NC migrant workers to receive $150,000 in human trafficking lawsuit settlement
In 2020, 13 Mexican visa holders left their hometowns to pick blueberries and blackberries in southeastern North Carolina.
This week, a settlement awarded them a total of $150,000 in response to a human trafficking lawsuit. The farms and the contractors who brought the workers to the U.S. withheld thousands of dollars they were owed, threatened them with deportation if they fled and sexually assaulted one woman, the federal lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit is just one of several alleging misuse of foreign workers with H-2A visas in North Carolina in recent years, a 2023 investigation by The Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer found.