Migrants in New York victims of forced labor and sex trafficking
Trigger warning*
The Miami Herald reports that the U.S. Federal prosecutors brought charges of forced labor and sex trafficking against a New York man after discovering he was forcing migrants from Guatemala to work on farms and that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant after abducting her on two separate occasions.
If they refused to work, they would “suffer serious harm”
Agusto Francisco of Dunkirk, NY stands accused of helping migrants cross into the U.S. and then shuttling them to various farms in the Dunkirk area around Lake Erie between September 2018 and September 2020. Once on the farms, he charged them for housing and transportation to work, taking a cut out of their pay to cover their “expenses”. If workers refused to work or pushed back against the fees, they were threatened with violence.