaker 1: with relief. They were finally safe.
Speaker 2: For in Salimos Cilos.
Speaker 1: They had walked away from the nightmare they experienced working
Speaker 1: in a US farm as part of a government program
Speaker 1: from Futuro Investigates and Latino USA in collaboration with PRISM,
Speaker 1: am Fernando echavarri in for our host Marie Jjosa. For
Speaker 1: the next two episodes, I, along with Tina Vasquez, editor
Speaker 1: at Large at PRISM, will tell you about the increasing
Speaker 1: and systematic abuse of temporary migrant laborers who are critical
Speaker 1: to the US economy.
Speaker 5: We're talking about the hundreds of thousands of farm workers
Speaker 5: who come to work our fields every year with work
Speaker 5: visas under the US government's H two a program, a
Speaker 5: program where Diego and Mariosa expectations don't match reality.
Speaker 2: That is a NASA.
Speaker 5: It's the back own of our agricultural industry, and yet
Speaker 5: these workers we desperately rely on are constantly mistreated.
Speaker 1: In a recent and very extreme case of abuse, an
Speaker 1: official from the Department of Justice called what happened to
Speaker 1: workers quote modern day slavery. The structure is certainly akin
Speaker 1: to indenture servitude.
Speaker 6: There's a pretty glaring disparity between the program on paper
Speaker 6: and what happens in practice.
Speaker 5: Are we going to just keep on this path because
Speaker 5: farmers are saying they need the labor.
Speaker 4: You're literally buying people to come do terrible work.
Speaker 7: Terrible work.
Speaker 1: In the simplest of terms, Here's how the HTA program
Speaker 1: works us farmers. And this can be a mom and
Speaker 1: pop citrus orchard or a massive corporation harvesting tons of cherries.
Speaker 1: They go to the Department of Labor and they say, hey,
Speaker 1: I can't get you as workers to do this very
Speaker 1: physically demanding jobs, so I need permission to I don't know,
Speaker 1: one hundred foreign workers. Then the Department of Labor says, okay,
Speaker 1: if you promise to pay them what the DL and
Speaker 1: what your state require, and you give them a place
Speaker 1: to live, you can have those visas.
Speaker 5: The employer hires a recruiting company or a labor contractor,
Speaker 5: or they just reach out to folks they've worked with
Speaker 5: in the past to hire the workers they need. The
Speaker 5: employer files some paperwork with US Citizenship and Immigration Services,
Speaker 5: and then things move pretty fast.
Speaker 1: The number of H to A workers has more than
Speaker 1: tripled in the last decade. Just last year, more than
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand workers came to the US in this way.
Speaker 1: About ninety percent of them are from Mexico, and the workers,
Speaker 1: mostly men, get their visas in Mexico right before they
Speaker 1: get on a packed bus that takes them north. The
Speaker 1: trip can take days, and their employer in the US
Speaker 1: should reimburse them for that travel. The job usually lasts
Speaker 1: six to nine months, no longer than a year.
Speaker 5: There's something about the employers that I want you to
Speaker 5: keep in mind. As a work visa, the HTWOA visas
Speaker 5: tie workers to their employer. So if their employer isn't
Speaker 5: paying them or is offering them inadequate housing or no food,
Speaker 5: the worker can't go find a better job because quitting
Speaker 5: means not only losing their visa, but their ability to
Speaker 5: legally remain in the United States. In the case of
Speaker 5: the HTOA program, losing The visa also strips workers from housing, meals,
Speaker 5: basic stuff. A worker can pretty much end up in
Speaker 5: the streets.
Speaker 1: For years now, this program has intrigued TENA and I
Speaker 1: because of its complexity. On one hand, it is beneficial
Speaker 1: for entire families in Mexico. Workers can make double or
Speaker 1: triple what they would make on a Mexican farm, and
Speaker 1: they don't have to risk crossing into the US own lawfully.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, the program is exploitative and
Speaker 1: full of dangerous power dynamics. Employers have pretty much all
Speaker 1: the control.
Speaker 8: Once the visa expires, the laborers are required to return home.
Speaker 5: At least one hundred immigrant workers were freed from conditions
Speaker 5: in which two people died.
Speaker 1: In theory, workers have some protections against retaliation, but in practice,
Speaker 1: if they complain, they can easily get fired. There's this
Speaker 1: unspoken expectation of the workers, put your head down, do
Speaker 1: the work, don't complain.
Speaker 5: Over the years, we've spoken with workers on both sides
Speaker 5: of the border.
Speaker 3: And Lakaye there spoils that can ascore.
Speaker 1: You know, travel to Mexico to see where it all begins.
Speaker 5: Investigated in Washington State and North Carolina.
Speaker 6: We're headed to I guess it's near North Carolina and.
Speaker 1: Spoke to government officials about exploitation of the program.
Speaker 4: They are stuck, absolutely stuck.
Speaker 5: We uncovered crucial documents. I just wanted to let you know,
Speaker 5: but I got some records.
Speaker 1: Back, records that show, oh, how the US government holds millions, yes,
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in wages owed to h to A
Speaker 1: workers and yet has no clear plans or timeline for
Speaker 1: how to pay them back. And despite all of the
Speaker 1: issues with the H two A visas, the Biden administration
Speaker 1: is in talks to expand the program. We'll get into
Speaker 1: it in our two parts special head Down.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: We met Diego and Mario last summer. These are not
Speaker 1: their real names. They've asked us to protect their identities
Speaker 1: because even though they're no longer h to A workers,
Speaker 1: they still fear retaliation from people associated with the program.
Speaker 1: So if we sound a little vague on certain parts
Speaker 1: of the story, that's why Madio is thirty six and
Speaker 1: Diego is twenty nine. They have been close friends for
Speaker 1: over a decade. They met working at a bakery in
Speaker 1: Sea othern Mexico.
Speaker 3: Join us Intestava and Prepa.
Speaker 5: Diego says he was still in high school when he
Speaker 5: learned how to bake bread from Mario. They're more than
Speaker 5: friends at this point, they're like brothers really. Diego is
Speaker 5: an extrovert who loves electronic music and dressing like famous
Speaker 5: soccer players with flashy tennis shoes and skinny jeans. He
Speaker 5: also has a remarkable memory, a detail that would be
Speaker 5: key to their escape. Mario is more serious and shy
Speaker 5: one of the two, but when he opens up, he
Speaker 5: gets easily emotional. They come from indigenous communities and they're
Speaker 5: both the eldest of three siblings.
Speaker 9: Only news.
Speaker 5: Mario comes from a remote area where Spanish is not
Speaker 5: the predominant language in his hometown. The nearest school was
Speaker 5: a two hour walk away from his home, so instead
Speaker 5: of getting an education, he had to start working as
Speaker 5: a child.
Speaker 10: Estuyadio dos est Mario wanted his kids to have a
Speaker 10: different life, so he moved with his wife and their
Speaker 10: two children to a bigger city.
Speaker 5: That's where he met Diego at the bakery. Mario wasn't
Speaker 5: earning much, just enough to build a small house out
Speaker 5: of sheet metals. One night in early twenty eighteen, Mario
Speaker 5: and his wife had a very serious conversation. They were
Speaker 5: frustrated because heavy rains flooded their home and their kids
Speaker 5: kept getting sick in.
Speaker 9: The cold Lady me and sposas, so.
Speaker 5: He asked his wife, could we ever live in a
Speaker 5: better house? The only option they can think of at
Speaker 5: the time was to seek work in the United States.
Speaker 5: Mario knew a guy in a nearby town who recruited
Speaker 5: men to legally work in the fields. He thought it
Speaker 5: sounded like a good idea, so he tried to get
Speaker 5: Diego interested.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, mera tengos.
Speaker 3: The plan is kiro ji yai formase the ira combisa
Speaker 3: contra talos.
Speaker 5: Diego had never really thought about leaving Mexico. He had
Speaker 5: a wife and a five year old daughter, but he
Speaker 5: only made sixty dollars a week.
Speaker 4: Although he really liked his job at the bakery.
Speaker 5: Like Mario, Diego also dreamed of building his own house
Speaker 5: one day and maybe even owning a bakery, so he
Speaker 5: got on board with the idea the.
Speaker 3: Campo.
Speaker 5: The recruiter told them that men from rural areas did
Speaker 5: well because they knew how to work the land. Both
Speaker 5: Diego and Mario grew up harvesting coffee and corn, so
Speaker 5: they checked that box, and like most HTAY workers, Diego
Speaker 5: and Mario were also in the prime of their lives, young, fit, healthy.
Speaker 5: They now just needed to get a Mexican passport, which
Speaker 5: they had never done before.
Speaker 3: Josovia Kenrato kJ Tempo de Travajo the ins almost para Mexico.
Speaker 5: What appealed to them about this plan was that they
Speaker 5: could come back home to Mexico. It was a six
Speaker 5: month job, so they figured why not. But there was
Speaker 5: one problem. Mario needed twenty five hundred dollars or thirty
Speaker 5: thousand pesos, because the recruiter claimed these funds would quote
Speaker 5: save their seats and put their name on a list.
Speaker 5: And if twenty five hundred dollars sounds like a lot
Speaker 5: of money to you, it's an inconceivable amount for someone
Speaker 5: in rural Mexico. By the way, this fee is completely
Speaker 5: illegal and not how the program is supposed to work
Speaker 5: at all. But this I need money to save your
Speaker 5: seat thing, it happens all the time. Diego and Mario
Speaker 5: didn't know that what the recruiter was demanding was illegal.
Speaker 3: Diebemana buscano aken' in pel.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 5: Mario spent a week trying to borrow twenty five hundred dollars. Finally,
Speaker 5: some relatives loaned him the cash with interest.
Speaker 4: Of course, same with Diego.
Speaker 5: They both figured, once we get paid US dollars, we'll
Speaker 5: quickly pay back the loans. They were set to leave
Speaker 5: for a place they'd never even heard of before, North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Is que.
Speaker 11: Es.
Speaker 5: This is Valaria, Diego's wife. That's not her real name.
Speaker 5: We're also protecting her identity. She's petite and wears her
Speaker 5: black hair pulled back in a pony tail.
Speaker 4: She's almost always smiling.
Speaker 5: She says that just days before Diego was about to
Speaker 5: leave for the US, the month she started feeling sick.
Speaker 5: So she goes to the doctor.
Speaker 4: Nick Amasa, you go.
Speaker 5: And the doctor tells her that she's pregnant.
Speaker 4: Always guess they were conflicted.
Speaker 5: Diego is headed to North Carolina to finally make good money,
Speaker 5: the kind of money he needed more than ever now
Speaker 5: that his family was expanding. But he didn't want to
Speaker 5: leave Valeria pregnant and alone with their.
Speaker 4: Daughter in Lelo per Puis contract.
Speaker 5: Valeria told Diego they couldn't pass in on opportunity like this.
Speaker 5: They were just going to have to push through the
Speaker 5: next six months apart.
Speaker 1: Around that time. In twenty eighteen, when Diego and Mattio
Speaker 1: first entered the h to A program, there was a
Speaker 1: historic growth taking place. Data shows that from twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: to twenty nineteen, during the Trump presidency, the number of
Speaker 1: h TOA visas spiked by forty five percent. This may
Speaker 1: be in part because of Trump's immigration crackdown and workplace
Speaker 1: rates that targeted undocumented workers. Employers turned to the h
Speaker 1: to A program out of fear that their farms could
Speaker 1: be raided. At a rally in twenty eighteen, Trump spoke
Speaker 1: about protecting American jobs, and then he said that farmers
Speaker 1: were going to get workers.
Speaker 9: They're going to be guest workers.
Speaker 11: They're going to come in, they're going to work on
Speaker 11: your farms. We're gonna have a lot of things happening.
Speaker 2: But then they have to go out. Then they have
Speaker 2: to go out.
Speaker 1: The crowd only cheered when they heard that the workers
Speaker 1: would have to leave. It's kind of like, hey, we
Speaker 1: want workers. We don't want families or parents or students.
Speaker 1: We don't want them in our communities. We just want workers.
Speaker 1: This disposable way of talking about migrant workers was not
Speaker 1: just a Trump thing. It's kind of baked into how
Speaker 1: the h TOA program has and continues to operate. According
Speaker 1: to h TOA workers advocates and decades of data addressing
Speaker 1: stolen wages, horrible living quarters, and dangerous working conditions, it's
Speaker 1: just not a priority for the program. The real focus
Speaker 1: is getting employers the workers they need, no matter the cost.
Speaker 1: To illustrate just how much we rely on these temporary workers.
Speaker 11: Thousands of people are self quarantining at home after they
Speaker 11: may have come in contact with the coronaviruce.
Speaker 6: Across the country, health officials are rapidly trying to ramp
Speaker 6: up their testing and contain the spread.
Speaker 1: When the pandemic hit in early twenty twenty, when the
Speaker 1: United States closed its borders, there was one major exception.
Speaker 1: The US not only continued issuing h TOWA visas, it
Speaker 1: made the process of getting them easier.
Speaker 11: They're going to come in and they're going to be
Speaker 11: given a certain pass, and we're going to check them
Speaker 11: very very closely, especially over the next month. I've given
Speaker 11: the commitment to the farmers they're going to continue to come.
Speaker 1: We couldn't eat without them. We still can't. It's been
Speaker 1: like that for decades, Ever since the US needed to
Speaker 1: address labor shortages during World War Two.
Speaker 12: It isn't easy to find men willing to take on
Speaker 12: such undesirable kinds of work. Understandably, then the American farm
Speaker 12: labor supply falls short and is supplemented by Mexican citizens.
Speaker 1: This has become the way of farming in the United States.
Speaker 1: We've spoken with farmers, growers, and leaders in the agriculture
Speaker 1: industry who say this is the only legal means they
Speaker 1: have to secure the labor they need to harvest their fields.
Speaker 7: I speak with growers around the country. They have had
Speaker 7: to leave apples on the trees to rot because they
Speaker 7: couldn't get enough workers to harvest them.
Speaker 1: That's Jim Blair, president of the US Apple Association.
Speaker 7: Using the h toa program. Even it's cumbersome and expensive
Speaker 7: and difficult to navigate, they're willing to do it just
Speaker 7: because of the certainty of knowing that their labor supply
Speaker 7: is legal and it's not going to put the grower
Speaker 7: in any kind of legal jeopardy.
Speaker 1: Well, we know that there are many instances in which
Speaker 1: workers and agricultural employers both benefit from these temporary visas.
Speaker 1: Diego and Mario faced terrible conditions that are not that uncommon.
Speaker 1: They were supposed to fall in line with those that
Speaker 1: came before them. Keep your head down, do the work,
Speaker 1: don't complain, but they didn't. After the break, we traveled
Speaker 1: to the epicenter of this temporary visa program in Mexico
Speaker 1: and learn about one of the most nefarious players in
Speaker 1: the program. That's coming up next on Latino USA. Stay
Speaker 1: with us. Hey, we're back. I'm Fernando Chavarri in for
Speaker 1: Marino Josa. It was twenty eighteen when Diego and Mario
Speaker 1: left their small town in Mexico to go to North
Speaker 1: Carolina with their new guest worker visas. That year, there
Speaker 1: were a record number of h TWA visas issued. This
Speaker 1: is the only category of temporary work visas without a limit,
Speaker 1: and there were hints of just how this program was
Speaker 1: exploding when I was in Monterrey, also in the spring
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, about a month before Theegu and Madio
Speaker 1: were instructed by their recruiter to travel there. Monterrey is
Speaker 1: about three hours south of the US border in the
Speaker 1: state of New Boleons, which has the third largest economy
Speaker 1: in Mexico. It is the hub for h to A visas.
Speaker 1: The epicenter of the program. That's where workers usually go
Speaker 1: to their appointments at the US consulate and then head north.
Speaker 2: Those are workers.
Speaker 1: We're just driving through this not very busy street, and
Speaker 1: there are dozens and dozens and dozens of men, some
Speaker 1: with suitcases, yes, just kind of hanging out outside of
Speaker 1: a hotel and then on the street. Even though I
Speaker 1: knew that every year thousands and thousands of temporary agricultural
Speaker 1: workers traveled to the US, it was still shocking to
Speaker 1: see it like this. That April in twenty eighteen, according
Speaker 1: to the State Department, more than thirty two thousand, h
Speaker 1: TWA visas were issued in Mexico, and most of them
Speaker 1: were granted right here in Monterrey. That's about an average
Speaker 1: of seven hundred and fifty workers getting a visa each
Speaker 1: day during that month, and since then the program has
Speaker 1: only gotten bigger. In April of last year, more than
Speaker 1: forty two thousand of these visas were issued in Mexico.
Speaker 1: That's about a thirty two percent increase from when I
Speaker 1: was there four years prior. I walked to the plaza
Speaker 1: where many of the workers gather after doing their morning
Speaker 1: interviews with consulate officials. This is where they get their
Speaker 1: prized visas.
Speaker 4: From their recruiters.
Speaker 1: The recruiters show up with these big plastic bins like
Speaker 1: where you would store Christmas decorations, and they are just
Speaker 1: packed with passports. They start pulling them out and calling
Speaker 1: Kose Juan Luis, and the men just come up, have
Speaker 1: their passports with the rolling suitcase in hand, and they
Speaker 1: walk straight to one of the greyhound like buses that
Speaker 1: are about to take them to the US. It happens
Speaker 1: that quickly. Some of the first timers that I talked to,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know where in the US they were going.
Speaker 1: When I asked them where they were headache. They had
Speaker 1: to pull out their passport and flip it over just
Speaker 1: so they could read this text on this little white
Speaker 1: sticker that said Oklahoma or Florida. Some of them were
Speaker 1: clearly nebies because they were wearing skin tight jeans to
Speaker 1: be on a bus ride for days. And while twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen seems like a lifetime ago, some things remain the
Speaker 1: same today. Monterrey is still the world's hub for H
Speaker 1: two A workers, and the large majority of those workers
Speaker 1: are still men from Mexico. But the pandemic did change
Speaker 1: a few things.
Speaker 4: There's a really.
Speaker 8: Stark contrast between the scene in Monterey prean post.
Speaker 1: COVID works with the biinational nonprofits Centro the Los re
Speaker 1: Jos Miante or CDM, which in English would be centered
Speaker 1: for migrants rights. She says that it's become a lot
Speaker 1: harder to reach workers now.
Speaker 8: Workers are no longer getting their fingerprints taken or their
Speaker 8: photos taken up the government office.
Speaker 1: For years, CDM had done know your Rights presentations to
Speaker 1: workers near the plaza while they waited outside the US
Speaker 1: government office where they got their photographs and fingerprints taken.
Speaker 1: But now the workers don't have to go there because
Speaker 1: the US has waived that requirement.
Speaker 4: That means that we.
Speaker 8: Needed to go to hotels to reach out to them.
Speaker 1: And the US government didn't just stop requesting fingerprints and photos.
Speaker 1: They also waived the in person interviews at consulates abroad.
Speaker 1: Evi says that while this made sense at the start
Speaker 1: of the pandemic three years ago, it makes no sense
Speaker 1: to not have face to face interviews with consulate officials today.
Speaker 8: Costular officers would awesome if they had paid fees or
Speaker 8: face of the recruitment abuse. This means that there are
Speaker 8: hundreds of thousands of workers who are traveling to the US,
Speaker 8: many of them for the first time, don't know what
Speaker 8: their rights are.
Speaker 1: According to CDM, fewer than ten percent of the workers
Speaker 1: are doing in person visa interviews right now, something that's
Speaker 1: incredibly unusual for the US immigration system. And this void
Speaker 1: of information from government officials leaves room for recruiters to
Speaker 1: take advantage of workers.
Speaker 8: The US government's EASTOP requirements to make it easier for
Speaker 8: employers and recruiters to hire workers, but they didn't increase
Speaker 8: protections or workers. They did it at the expense of
Speaker 8: workers were putting their lives on the line.
Speaker 1: We asked a State Department official at the consulate in
Speaker 1: Monterey for the percentage of workers who are getting in
Speaker 1: person interviews, but he wouldn't tell us. He would only
Speaker 1: say that the workers are quote coming in every day
Speaker 1: for interviews based on quote certain criteria. Mexico and Central America,
Speaker 1: like in the US, the pandemic brought massive unemployment, so
Speaker 1: an already desperate population of workers became even more so,
Speaker 1: and that resulted in recruiters charging even higher fees.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about those recruiters.
Speaker 1: Recruiters are a critical part of the system because they
Speaker 1: hold so much power, they basically get to say who
Speaker 1: gets to apply for a visa and who does it.
Speaker 1: I remember in twenty eighteen, my sources warned me to
Speaker 1: be careful when I went to Monterrey because recruiters don't
Speaker 1: like to see anyone asking their workers' questions. I mean,
Speaker 1: are from Minos's visas, even without a presid or any
Speaker 1: of my recording equipment. When I, a five foot tall
Speaker 1: Mexican woman, casually approached a group of workers, they didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk to me. When some of them did,
Speaker 1: they told me everything was great and that they didn't
Speaker 1: pay a recruiter for anything. Essentially that mentality I was
Speaker 1: talking about, of put your head down, do the work
Speaker 1: and don't complain. It starts here in Mexico, far from
Speaker 1: US farms and away from US government's oversight. And Diego
Speaker 1: and Mario, the best friends from rural Mexico, they saw
Speaker 1: this firsthand.
Speaker 5: Diego said that back in twenty eighteen, they were in
Speaker 5: a hotel in Monterey with the recruiter and about three
Speaker 5: hundred other workers.
Speaker 3: Uno de los patrone jego a ya Monterrey Esperanos in
Speaker 3: a hotel Paraos casi.
Speaker 2: They said, nosbro copeno.
Speaker 1: S S. S.
Speaker 5: Diego calls him the boss. He was Mexican American, about
Speaker 5: thirty years old and had sort of a makeshift office
Speaker 5: set up in the hotel. He called all the men
Speaker 5: to a meeting and told them not to worry, that
Speaker 5: he was going to make sure that they got a
Speaker 5: work contract with a US farm. But the recruiter also
Speaker 5: said something that was unsettling to.
Speaker 2: Diego, Miss Monosier.
Speaker 4: As they prepare to go to their.
Speaker 5: Interviews at the US Consulate, the recruiter instructs the group
Speaker 5: not to tell US officials that they had given him
Speaker 5: any money, to say that.
Speaker 4: They hadn't paid him a fee.
Speaker 10: Que.
Speaker 5: Diego says that's when the real fear kicked in. He
Speaker 5: was nervous, so he did what the recruiter told him.
Speaker 2: He lavisa.
Speaker 5: During the interview at the US Consulate, Diego was asked
Speaker 5: if it was his first time coming to the US.
Speaker 5: He answered yes. He was then asked if he had
Speaker 5: ever crossed the border without authorization. He answered no, both true. Finally,
Speaker 5: he was asked if he paid for the H two
Speaker 5: A visa as instructed.
Speaker 4: He answered no.
Speaker 5: Later that day, Diego and Mario got their visa. Says
Speaker 5: they felt a huge sense of relief.
Speaker 2: Know them those gen.
Speaker 3: Canzilmentar, kipps Algusta Aman.
Speaker 4: Everything seemed legit.
Speaker 5: Diego says he was about to start legally working in
Speaker 5: the US as part of a government program. It would
Speaker 5: have never occurred to him to even think that things
Speaker 5: would be so bad that he and Mario would have
Speaker 5: to escape.
Speaker 1: A core issue with the H two A program is
Speaker 1: the lack of oversight in general, but especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to recruiters. There is no public database of recruiters,
Speaker 1: and recruiters don't have to register with any government agency,
Speaker 1: not in Mexico and not.
Speaker 4: In the US.
Speaker 1: This is how it usually goes. Farmers in the US
Speaker 1: get labor contractors, often Mexican nationals, who hire recruiters in Mexico.
Speaker 1: Advocates warned that this process ends up preventing farmers from
Speaker 1: facing direct liability in case of wrongdoing during the recruitment
Speaker 1: process in Mexico, because the employers here in the US
Speaker 1: can say, well, I hired a third party to get
Speaker 1: me the workers. I didn't do anything wrong. So on
Speaker 1: the recruitment side, it all seems very informal. Even though
Speaker 1: all US employers are required to sign a statement from
Speaker 1: the US Department of Labor acknowledging that recruiter fees are prohibited.
Speaker 1: This lack of transparency and accountability leaves workers extremely vulnerable
Speaker 1: to abuse. In twenty eighteen, Diego and Madiu's recruitment fees
Speaker 1: of twenty five hundred dollars were considered outrageous, but we
Speaker 1: discovered that there are recent cases in which workers have
Speaker 1: paid up to six thousand dollars in illegal recruitment fees.
Speaker 1: The State Department official in Monterrey's consulate told us that
Speaker 1: the illegal recruitment fees they hear about most frequently are
Speaker 1: about two thousand dollars, but they can go up to
Speaker 1: five and that there are these other extreme cases of
Speaker 1: fraud when a recruiter takes money from someone and there's
Speaker 1: actually no age to a job for them. The State
Speaker 1: Department said they've heard of people losing as much as
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars as part of these elaborate schemes. And
Speaker 1: to make matters worse, there's, of course the internet.
Speaker 4: SPECIALIFA and RAT.
Speaker 1: While I was reporting in Monterey, I came across this
Speaker 1: video from a Facebook profile called Cervisius Migratorius USA Migratory
Speaker 1: Services USA a page that advertises visa processing services. It
Speaker 1: says that they can get people who have been deported
Speaker 1: a pardon and a temporary worker visa, which is impossible
Speaker 1: because one of the requirements for people to get h
Speaker 1: to a visas is to not have been in the
Speaker 1: US illegally. The woman in this video sounds like a
Speaker 1: computer generated voice with an accent from Spain.
Speaker 2: Books.
Speaker 1: The page advertised visa fairs in different cities across Mexico.
Speaker 1: One of them was in a hotel in the northern
Speaker 1: city of Durango. So we called the hotel to ask
Speaker 1: ol I want to.
Speaker 4: Start this Estoria mandover in Casalon.
Speaker 1: The man at the front desk who answered the phone
Speaker 1: told us, oh, miss, you're like the sixth person that's
Speaker 1: called asking about this, but nothing is booked here. We
Speaker 1: don't even have a conference room in this hotel where
Speaker 1: this could happen. He also told us that he had
Speaker 1: gotten a call from someone inquiring about possibly setting up
Speaker 1: a table in the lobby, but the hotel told them no.
Speaker 1: So naturally we sent someone to check out this quote
Speaker 1: unquote visa fair, and it turns out that it was
Speaker 1: just two women sitting in the hotel restaurant with a
Speaker 1: laptop collecting five hundred pisos about twenty five dollars from
Speaker 1: the people who had made appointments via Facebook, and today
Speaker 1: that Facebook page isn't active, but we found others like it.
Speaker 1: And Ibipena with the Migrant rights group CDM told us
Speaker 1: that since the pandemic, the amount of scams in fraud
Speaker 1: taking place online is worse than she's ever seen. Some
Speaker 1: advocates say that creating a bi national framework for their
Speaker 1: recruitment process is necessary, otherwise you end up with scams,
Speaker 1: false promises, labor trafficking threats. Meanwhile, Mexico and the US
Speaker 1: keep throwing the hot potato around. Mexico says, oh, it's
Speaker 1: a US company doing this in Mexico, so Mexico has
Speaker 1: no responsibility, or the US says, well, this is happening
Speaker 1: in Mexico, so there's no place for us to investigate.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that there are big recruitment agencies
Speaker 1: used by farmers and growers that are legitimate businesses. They're
Speaker 1: hired by US companies and they don't charge illegal fees
Speaker 1: to the workers because they make their money from the
Speaker 1: US companies that hire them. It's also worth mention that
Speaker 1: I've met with Mexican officials at a couple of state
Speaker 1: government agencies who are trying to educate communities about visa
Speaker 1: fraud so that they don't fall victims and end up
Speaker 1: in debt. But that's simply not enough. As one official
Speaker 1: told me, they're constantly playing catch up. These bad apples
Speaker 1: are popping up everywhere, and this is especially troubling because
Speaker 1: the program's rapid growth means that there are more opportunities
Speaker 1: for fragilent companies to scam.
Speaker 9: Workers see quent Taos.
Speaker 1: Before I left Monterey, I stopped by a small shelter
Speaker 1: not far from the main plaza. This was a place
Speaker 1: where men who ran out of money could go while
Speaker 1: they waited for their visas. I talked to workers who
Speaker 1: were doing this for the third or fourth time. They
Speaker 1: seem to know what they were getting into. Two of
Speaker 1: them told me that they made thirteen dollars an hour
Speaker 1: in Louisiana and that it was good money even after taxes,
Speaker 1: but leaving their families was extremely painful. Will Then, as
Speaker 1: I was walking out, a soft spoken man said he
Speaker 1: wanted to be interviewed.
Speaker 4: Garcia.
Speaker 1: Omar, like the other two men I talked about the shelter,
Speaker 1: had gone to his interview at the US Consulate that morning,
Speaker 1: but they denied his visa because he admitted that he
Speaker 1: had previously lived in the US without status is to
Speaker 1: be That's something that disqualifies you from this program. And
Speaker 1: the recruiter should have known this information, but he still
Speaker 1: told Omar to travel to Monterey. This is yet another
Speaker 1: way that recruiters scam people by setting them up to
Speaker 1: fail and taking their money.
Speaker 2: It's the from Castigo.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 1: Then Omar was devastated to be stuck in Monterey, far
Speaker 1: away from home, with the money he had saved, then
Speaker 1: borrowed gone. But what said in him was not that
Speaker 1: he didn't get to go to the US. It was
Speaker 1: that there aren't real opportunities here in such a beautiful country,
Speaker 1: he says. Coming up on Latino, USA, we continued Diego
Speaker 1: and Mario's journey as they arrived in the nightmare that
Speaker 1: was North Carolina.
Speaker 6: I mean, if I were Diego Mario, I don't know
Speaker 6: what I would have done. I think that they had
Speaker 6: kind of they were pretty desperate.
Speaker 1: That's after the break stay with us.
Speaker 4: Hey, we're back.
Speaker 1: I'm Fernande Chavarri in for Mari, Nojosa and Tina. I'd
Speaker 1: like for you to take us back to Diego and
Speaker 1: Mario story.
Speaker 5: It's twenty eighteen and Diego and Mario are headed to
Speaker 5: their first official jobs as h two A workers. Getting
Speaker 5: there takes almost two days, and they're traveling on a
Speaker 5: cramped bus that takes them from to North Carolina. All
Speaker 5: they know at this point is that they've been promised
Speaker 5: well paying jobs and room and board, But soon after
Speaker 5: they arrive, things start to fall apart. Before their new
Speaker 5: employer takes them and other workers to the labor camp,
Speaker 5: there's this sort of unexpected off site meeting.
Speaker 7: In No.
Speaker 2: Si Ali and uh kias caparse kera imposile.
Speaker 5: The bosses very clearly threatened Diego, Mario and the hundreds
Speaker 5: of other workers there. If you dare leave this job,
Speaker 5: we will inform immigration authorities and they will come to
Speaker 5: get you wherever you are.
Speaker 3: Thenmos marel talondo the substam rambozostamos.
Speaker 5: Right then and there, workers were required to sign a
Speaker 5: document falsely confirming that the employer reimbursed them the money
Speaker 5: they spent for their visa and travel expenses from Monterrey
Speaker 5: to North Carolina. This is illegal, of course, the H
Speaker 5: two A program's rules are very clear. The employer pays
Speaker 5: for all costs, including travel, visas and housing in the US.
Speaker 5: Later that day, when Diego and Mario arrived at the
Speaker 5: labor camp, things got even worse.
Speaker 2: They said, well, come see nice to Nakasa. Nice in Nagasa.
Speaker 5: Diego still remembers the house they were going to live in,
Speaker 5: abandoned and filthy with dirty mattresses. His first impulse was
Speaker 5: to take pictures with his.
Speaker 4: Cell phone.
Speaker 2: Personas and.
Speaker 5: The house was already occupied by forty other workers. When
Speaker 5: Diego and Mario arrived. There was no hot water, the
Speaker 5: bathrooms didn't have any doors, and there was a bucket
Speaker 5: in the shower. The fridge was the only working aplacellance
Speaker 5: in the house, just one fridge for forty men. If
Speaker 5: the awful labor camp wasn't enough for Diego and Mario,
Speaker 5: there was also the issue of food. Someone from the
Speaker 5: farm took the workers to the grocery store, but it
Speaker 5: only happened twice in eight days. Diego and Mario bought
Speaker 5: ingredients to make ham and cheese, sandwiches. But after that
Speaker 5: they were basically out of money that they borrowed in Mexico.
Speaker 4: And Mexico, and they weren't alone.
Speaker 5: Some workers at the camp pulled their money together to
Speaker 5: buy food they were starving. Others walked the main road
Speaker 5: near the camp, stopping cars and offering to work in
Speaker 5: exchange for food. And there was even this one time
Speaker 5: when food vendors arrived in the labor camp with freshly
Speaker 5: made towards us. Diego and Mario thought they were finally
Speaker 5: going to eat a warm meal, but the food was
Speaker 5: for sale and they had no money, And then they
Speaker 5: realized that there was not a lot of work to do.
Speaker 5: The whole point of being in North Carolina was to work.
Speaker 5: But Diego and Mario heard from men who arrived before
Speaker 5: them that they hadn't even worked.
Speaker 4: In two weeks.
Speaker 2: Dijonas Manos, manas Ajos, p.
Speaker 5: Ian and Masi, the recruiter in Mexico, had assured Diego
Speaker 5: and Mario that they would receive an hourly wage.
Speaker 4: This was another lie.
Speaker 5: Once at the farm in North Carolina, they were told
Speaker 5: they'd be paid by the volume of blueberries they picked.
Speaker 5: A full bucket of fruit was worth two dollars and
Speaker 5: fifty cents illegal, but who's counting.
Speaker 4: Adding to all of this chaos.
Speaker 5: The blueberries they were there to pick weren't even ready
Speaker 5: to be harvested, so it was impossible to make money.
Speaker 1: Ye go on.
Speaker 5: After a long day of work that started at five am,
Speaker 5: Diego earned ten dollars. In four days, he made around
Speaker 5: forty five dollars less than what he made at the
Speaker 5: bakery at.
Speaker 4: Home if there was time.
Speaker 5: The workers spent standing around waiting for work that was
Speaker 5: supposed to be compensable time. They were supposed to get
Speaker 5: paid for that, but that didn't happen. And remember, Diego
Speaker 5: and Mario went into debt for this job. When Mario
Speaker 5: told his wife about all of this, she said there
Speaker 5: wasn't much that they.
Speaker 3: Could Doosa loke sam obibian.
Speaker 5: She basically resigned herself to the idea that Mario had
Speaker 5: to endure all of this because they were poor.
Speaker 2: Book is almost Both Diego and.
Speaker 5: Mario were furious, and they were also starting to get desperate,
Speaker 5: so they called the recruit were back in Mexico to
Speaker 5: ask what was going on. The recruiter explained that they
Speaker 5: were promised hourly wages because that was the only way
Speaker 5: the US Consulate would approve their visas. Reality was really
Speaker 5: starting to set in. Now they had thousands of dollars
Speaker 5: to pay back, and it was clear that they weren't
Speaker 5: going to make the wages they were promised.
Speaker 4: They started to regret everything.
Speaker 2: Do you guys say, come on?
Speaker 5: Diego says that even though they never had much in Mexico,
Speaker 5: this this was the first time they were going hungry.
Speaker 2: And i'll, i'll.
Speaker 4: They felt like prisoners and.
Speaker 5: If they didn't do what they were told to do,
Speaker 5: the bosses threatened to take away their passports to keep
Speaker 5: them from running away like other workers in other camps.
Speaker 9: Lo this is most Dama.
Speaker 5: Five years later, it's still hard for Diego and Mario
Speaker 5: to bring up these memories. How could this have happened
Speaker 5: to them under a US government program?
Speaker 6: Okay, so we got gash, I gave you the receipt right.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 5: It's October fifth, twenty twenty two, and I'm an Aaron
Speaker 5: Jacobson's car about to leave Raleigh. Aaron Jacobson is a
Speaker 5: supervising attorney for Legal Aid of North Carolina's farm Worker Unit,
Speaker 5: and he's also one of Diego and Mario's lawyers.
Speaker 6: There's there's some camps down like in far southeast.
Speaker 5: That are like, probably he's driving us to get as
Speaker 5: close as we can to the labor camp where Diego
Speaker 5: and Mario escaped. Aaron doesn't really fit the stereotype of
Speaker 5: what an attorney looks like. He has a long beard
Speaker 5: and long gray hair that he ties back. He was
Speaker 5: a farm worker organizer before becoming a lawyer. Aaron was
Speaker 5: instrumental in Diego on Mario's escape. He still remembers the
Speaker 5: day he first learned what was going on at the
Speaker 5: labor camp. In May of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 6: We can get a call for a worker. We got
Speaker 6: a call from a sister organization that said you need
Speaker 6: to get out of his labor camp, like and soon.
Speaker 6: The report we got from them was that there were
Speaker 6: farm workers walking the streets begging to work for food.
Speaker 6: And we were like, like, what.
Speaker 5: Those were Diego and Mario's co workers who had begged
Speaker 5: for food. So Aaron and his team drove out there.
Speaker 5: Employers don't allow farm worker advocates like him to talk
Speaker 5: to workers in the fields, so he goes to their
Speaker 5: housing and so.
Speaker 6: A lot of times we'll learn about abuses, but very often,
Speaker 6: workers still will not want to take any action because
Speaker 6: I think they're just doing like a call benefit analysis
Speaker 6: in their heads, and like, you know, I could report this,
Speaker 6: but then I could get fired. I get fired. That's
Speaker 6: going to be a hardship.
Speaker 5: And this is where the power imbalance between employer and
Speaker 5: worker gets even worse. If you get fired and don't
Speaker 5: leave the country immediately, you would become undocumented. So what's
Speaker 5: to stop an employer from retaliating against you by calling ice.
Speaker 5: Aaron is used to farm workers not wanting to speak up,
Speaker 5: and that's how it was at the blueberry farm. As
Speaker 5: he told the workers how the program was supposed to work,
Speaker 5: no response. Mario remembers, no one wanted to say anything.
Speaker 6: So then Mario's got up in the middle of the room.
Speaker 6: He said, I'm probably getting in trouble for saying this,
Speaker 6: but that's not what's going on here, and that's kind
Speaker 6: of like almost unheard of, and so I remember, I
Speaker 6: leave it. I bet we're going to get a call
Speaker 6: from him.
Speaker 5: Diego and Mario scheduled an in person meeting with Aaron,
Speaker 5: but it was going to be difficult to pull off
Speaker 5: because they were always being watched. So They said they
Speaker 5: were going to go out and buy some food, and
Speaker 5: that's when they met up with Aaron. They were still
Speaker 5: a little unsure about him, could they really trust him.
Speaker 5: It was only when they were sitting with Aaron in
Speaker 5: a truck stop by the side of the road that
Speaker 5: Diego and Mario began to fully understand this massive illegal
Speaker 5: scheme they'd been funneled into. In reality, Mario and Diego
Speaker 5: had been trafficked. They were brought to the US through deception.
Speaker 5: The fees were illegal, They were lied to about their contracts.
Speaker 5: They were forced to as sign documents that falsely stated
Speaker 5: the employer had reimbursed them for fees, hotel, transportation, and food.
Speaker 5: The conditions they were housed in were legal. Being paid
Speaker 5: a severely low wage by the buck instead of hourly
Speaker 5: also illegal. Aaron explained that they had a strong case
Speaker 5: and that they could sue their employer for labor trafficking,
Speaker 5: but first they had to escape.
Speaker 6: I said, look, right now, she might be eligible for
Speaker 6: immigration remedy based on the labor trafficking you've survived. However,
Speaker 6: if you want to pursue that remedy, you have to
Speaker 6: stay in the country, So it takes you know more
Speaker 6: than a year.
Speaker 5: That's the real crux of the problem with this program.
Speaker 5: Even though they were fling starvation, labor trafficking and everything else,
Speaker 5: it was Mario and Diego who had the most to lose,
Speaker 5: not the employer, not the recruiter, the victims. They could
Speaker 5: apply for a visa for victims of trafficking, but they'd
Speaker 5: have to wait in the US without any legal status.
Speaker 5: So forget about working and providing for their families back home,
Speaker 5: forget about meeting your newborn. Despite the risks and the heartbreak,
Speaker 5: they decided to do it.
Speaker 6: I mean, if I were Diego Mario, I don't know
Speaker 6: what I would have done. I think that they had
Speaker 6: kind of they were pretty desperate.
Speaker 5: Aaron knew that if Diego and Mario stayed around for
Speaker 5: another day and waited until payday, that they could prove
Speaker 5: wage theft on top of everything else that happened, and
Speaker 5: that they'd have a stronger case.
Speaker 4: So the evening after payday.
Speaker 6: Diego was like, what's happened to me? Like at eleven
Speaker 6: pm Saturday night. He was kind of like the evidence
Speaker 6: collector of the group, So he had got everyone's pay
Speaker 6: stubs and took photos.
Speaker 5: That night Diego and Mario walked down the dirt path
Speaker 5: out to the main road. An advocate who worked with
Speaker 5: Aaron picked them up. They'd only been in the US
Speaker 5: for eight days and their lives were totally derailed. Being
Speaker 5: there now, all these years later, I tried to imagine
Speaker 5: what it was like for them. I feel like anxiety
Speaker 5: in my chest, Like I'm really worried that somebody is
Speaker 5: going to come out of one of these trailers and be.
Speaker 4: Like, what are you doing kind of thing.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is the South, after all, a lot
Speaker 5: of people have guns and they don't really take kindly
Speaker 5: to strangers trespassing on their property.
Speaker 4: After two weeks at.
Speaker 5: The Blueberry farm, Mario and Diego escaped the labor camp
Speaker 5: around midnight in May of twenty eighteen, and they didn't
Speaker 5: even know the name of the North Carolina town that
Speaker 5: they were in. We're getting close to the labor camp
Speaker 5: where Diego and Mario were kept.
Speaker 6: I think this is okay.
Speaker 1: This is busier than I thought.
Speaker 5: Like there's stuff closer than I thought there would be.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of little houses. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: guess there's no like stores really nearby.
Speaker 4: This is the road that workers were walking on asking
Speaker 4: for food.
Speaker 6: I think that's great.
Speaker 4: Damn. The main road is very busy.
Speaker 5: Cars whiz by constantly, and right around where we stop
Speaker 5: we can see a church and an elementary school in
Speaker 5: the distance. But Diego and Mario were housed in a
Speaker 5: remote area off this main road. Standing there, I knew
Speaker 5: that I would never think of labor trafficking the same Again,
Speaker 5: this was all happening right in our backyards. Aaron advised
Speaker 5: us not to get much closer to the labor camp.
Speaker 5: We couldn't even access it by car, so we decided
Speaker 5: to leave.
Speaker 1: Diego and Mario are just two of the thousands of
Speaker 1: workers who fall victim to abuse and fraud in the
Speaker 1: H twoa program every year. Remember just last year, more
Speaker 1: than a quarter million workers came here this way, expected
Speaker 1: to put their heads down, do the work, and not.
Speaker 3: Complain the Formacon Coles Public.
Speaker 1: Dico says there's a need for government officials in both
Speaker 1: countries to use social media, the radio, TV, any means
Speaker 1: necessary to educate folks about their rights. If they did that,
Speaker 1: he says, maybe there'd be less abuse. While there are
Speaker 1: government officials who oversee the program, and there are avenues
Speaker 1: to report abuses. It is far from enough, and we're
Speaker 1: going to get to all of that in the next episode.
Speaker 6: There's a pretty glaring disparity between the program on paper
Speaker 6: and what happens in practice.
Speaker 5: Aaron says recently he's gotten more calls about stories like
Speaker 5: Diego and Mario's.
Speaker 6: It's kind of alarming. We're hearing more accounts that are
Speaker 6: very similar to that, involving password confiscation, threats of deportation.
Speaker 5: Threats like the ones Diego and Mario received from the
Speaker 5: recruiter even after they escaped.
Speaker 3: Then Darle mazin Neto in tempos Perian been tissing Camil
Speaker 3: Pesos mass but Nilo.
Speaker 5: They were threatened twice. First, right after they escaped, the
Speaker 5: recruiter demanded that they pay thirteen hundred dollars as a
Speaker 5: quote penalty fee. Diego and Mario refused, and then months
Speaker 5: later the recruiter popped back up again, this time threatening
Speaker 5: to hurt Mario's wife. In part, that's why we're not
Speaker 5: revealing more details about their identities and why we're not
Speaker 5: saying the name of the recruiter. It's been almost five
Speaker 5: years since Mario and Diego escaped from North Carolina, Mario
Speaker 5: says he'd rather not think about it. It's best to
Speaker 5: put the bad memories of what happened behind.
Speaker 3: Himlo Algo Tristeno, Algo Triste is Sally Mosasi Coriendo is Capando.
Speaker 5: Diego and Mario, with help from Aaron, brought a lawsuit
Speaker 5: against their former employers and the recruiter, which was settled
Speaker 5: last year. As a result, they each got paid a
Speaker 5: little over ten thousand dollars. Of course, they used part
Speaker 5: of this money to pay back their loans. They're still
Speaker 5: in the US and they still work together now it's
Speaker 5: at a restaurant.
Speaker 1: All the evidence Diego collected helped the workers win their case.
Speaker 1: He says he knew that those pictures would come in
Speaker 1: handy in Diego and Marius case. Both the recruiter and
Speaker 1: the employer were included in the lawsuit. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: the h to a labor contractor was debarred for two
Speaker 1: years from participating in the program, but Aaron says that
Speaker 1: the contractor was active in the program during that time
Speaker 1: and in our reporting we found another lawsuit against the
Speaker 1: same labor contractor, and it was filed a month before
Speaker 1: Diego and Marius.
Speaker 3: Allah heloila. Thank cousin. M Le Miko, let Miko.
Speaker 1: It's a hot and humid afternoon in the summer of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. Diego sitting on a park bench surrounded
Speaker 1: by luscious trees. He's on a video call with his
Speaker 1: wife and young child, No No Sali. No, Diego's son
Speaker 1: was born in late twenty eighteen, about six months after
Speaker 1: he escaped from the labor camp.
Speaker 4: They've never met.
Speaker 1: They've had to bond over the phone.
Speaker 3: Mayako the ghetto, Bye, Mayaka, Mucho mu Mucho.
Speaker 11: My my.
Speaker 1: Diego and Mario have been granted special immigrant visas for
Speaker 1: victims of trafficking. That means that they should now be
Speaker 1: able to legally bring their families to the US. Diego
Speaker 1: can finally meet his little.
Speaker 4: Boy, hug him for the first time.
Speaker 1: Coming up on episode two of head Down, we bring
Speaker 1: you the results of our investigation into how millions of
Speaker 1: dollars in stolen wages owed to farm workers end up
Speaker 1: in the hands of a US federal agency.
Speaker 5: When starts.
Speaker 1: An announcement that the US promises to pay back that
Speaker 1: money with the help from Mexican authorities, they.
Speaker 5: Come up Rotejimos alos Achos travadors.
Speaker 1: A big promise, especially in a program known for its
Speaker 1: inefficiency and wage theft. You'll also meet two brothers who
Speaker 1: protested in Washington State after a fellow H two A
Speaker 1: farm worker died. We'll look back at the racist history
Speaker 1: behind temporary foreign.
Speaker 12: Labor, Why bring in foreigners to work on our farms
Speaker 12: makes no sense?
Speaker 1: And ask how can the H two A program be fixed?
Speaker 1: Head Down is an original production by Fututo Investigates in
Speaker 1: collaboration with Latino USA and Prism. I'm Fernande Chavarri in
Speaker 1: for our host and executive producer Marin j Josa. This
Speaker 1: episode was reported and produced by Patricia Suvaran, Tina Basquez,
Speaker 1: and Me, with assistance from Rosanna Aguire. It was edited
Speaker 1: by Andrea Lopez Cruzado and Ni Penilee Ramirez is the
Speaker 1: executive producer of Futuro Investigates. Music and scoring by Jacob Rossadi,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Amy Tardiff. This episode was mixed by
Speaker 1: Julia Caruso and gabriel A Bias. Nancy Rujillo and Raoul
Speaker 1: Perez are Futuro Investigates project managers. Reporting was made possible
Speaker 1: with support from the w K. Kellogg Foundation, the McGraw
Speaker 1: Center for Business Journalism, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of
Speaker 1: Journalism at the City University of New York, the TAO Foundation,
Speaker 1: and Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden. Early support for this
Speaker 1: reporting came from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Avram Basquez, Sophia Sanchez, Elizabeth Lowenthal, Torres, Nina Alvarez,
Speaker 1: Diane Silvester, and the farm workers.
Speaker 4: Who shared their stories with us.
Speaker 1: The Ratino USA team also includes Deacy Contreras, Mike Sargent,
Speaker 1: Marta Martinez, Victoria Strada, and Renaldo Lanos Junior. Our editorial
Speaker 1: director is Fernande Santos. Our engineering team also includes Stephanie
Speaker 1: Leveau and JJ Carubin. Our marketing manager is Luis Luna.
Speaker 1: Our theme music was composed by Senia Rubinos. For more,
Speaker 1: visit Futuro Investigates dot org and Prison Reports dot org.
Speaker 1: Join us again next time, and in the meantime, you
Speaker 1: can find us on social media.
Speaker 4: Shao Latino USA is made possible in part by W. K.
Speaker 4: Kellogg Foundation, a partner with Communities where Children Come First,
Speaker 4: the TAU Foundation, and Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden.