GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Two migrant workers are accusing a Michigan blueberry farm of human trafficking, involuntary servitude, and forced labor. Plaintiffs Luis Guzman Rojas and Feliciano Velasco Rojas say they were illegally transported alongside thirty other workers from a farm in North Carolina and forced to pick blueberries up to twelve hours per day, seven days per week.

First Pick Farms and its associated businesses are the defendants in the case, which was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center will represent the farm workers.

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“Given how serious human trafficking is, we need to make use of all tools available to us in order to vindicate the rights of victims of human trafficking,” said Gonzalo Peralta, staff attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.

Guzman and Velasco had obtained H-2A temporary agriculture visas to work at a North Carolina farm in 2017. One night, they and thirty coworkers were woken up and photographed. A First Pick Farms employee, Antonio Sanchez, told them they were being transported to a farm in Michigan. This violated the terms of their immigration status, since H-2A visas are tied to specific employers.

Sanchez allegedly forced the workers to board a van and drove them from North Carolina to First Pick Farms in Michigan. He gave the workers fake IDs, which they were forced to use in employee documentation, and charged them $110 apiece for the forged documents.

The workers were also charged $25 per refueling stop during their transport from North Carolina, then $20 per week to live in an unfurnished house, where thirty male workers slept on the floor and shared two bathrooms. Male and female workers were prohibited from speaking to or associating with each other, although they lived in the same house.

The defendants processed the workers’ employee documentation with the forged IDs and used this as legal blackmail, threatening to report the workers to immigration authorities if they protested their working conditions.

“They were told that immigration would be called on them if they voiced any issues about what was happening,” Peralta said. “Then they were made to work during the blueberry season of 2017 living in pretty bad conditions.”

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The complaint alleges that workers were forced to pick blueberries for long, grueling days, and their employer failed to record the number of hours worked on paystubs as legally required. Guzman was told to drive workers to and from their housing in Wyoming, Michigan, although he did not possess a U.S. driver license.

“It was something very painful, it was to a certain degree mentally painful,” Velasco said in a press release. “We are accustomed to work but when we were transported to Michigan we were exhausted mentally and physically. Our families were also affected who were sick and we had taken these jobs to try to earn enough for their medications but we were not able to earn enough to get those. Additionally, the conditions, being unable to rest because we had to sleep on the floor, nearly broke me.”

After the 2017 blueberry season, Velasco, Guzman, and the other workers were taken back to North Carolina. The plaintiffs are now seeking unspecified damages after unsuccessfully trying to resolve their complaint against First Pick Farms.

“No employee should be made to work under threat from their employer—particularly those individuals who are not from the United States and may be threatened for immigration consequences that are not their fault,” Peralta said. “They’re the victims in all this.”