This is the second in a series on human trafficking in Nebraska and the efforts of ILJ affiliate CIRA (Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement) to help the survivors.  

You can find the first of the series here: Freedom within Their Grasp.

I owe my soul to the company store…

Years of drought and crop failure have made farming an untenable way to make a living for many of the Indigenous people of Guatemala. The only good jobs to be had are in the making and selling of Indigenous tapestries for the tourist trade. But those who sell goods to tourists are targeted by gangs for extortion and violence.

But then, one day, a friend of a friend appears with an offer. He knows someone in the U.S.—someone who doesn’t ask questions and who will pay $14 an hour to work on a hydroponic tomato farm. The work won’t be too hard, the friend of a friend tells them, and most of the money they make can be sent back to their families. The owner will take care of everything.

And so, the young men leave their homes in rural Guatemala for rural Nebraska, to work on other people’s farms. There they find the pay is considerably less than what was promised. Strangely, they are paid by checks that can only be cashed at the owner’s hotel in town, where the owner takes a cut—a “handling fee.” He also requires his workers to buy their personal supplies at his “company store.” The young men see their debt spiraling, and the money they promised to send to their families is revealed to be nothing more than a deluded fantasy.

The work, too, is not as promised.  For ten hours a day, seven days a week, they are lifting heavy flats of tomatoes in temperatures soaring up to 130 degrees. They are not allowed sufficient water breaks. They are shouted at and threatened if they don’t work fast enough. And this is not even the worst of it. When the tomatoes don’t require their attention, they are assigned to work at a pig farm. The conditions there are more horrendous than anything the men can remember from back home.

“Our governor is himself a pig farmer,” says Astrid Munn, attorney for CIRA (Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement, our ILJ affiliate in Nebraska. “You need to understand that Nebraska treats pig farming very seriously. There are strict standards for cleanliness; workers must take a shower when they start their shift, wear hazmat suits, and the pigs are kept in an extremely clean environment. It is my understanding that none of these measures were being taken at this pig farm. The men were handling sick pigs, and they were wading in mucus, bodily fluids, and filth.

“This wasn’t just a humanitarian crisis,” she adds indignantly. “It was an animal rights crisis, too.”  

But complaining—or leaving—is out of the question for these men. The owner and his family appear to control the entire area. If these young men were to try to leave, the consequences for them would surely be severe. They are kept isolated. They speak no English and very little Spanish. And no one on the outside notices what is going on.

“There isn’t much awareness of what labor trafficking looks like in these rural areas,” states Astrid. “There was no reason other farmers would think anything untoward was happening —only that these farm laborers have a great work ethic.”

From the Nebraska Human Trafficking Task Force. illustrating the location of reports of human trafficking in Nebraska. 

The state’s larger cities—Omaha and Lincoln, the capital, are in the Eastern region (right), while the rural regions extend westward (left.)

The men continued working—months, even years—before the owner was finally caught, charged, and sentenced to 120 months in prison for his crimes.

Many of his victims—the survivors—were called to testify against their trafficker. In exchange for their willingness to cooperate, they were given deferred action—protection from deportation—and a work permit. Some went elsewhere in the state to find similar jobs under less harsh conditions. They may not have been immediately aware that they could be eligible for a T Visa, specifically designated for survivors of human trafficking. T visa recipients are generally allowed to remain in the U.S. for up to four years, with the possibility of obtaining a green card in the future under certain conditions.

Since the creation of the T Visa program in 2000, Congress has allotted 5,000 T Visas to trafficking survivors each year. Generally, fewer than 2,000 are granted. However, due to progress in reducing wait times as well as a growing awareness of the program, more than 3,000 T Visas of the 4,940 applications filed—the highest number in a single year to date—were approved in 2022.

Of all our ILJ sites, CIRA sees the most T Visa cases, and the men who worked at the tomato and pig farms are the reason why.  This notorious trafficking ring was broken after an extensive investigation by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice several years ago, yet Astrid still sees survivors coming forward to seek legal counsel.

“The harm the trafficker caused them—the verbal abuse, the manipulation, the threats, the inhuman conditions—it doesn’t leave them,” she says sadly. “I don’t know that it ever will.”  

To learn more about the trafficking of agricultural workers, please visit the National Human Trafficking Hotline. 

About the attorney in this story…

Astrid Nunn is CIRA’s lead attorney for U Visa, T Visa, and VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) cases. These are clients who have survived violent crimes or severe trafficking and then agreed to assist law enforcement with investigating and prosecuting these crimes. 

When she is not diligently working for justice for the most vulnerable in our society, Astrid moonlights as a stand-up comedian in several local venues.

To hear about her thoughts on immigration law, comedy, and the intersection between the two, please listen to this fascinating interview on Riverside Chats.

Photograph of farmworkers by Mark Stebnicki, pexels.com.