Couple Indicted for Alien Smuggling and Forced Labor
Department of Justice
PUBLISHED: Thu, JUN 1st 2023 @ 8:50 am EDT by Jared Culver
Modern slavery continues in the United States as the border crisis is exposed as the current slave trade pipeline. A Georgia couple, Efrain Gonzalez, 40, and Estella Gonzalez, 34, were indicted on 16 counts, including labor trafficking conspiracy, forced labor, and alien smuggling. The couple forced foreign victims to work at two restaurants. For all the talk of how we just need more legal pathways to work, tens of thousands of parolees and asylum seekers with employment authorization from the Biden Administration are not reversing the growing child and forced labor across the country. This, despite Biden also doubling H-2B visas, which this couple would have been eligible to apply for if they sought legal workers. Rather than a worker shortage, I think we have an honest employer shortage.
These tragic captive labor stories seem to have the same fact pattern. The indictment alleges use of force, threats of force, and abuse of law and legal process to force vulnerable migrants to work for profit. McDonald's franchisees were recently caught using [link url="
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/mcdonalds-franchisees-fined-over-child-l..." title="child labor" target="_blank"]child labor]/link] with kids as young as ten. What in the world is happening in this country with employers exploiting every worker they can get their hands on while demanding ever higher numbers of immigrant workers?
Worker exploitation is becoming as routine as the daily footage of chaos at the border. These dueling crises are inextricably linked. As more vulnerable foreign workers stream into the country desperate for work, the apparent hordes of unscrupulous employers are descending on them like locusts.
https://www.numbersusa.com/blog/couple-indicted-alien-smuggling-and-forced-labor
