Fancher, NY, United States
Maria Garcia, a farm labor contractor, conspired with five others (Jose J. Garcia, Jose I. Garcia, Elias Botello, Rogelio Espinoza, and Sylvia Munoz Rubio) to recruit undocumented Mexican males from Arizona to move to New York to work in labor camps. Garcia used guards to monitor the workers’ action, and physically and verbally threatened victims with threats of arrest and deportation. The camps, located in Orleans and Genesee counties in Western New York, were crowded and unsanitary. Garcia deducted heavily from the victims’ earnings, leaving them with essentially nothing. They were told they had to say until they had paid off charges for transportation, food, housing, and other miscellaneous costs.
Location
United States · Fancher, NY · 2002 (location generalized to protect survivors)
Response & intervention
Maria Garcia, Jose J. Garcia, and Jose I. Garcia were arrested in New Cork. Elias Botello was arrested in Mission, Texas. Rogelio Espinoza and Sylvia Munoz Rubio remain at large. All there indicted for holding workers in a condition of forced labor, trafficking workers into forced labor, transporting and harboring aliens, and violating the transportation safety provisions of the Migrant and Seasonal Worker Protection Act. Maria Garcia was sentenced to 46 months in prison for forced labor. Botello was sentenced to 37 months in prison. Jose Luis Garcia was sentenced to 14 moths in prison. Jose J. Garcia received one year probation.
The case was investigated by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, as well as the US Department of Labor through the Nation Worker Exploitation Task Force (WETF).
Documented on the original SlaveryMap (2008–2016). We don't have a verifiable source on file yet — use “Report a problem” below to add one.