Court lets Florida woman who abused H-2A employees work for Florida man who did the same
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Florida companies and H-2A visa worker mistreatment
Abuse of H-2A workers isn’t limited to Florida companies, but the U.S. Department of Labor hasn’t had much trouble finding the problem here.
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An Avon Park woman who admitted to abusing H-2A visa workers as part of her guilty plea to racketeering has been granted permission to leave Florida to work while awaiting sentencing. The work? Supervising H-2A visa workers.
And, the Fort Meade company that Christina Gamez is working for, Gracia & Sons, is owned by a Frostproof’s Jose Gracia. He started Gracia & Sons while the U.S Department of Labor was about to debar his first company, Jose M. Gracia Harvesting, from the H-2A visa program after violations that included underpaying workers and forcing them to sleep on the floor in rodent- and fly-infested housing.
Gracia’s letter in Tampa federal court documents requesting Gamez’s permission to leave the middle district of Florida said he needed her “to travel to assist in work as I need. She will be monitoring the housing, work placement or any other task(s) that might be needed.”
The motion was unopposed by prosecutors.
What follows about Gamez, Gracia, Gracia & Sons and Jose M. Gracia Harvesting comes from Gamez’s guilty plea in Tampa federal court; U.S. Department of Labor documents and releases on Gracia and his companies; and state of Florida records.
After a Miami Herald reporter left a message at Gracia & Sons for Gracia, a woman called back and said any callback would follow a conversation with their attorney. The company has not returned the call for comment.
What is the H-2A temporary worker program?
The H-2A guest worker visa program allows companies to use non-immigrant foreign workers for seasonal work if the company anticipates a shortage of U.S. workers. The work often involves agricultural tasks, such as harvesting produce. Employers must:
▪ Try to fill the jobs with United States-based workers first;
▪ Pay special rates for H-2A workers;
▪ Provide housing and transportation to the job site;
▪ Provide meals if the housing doesn’t have kitchens or kitchenettes;
▪ Provide H-2A workers work that’s at least 75% of the work specified in the job contract
Some companies employ H-2A workers directly. Others hire a farm labor contracting company, such as Gracia & Sons, Jose M. Gracia Harvesting or Los Villatoros Harvesting (LVH).
Christina Gamez worked LVH. What she did as LVH’s recordkeeper/bookeeper, part-time H-2A worker supervisor and liaison with LVH’s payroll and filing service provider will have her in federal prison.
Paying to work, not being paid for work, forced labor
State records say Bartow’s Bladimir Moreno registered LVH to do business in Florida in 2010 and ran it through its dissolution in 2019. Moreno is facing his own federal court charges of racketeering, forfeiture, forced labor and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The Department of Justice says LVH brought in H-2A workers from Mexico to harvest produce in Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia and Indiana. Gamez’s guilty plea says she, Moreno, Efrain Cabrera (charged with two counts of forced labor) and Alexander Moreno (aka “Quichi”) “engaged in a pattern of racketeering” from at least March 2016 through August 2017.
Gamez’s guilty plea separates what she did from what she knew about but ignored. She did the latter as she “continued to work for LVH and assisted B. Moreno with recordkeeping, office management and other tasks material to LVH’s continued operation.”
For example, Gamez knew LVH recruiters in Mexico made prospective H-2A workers pony up “a significant fee” to work for LVH while lying about about how much LVH would pay them in the United States. She knew “LVH had leverage over its H-2A workers because the workers were desperate to pay off the debts that they had incurred” to the recruiters, and LVH used that “to coerce the workers into continuing to work for the company.”
Gamez knew LVH “routinely and consistently” didn’t reimburse H-2A workers for travel from Mexico; for food; for housing; or for transportation between housing and the jobsite. She knew LVH’s H-2A contracts said a restaurant would feed the workers, but someone else — Bladimir Moreno relatives or friends — did it and the workers paid for it. She knew Moreno “falsified documents” to conceal the food fraud.
Gamez knew “many” H-2A workers kept working for LVH past expiration of their H-2A visas. They would be paid in cash, and workers who got paid in cash might get “only a small fraction of the money” LVH owed them.
Gamez knew about the housing overcrowding as “she routinely observed six workers sharing a single hotel/motel room.”
As for what Gamez did, in Enterprise, Georgia, she took H-2A workers passports when they first arrived, then gave them to “Quichi,” who held onto them for the same reason sex traffickers take their victim’s identification and cash.
“Gamez understood that A. Moreno held onto the passports for the purpose of discouraging workers from fleeing LVH so that the workers would be coerced to continue laboring for LVH under the conditions detailed above,” her guilty plea says.
She sent Labor’s Wage and Hour Division fraudulent emails concerning how much LVH paid H-2A workers toiling on a Hardee County farm and the reimbursement of their travel expenses. To fake reimbursement of travel for workers on Indiana farms in Vincennes and Oaktown, she and “Quichi” created fake reimbursement receipts.
Gamez pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering in Tampa federal court.
Living with rodents, handling food without toilets or soap nearby
Before and after LVH’s documented mistreatment of H-2A workers, Jose M. Gracia Harvesting inflicted its own brand of the same in Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. And the company got caught. Repeatedly.
According to an administrative law judge’s order, Labor’s Wage and Hour Division investigated Gracia Harvesting from June 18-July 22, 2016, June 12-July 21, 2017, and Nov. 11, 2017 through June 15, 2018.
The first two times, investigators found the company had shorted workers pay and assessed civil money penalties for violating H-2A program guidelines. Labor investigation No. 3 found violations worth more civil money penalties and the Feb. 7, 2019, letter notifying Gracia Harvesting of that also included a three-year debarment from future labor certifications.
Labor said the violations found included:
▪ Not offering the work to U.S. workers first
▪ Not paying the required hourly wage or for all hours worked
▪ Overcrowded worker housing with “rodent and fly infestation” and workers sleeping on the floor
▪ Housing without heat in the winter
▪ Not providing meals or kitchen facilities
▪ Workers picking food in fields didn’t have “toilets within a quarter of a mile from the work site” or “soap, potable water and single-use towels for handwashing”
Gracia Harvesting requested a hearing before an Office of Administrative Law Judge after each investigation. Though the case was assigned in July 2019, Gracia Harvesting and Labor’s Wage and Hour Division didn’t reach a settlement agreement until December. Gracia Harvesting paid $69,372.14 in owed wages to 152 workers, $456.40 per worker; a $180,000 civil money penalty, reduced from $263,935.80; and entered into an enhanced compliance agreement for three years instead of being debarred.
But from that Feb. 7, 2019, letter until Dec. 16, 2021, there was the threat that Jose M. Gracia Harvesting would be debarred and out of the H-2A visa worker business. That’s when another company arose from the Polk County dirt, but one not officially dirtied by Gracia Harvesting’s past H-2A sins.
State records say Jose M. Gracia registered Gracia & Sons as a Florida corporation on Dec. 20, 2019. The company’s address was 9100 Rhoden Loop Rd., a chunk of Fort Meade that Gracia bought in 1998, according to Polk County property records. Gracia is listed as the president and the only officer the company has had.
The U.S. Department of Labor notes Gracia Harvesting provided workers for Melon 1, “one of the nation’s largest melon distributors,” and Gracia & Sons letterhead looks like a couple of watermelon wedges.
A current listing for H-2A workers on a Department of Labor website lists the same phone number for Gracia & Sons that is listed on at least two job sites for Jose M. Gracia Harvesting.
To file a complaint
The Wage and Hour complaint section of Labor’s website contains information on how to file a complaint if you believe your employer has violated the requirements of the H-2A visa program or the Fair Labor Standards Act. Miami’s Wage and Hour Division office can be reached at 305-598-6607. The national helpline is 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243).
No matter a worker’s immigration or citizenship status, he or she can speak with the department, which says it can handle calls in more than 200 languages.
Herald Staff Writer Omar Rodriguez Ortiz provided information for this story.
This story was originally published April 26, 2022 at 8:46 AM.
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