{"id":33,"date":"2006-09-01T21:58:17","date_gmt":"2006-09-01T21:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucefinley.com\/migration\/migrants-exploiters-to-be-sentenced-today\/"},"modified":"2008-06-05T06:15:31","modified_gmt":"2008-06-05T06:15:31","slug":"migrants-exploiters-to-be-sentenced-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/migration\/migrants-exploiters-to-be-sentenced-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Migrants&#8217; Exploiters To Be Sentenced Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Hudson couple have pleaded guilty to holding illegal laborers in a camp and skimming their pay.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Hudson<\/em> &#8211; Leaning on her fence, retiree Ann Hoyt looked across at<br \/>\nthe dilapidated white barracks and winced. She had no clue they had<br \/>\nheld illegal Mexican workers who toiled on farms to pay smuggling<br \/>\ndebts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Remember Auschwitz and the people in Germany saying, &#8216;We didn&#8217;t<br \/>\nknow it was there&#8217;? Well, I didn&#8217;t know this was there, and it was<br \/>\nin my backyard,&#8221; said Hoyt, a retired microbiologist who raises<br \/>\nllamas half a mile away.<\/p>\n<p>Today in federal court, Hudson residents Moises Rodriguez and his<br \/>\nwife, Maria, are scheduled to be sentenced for transporting and<br \/>\nharboring illegal immigrants in this case of migrants who were<br \/>\nsmuggled into the country and then worked to the bone.<\/p>\n<p>Foremen bused them from the barracks to farms where they picked<br \/>\ncrops for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Supervisors deducted<br \/>\n&#8220;smuggling fees&#8221; totaling $1,100 to $1,300 from the workers&#8217;<br \/>\npay.<\/p>\n<p>In October, when federal agents raided the fenced barracks compound<br \/>\nat Hudson, 30 miles northeast of Denver, they found automatic<br \/>\nweapons and cocaine in a trailer where a supervisor stayed, court<br \/>\nrecords show.<\/p>\n<p>This is one of several recent cases around the country involving<br \/>\nsmuggled foreign workers who labored under financial duress, owing<br \/>\nmoney to those who sneaked them into the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Moises and Maria Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty in May, face up to<br \/>\n40 years in prison for their role in transporting and harboring<br \/>\nscores of illegal workers from Mexico, then deducting fees from<br \/>\ntheir pay. Prosecutors say they supplied workers to agricultural<br \/>\nemployers around northern Colorado, including the state&#8217;s largest<br \/>\norganic vegetable farm.<\/p>\n<p>Their son, Javier Rodriguez, who lived in a trailer by the<br \/>\nbarracks, has agreed in a plea deal to share what he knows about<br \/>\nsmuggling, employment of illegal workers, drug trafficking, violent<br \/>\ncrime and gun dealing in return for leniency in sentencing.<\/p>\n<p>Farm owners who used the illegal workers were not charged.<\/p>\n<p>Attorney Jeff Edelman, representing Javier Rodriguez, said<br \/>\nemployers are key players who ought to be targeted.<\/p>\n<p>For the workers, &#8220;it&#8217;s sort of an indentured servitude you can<br \/>\nnever get out from under,&#8221; Edelman said. &#8220;You ought to get the<br \/>\nbig shots. It&#8217;s against the law to hire illegal aliens<br \/>\nknowingly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At Grant Family Farms, a large organic grower where Moises<br \/>\nRodriguez sent workers, owner Andy Grant said he has championed<br \/>\nworker rights and pays at least $7.25 an hour.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The whole thing about the smuggling, I have no knowledge of it,<br \/>\nand as far as the housing, I don&#8217;t know where people live. We offer<br \/>\njobs,&#8221; Grant said.<\/p>\n<p>Grant questioned federal priorities in targeting farms rather than<br \/>\nother sectors of the economy that rely heavily on illegal workers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s going to happen is, agriculture is going to be driven out<br \/>\nof the United States to Mexico,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Among other U.S. cases involving indebted foreign workers:<\/p>\n<p>FBI and immigration agents just arrested 31 Koreans accused of<br \/>\nrunning a trafficking ring that placed smuggled women at spas and<br \/>\nbrothels across the northeastern states.<\/p>\n<p>Federal prosecutors in Seattle charged nine Koreans for their<br \/>\nalleged role in an operation that smuggled women from Asia, often<br \/>\nacross the U.S.-Canada border, and put them to work as prostitutes<br \/>\nin spas nationwide.<\/p>\n<p>A Colorado court on Thursday sentenced Saudi Arabian immigrant<br \/>\nHomaidan Al-Turki to 28 years to life in prison on charges of false<br \/>\nimprisonment and unlawful sexual contact involving an illegal<br \/>\nworker from Indonesia kept as a virtual slave. Federal charges are<br \/>\npending.<\/p>\n<p>And federal immigration agents in Colorado are investigating<br \/>\nseveral other cases involving smuggled foreign workers, said Jeff<br \/>\nCopp, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs<br \/>\nEnforcement&#8217;s Denver district.<\/p>\n<p>As in most of these cases, the Mexican men and women smuggled to<br \/>\nHudson apparently came willingly, agreeing to work and live at the<br \/>\nbarracks until free from their debts to smugglers.<\/p>\n<p>First, the workers in Mexico telephoned Moises Rodriguez, court<br \/>\nrecords show. He directed them to hotels at Palomas and Agua Prieta<br \/>\non the Mexico side of the border, where they met &#8220;coyote&#8221; guides<br \/>\nwho led them on multi-day treks across dry open land near Douglas,<br \/>\nAriz.<\/p>\n<p>Then, after receiving cellphone calls from the guides on the U.S.<br \/>\nside of the border, Rodriguez picked up the workers and drove them<br \/>\nvia Phoenix to Hudson, the records show.<\/p>\n<p>Some Hudson townspeople never knew. But a few sensed an ugly<br \/>\nsituation.<\/p>\n<p>Construction worker Loren Winstead recalled delivering surplus food<br \/>\nfrom a supermarket to the barracks. &#8220;They would surround my truck<br \/>\nand help unload it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t think they were abused.<br \/>\nBut people took advantage of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Others cringed at hearing regular automatic weapons fire from<br \/>\ninside the compound, Hudson Mayor Neal Pontius said. Town leaders<br \/>\nrepeatedly complained to Weld County authorities, he said. &#8220;People<br \/>\ndidn&#8217;t like going to our town park in the evenings because you<br \/>\ndidn&#8217;t know if a stray bullet would come your way.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Deporting the smuggled workers, as federal authorities have done,<br \/>\nand jailing members of the Rodriguez family won&#8217;t make much<br \/>\ndifference in the overall immigration conundrum, Pontius said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There will be another person who takes their place in a<br \/>\nheartbeat. It&#8217;s a never-ending cycle.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hudson couple have pleaded guilty to holding illegal laborers in a camp and skimming their pay. Hudson &#8211; Leaning on her fence, retiree Ann Hoyt looked across at the dilapidated white barracks and winced. She had no clue they had held illegal Mexican workers who toiled on farms to pay smuggling debts. &#8220;Remember Auschwitz [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,15,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-immigrants","category-latin-america","category-migration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}