Lawsuit: Michigan Farm Forced Foreign H-2A Visa Workers to Pick Blueberries for Slave Wages

A farm in western Michigan trafficked foreign workers through the H-2A visa program and forced them to pick blueberries for slave wages, a lawsuit alleges.

Mexican nationals Luis Guzman Rojas and Feliciano Velasco Rojas, both represented by the Michigan Immigration Rights Center, filed suit against First Pick Farms after they said they, as well as other foreign H-2A visa workers, were forced to take jobs for just 50 cents per pound of blueberries picked.

According to the lawsuit, Guzman Rojas and Velasco Rojas arrived in the United States on H-2A visas — the federal program that allows farms to annually outsource an unlimited number of American agricultural jobs to foreign workers who can extend their stay for up to three years.

A nursery based in Miami, Florida, is accused of discriminating against qualified Americans for blue-collar, agricultural jobs in Georgia, importing foreign H-2A visa workers instead. https://t.co/FT0bUa80ru

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 28, 2023

While staying at a residence in North Carolina, the two men said they were woken up in the middle of the night in 2017 by a man who told them they were being taken to Michigan to work on a blueberry farm and were given fraudulent identifications to help conceal the scheme.

Guzman Rojas and Velasco Rojas were threatened with being turned in to federal immigration authorities if they refused to comply with the orders, the lawsuit alleges. The two men were among about 30 foreign H-2A visa workers who were trafficked into blueberry picking jobs at the Michigan farm, the lawsuit claims.

While working on the blueberry farm, Guzman Rojas and Velasco Rojas said they were forced to live in squalid conditions with the other foreign H-2A visa workers and made to pay rent. One of the men said he had to sleep on the floor, which “nearly broke” him physically.

At the end of the growing season, the men were taken back to North Carolina and expected to remain quiet about the scheme.

A Texas-based farm discriminated against qualified Americans for crop harvesting jobs, instead hiring foreign workers that they imported on the H-2A visa program, the Department of Justice (DOJ) states. https://t.co/gYLurPgrNG

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 25, 2022

As Breitbart News has chronicled for years, the program is often used to replace Americans and preserve the low cost of agricultural labor.

In 1997, a little more than 16,000 foreign visa workers were imported to take American agriculture jobs. By 2021, that number ballooned to a record 258,000 foreign visa workers — an increase in the H-2A visa program of more than 1,500 percent in less than 25 years.

The case is Rojas v. First Pick Farms and was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.