Colorado farmers have become increasingly reliant on seasonal foreign labor to grow the food that makes it your local grocery store.

The H-2A visa allows American employers to hire foreign laborers for agricultural work when they cannot find domestic help to do the job. Employers are supposed to pay for nearly all their guests’ expenses: housing, tools and transportation to and from the U.S., as well as to their work sites.

But a Denver Post investigation found Colorado growers routinely short-change these vulnerable workers.

Nearly one in 10 Colorado employers who have used the H-2A program since 2015 have stolen wages or illegally charged their workers outside the bounds of the visa, a Post analysis of federal labor data found. Workers weren’t reimbursed for their visa applications or transportation. Some had illegal deductions taken for Medicare and Social Security. Others were forced to pay for their own housing or tools necessary for their work.

Unenforced Labor

In this three-part report, The Denver Post details abuses of foreign workers in Colorado’s agricultural supply chain — and a lack of action from state and federal regulators.

Click here to read more from this series.

One in six Colorado farmers who brought H-2A workers to the state since 2015 have broken labor laws, The Post found, the majority of which concern wage theft and illegal cost-shifting onto workers.

The state and federal government rarely bar these companies from bringing guest workers to the United States, despite having the ability to do so.

Immigrants and Latino workers are especially susceptible to having their wages stolen, experts say, while the visa program is ripe for exploitation.

“It all comes down to control,” said Jennifer Lee, a former attorney with Colorado Legal Services, which represents migrant workers. “They have total control over these people’s everyday lives.”

This is the second story in The Post’s three-part series on seasonal migrant workers that also examines how sheepherders are particularly vulnerable to workplace abuses. A growing body of Colorado employers, though, are joining a national movement designed to ensure safer working conditions on American farms.

The Post’s yearlong investigation included on-the-ground reporting from across Colorado, along with interviews with more than three dozen sources. The newspaper also reviewed hundreds of pages of Department of Labor investigative documents and state and federal lawsuits.

The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment and the U.S. Department of Labor declined interview requests for this series.

In a statement, the federal Labor Department said the agency “concentrates our efforts on protecting workplace rights for low-wage, vulnerable workers — including the many H-2A agricultural workers whose ability to work in the U.S., as well as their housing and transportation, are tied to their specific place of employment.”

Bruce Talbott, a longtime Palisade peach grower, said he thinks worker advocacy and legal aid organizations are operating in bad faith. Laborers in the H-2A program, he said, are “well taken care of.”

“It’s in their interest to find or generate or bring doubt about worker abuses,” Talbott said. “Those who benefit from abuses and atrocities present them as the norm.”

Colorado farms rely on H-2A program

Colorado growers overwhelmingly say the H-2A program is critical for their survival.

That’s because Americans, they say, simply aren’t willing to do this difficult work for near minimum wage.

“If the H-2A labor pool went away, I would shut down,” said David Harold, who operates the Tuxedo Corn Company in Olathe with his father.

Talbott, whose family has been growing Palisade peaches for a century, said 90% of his workforce comes from the H-2A program.

Some of the problem, farmers say, is the availability of domestic workers. Most American laborers only want to work on the farm part-time — if at all.

“It’s 50-50 whether the local workforce will even show up tomorrow,” saidErin Dreistadt, who runs Aspen Moon Farm in Boulder County. “People have so many options.”

Growers also say there’s a problem with the American work ethic. They don’t want to get down and dirty in the fields or work long hours in the blazing Colorado sun.

“Very few white people work for me,” Harold said. “If you walk onto my place and you’re white, you’ll cost me more ’cause you’re a sucky worker. Some people are just lazy; some people don’t have the capacity to work hard.”

The generation who used to farm in the United States is also beginning to age out — and their kids, by and large, aren’t taking on the family business.

The average farmer in 2024 is 57.5 years old — a sharp increase from 1978, when that figure stood at just over 50.

“For (foreign workers), this job is a windfall, a treasure chest,” Harold said. “For us, it’s pretty (expletive) wages. I wouldn’t leave my four kids for six months. These people are potentially desperate.”

Some farmers use recruiters to fill their workforce needs. But many rely on their workers spreading the word amongst their friends and family.

“All our workers are related to each other somehow,” said Gwen Cameron, who co-owns Rancho Durazno in Palisade with her father.

Manuel Holguin came to Tuxedo Corn for his first growing season six years ago. His recruiter? His mother, who has been making the trek to Olathe from Sinaloa, Mexico, for 20 years.

The 28-year-old comes to the U.S. on the H-2A visa for many of the same reasons as his compatriots on the farm: money.

Holguin said he makes twice here what he could make back home. As he sorted onions at a warehouse in the fall, he talked about his wife and 4-year-old daughter he left behind for half the year in Mexico.

“Everything I’m doing here is for them,” he said.

It’s always hard to leave home when the kids are little, said Alejandro Soria, another Tuxedo Corn worker.

But one day working in Colorado can earn enough money to dress one of his three children from head to toe, he said. In Mexico, that takes a week.

If someone at home gets sick, “you have to sell stuff to pay for the treatment,” he said.

Soria, on his off days here, goes into town to buy gifts: clothes, toys, laptops and phones. With Christmastime nearing, Soria knew he had to bring home the goods.

“I’m going home happy,” he said with a smile. “We work here and then go home to have a better life.”

More and more American employers in recent years are turning to foreign workers.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor approved hiring 378,000 workers — more than double the number of H-2A workers approved in 2016 and seven times the number in 2005, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Colorado, similarly, has seen a drastic uptick in foreign labor.

Centennial State employers requested just under 4,000 workers in 2023, an increase from less than 1,200 workers a decade ago, according to Colorado Department of Labor and Employment records. In 2001, just 246 people were approved to work here on H-2A visas.

Not just a “few bad apples”

Advocates over the years have compiled mountains of examples that they say show Colorado employers failing to treat their workers with basic dignity and human rights.

“The number of violations… indicate that this is not just a ‘few bad apples,’ ” the Agricultural Workers’ Rights Coalition wrote to lawmakers in 2021 as they debated a landmark farmworker bill. “It is the result of a structural power dynamic that tends toward exploitation.”

In 2018, a good Samaritan delivering food to farmworkers at Petrocco Farms in Brighton saw a box truck with 15 to 20 men inside, crammed onto benches, the workers’ coalition said. The heat was so severe, one worker said, that his phone wouldn’t work. The truck only had two small vents letting air into the vehicle. (Petrocco Farms’ owners did not respond to requests for comment.)

Another grower, Southern Colorado Farms in Saguache County, said in their H-2A job order that workers could not have visitors without written requests by employees.

“Requests for visitors may be denied for no cause,” the employer wrote, according to the workers’ coalition. No members of the opposite sex would be allowed at any time, and visitors couldn’t stay the night.

Advocates said a local restaurant employee would buy food for these workers because they didn’t get enough to eat from their bosses. The employee, according to testimony to state lawmakers, would have to surreptitiously throw food over the fence. If they were caught, the workers would get in trouble. (Farm operators did not respond to requests for comment.)

At Hirakata Farms in southeast Colorado, a federal Department of Labor probe in 2017 found H-2A workers lived in bedrooms without windows and working lights. Mildew grew on the bathtub. A car that workers used had a large crack on the driver-side windshield. (Michael Hirikata, the farm’s owner, said he cooperated fully with the labor department and rectified the mistakes.)

At Galicia Farms in Fort Lupton, workers in 2017 were forced to cover a large hole near the dining table with a metal sheet to avoid rodents and insects infesting their home, the federal Department of Labor found.Laborers in the fields had to walk 1.5 miles to use the bathrooms, which lacked toilet paper and were “overloaded and filthy,” investigators found.

Ernestine Galicia, one of the farm owners, acknowledged to The Post that they had violations during this one investigation but said the issues were remedied promptly.

“We treat our workers very good,” she said.

At Dionisio Produce & Farms in Pueblo, 12 guest laborers in 2011 shared one stove, Department of Labor records show. The nearest shower sat three-quarters of a mile away. (The farm’s owner, Russell Dionisio, declined to comment on the investigation.)

Fifteen workers at Korby Sod in northern Colorado were crammed into housing meant for six workers, the state’s Department of Labor and Employment alleged last year. Instead of replacing a malfunctioning septic tank at one of the worker houses, the employer required laborers to pump the sewage themselves into a nearby field, state investigators said.

The farm’s owner, Steve Korby, also verbally abused employees, threw tools and keys at them and “used a shotgun to intimidate them by firing live rounds into the field,” the department alleged.

Korby, in an interview with The Post, called those allegations “all lies” made up by disgruntled employees he accused of embezzling funds. He agreed to a settlement with the state, with no admission of wrongdoing, that included a three-year probationary period.

“It’s a smear campaign,” he said.

Some Colorado growers have repeatedly violated federal laws, yet continue to be allowed to hire foreign workers.

In 1998, 2000, 2001, 2006 and 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor found Angelo Palombo, who runs Star Farms in Brighton, failed to pay his seasonal workers wages when due, according to investigation records obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In 2006, investigators found the farm owner was “willfully violating migrant housing requirements.” Portable toilets had not been cleared for over a week, the agency ruled, and remained “fly-infested and extremely dirty.” The conditions represented “repeated and willful” field sanitation violations.

Four years later, labor investigators found 191 migrant worker violations at Star Farms, impacting 140 laborers. The department fined Star Farms $12,200 and ordered it to pay its workers $123,330.54 in back wages.

The federal probe found employees were being charged $1 for every $100 to receive cash instead of checks, documents show. Workers didn’t receive wages at one point for five weeks. Lack of timely payment is also considered a form of wage theft.

Last year, Palombo acknowledged in bankruptcy filings that he hadn’t paid workers more than $231,000 for over a month, prompting the Department of Labor to initiate another investigation. Palombo says he sought permission from the bankruptcy court to pay his workers the wages he had not paid them, on time, for five weeks, and he claims that shows his commitment to doing right by them. But the motion that sought the court’s permission to pay the withheld back wages he owed his workers made clear that he would not be able to harvest his crops if his workers went unpaid and left his employment.

“Every year it’s the same,” one laborer told The Post last year through a translator. The 28-year-old father of two said his wife and children back in Mexico wonder why he continues working in the U.S. “This year they said it would change. But it’s a lie — we come and it’s the same thing all over again.”

This year, despite the litany of Labor Department findings, Star Farms was again allowed to bring H-2A workers to Colorado.

In January, Palombo sued The Post and one of its reporters for libel. A Denver District Court judge in April dismissed the lawsuit. Palombo has appealed that ruling.

More susceptible to wage theft

Stolen wages and improper cost-shifting onto workers represent common themes among Colorado employers of migrant seasonal workers.

The Department of Labor continually found farm owners failed to pay workers on time or at the correct rate. Investigators also routinely discovered employers did not pay workers for their travel to and from the United States, or forced workers to take out loans that had to be paid back.

For instance, Tagawa Greenhouse Enterprises, the state’s largest H-2A employer with 155 guest workers, failed to pay the correct wage to all its workers and took improper deductions for Medicare and Social Security, Department of Labor documents show.

The feds in 2020 ordered the company to pay $339,443 in back wages and nearly $8,000 in fines.

State labor officials say the same top issues cut across all workers, whether they’re U.S. citizens or seasonal migrant laborers: wages not being paid on time; overtime going unpaid; lack of rest periods; and paid sick leave issues.

But wage theft, in particular, is especially prevalent in industries that employ immigrants and Latinos.

Nearly $728 million in wages are stolen annually from hundreds of thousands of Colorado workers, leading to more than $45 million in lost tax revenue, according to a2022 reportfrom the Colorado Fiscal Institute.

The report found that Latino workers are the demographic group most likely to experience wage theft. They make up only 20% of Colorado workers but nearly 30% of those at high risk of wage theft. White workers are slightly less likely to have their wages stolen, researchers found.

Generally, employers target lower-wage workers at a higher rate, according to the report.Nearly 440,000 low-wage Colorado workers lose money to this scheme every year.

Migrant or immigrant workers also commonly face wage theft from employers due to their isolation and tenuous immigrant status “which makes them fearful of rocking the boat and getting fired, sent home or being reported to” immigration authorities, said Lee, the former Colorado Legal Services attorney and current law professor at Temple University who specializes in low-wage workers and immigrant rights.

Many of these laborers, she said, may also not know their rights.

“Shackles of modern-day slavery”

These abuses are hardly just endemic to Colorado.

Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice found dozens of victims had been trafficked to the southeast United States using the H-2A program under the pretext of serving as agricultural workers. But investigators — during a three-year sting titled “Operation Blooming Onion” — found these workers in Georgia, Florida and Texas were held in work camps with little to no food, limited plumbing and no safe water.

The government accused 24 people of raping, kidnapping and threatening or attempting to kill workers or their families. At least two people died from working conditions, federal investigators said. Meanwhile, the perpetrators raked in more than $200 million.

“The American dream is a powerful attraction for destitute and desperate people across the globe, and where there is need, there is greed from those who will attempt to exploit these willing workers for their own obscene profits,” David H. Estes, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, said in a statement at the time.

More than 100 individuals had been subjected, he said, to the “shackles of modern-day slavery.”

A 2013 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center — titled “Close to Slavery” — found guest workers across the country routinely have their wages stolen, are forced to mortgage their futures to obtain these jobs and are held “virtually captive” by employers.

The program, the authors write, “is rife with labor and human rights violations committed by employers who prey on a highly vulnerable workforce.”

A representative from the Southern Poverty Law Center, in remarks to a U.S. House subcommittee in 2016, said the H-2A program provides “no realistic means for workers to exercise the few rights they have.”

“It is virtually impossible to create a guest worker program for low-wage workers that does not involve systemic abuse and thus erode the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers,” Meredith B. Stewart said. “The H-2 guest worker program should not be the model for the future flow of workers to this country. If the current H-2 program is allowed to continue, it should be completely overhauled.”

Farmworker attorneys and industry experts say the problem is not limited to individual employers. It’s the entire system.

Workers coming to this country on H-2A visas are tied to one employer, meaning they can’t find a new job if a boss abuses them.

Wages in the U.S. are still much better than back home, so workers fear being sent home or not asked back the following year if they speak up, experts say.

“Fear of retaliation is a big barrier to utilizing protections under the law,” said Jenifer Rodriguez, managing attorney for the Migrant Farm Worker Division at Colorado Legal Services.

Updating the H-2A program

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet has unsuccessfully tried to revamp the H-2A program for years.

The Democrat has twice introduced a bill to overhaul a system he called “hopelessly and embarrassingly outdated.” Neither made it to the president’s desk.

TheAffordable and Secure Food Act would allow employers to hire workers year-round (the current system mandates workers return home and come back each year). The legislation would also modernize the application process, strengthen protections against employer retaliation and establish a process for agricultural workers — along with their spouses and children — to earn legal status.

“This has been going on for decades, and we have ignored this problem,”Bennet said in December 2022 on the Senate floor, “in part, because the food keeps showing up somehow miraculously in our grocery stores, as if somebody waved a wand to put it there.”

The economic pressures will eventually be so severe that Congress will be forced to respond, Bennet told The Post.

“The question is how deep the self-inflected wounds are that we want to suffer before we get something done,” he said.

Though his bills stalled, Bennet and 14 senators wrote to the Department of Labor in support of a proposed rule meant to strengthen protections for workers under the H-2A program.

Therule, finalized April 26, expands anti-retaliation provisions; improves transportation safety; clarifies the law surrounding employers confiscating passports and other personal documents; and requires states to discontinue services to banned employers.

“H-2A workers too frequently face abusive working conditions that undercut all farmworkers in the U.S.,” acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said in a news release. “This rule ensures farmworkers employed through the H-2A program are treated fairly, have a voice in their workplace and are able to perform their work safely. It also promotes employer accountability, benefitting all farmworkers by upholding labor standards.”

Some growers and industry groups expressed alarm at the changes.

“It’s a very exciting and terrifying time to be in H-2A,” said Tom Bortnyk, senior vice president and general counsel forMas Labor, a national consulting firm that helps employers hire seasonal workers.

Bortnyk, at an industry conference in Pueblo last year, told employers that the rule was “highly problematic.” Under the new regulations, growers and ranchers would be required to allow labor organizations to access their workers — even on private property.

Employers, he said, could be negatively impacted by unionization, though these organizing efforts are exceedingly rare.

“It’s mind-boggling,” Bortnyk told the group.

State labor officials, though, are very sensitive to agricultural employers, said Talbott, the Palisade peach grower.

“They have not been a worry for us,” he said.

Much of the bad blood stems from legislation brought by Colorado Democrats at the state Capitol three years ago.

SB-087, dubbed the Farm Workers’ Bill of Rights, represented a sea change in how labor is paid and treated on Colorado’s nearly 40,000 farms and ranches.

The lawremoved the exemption of agricultural labor from state and local minimum wage laws, which had long carved out farm workers, and allowed these laborers to join unions and collectively bargain. Farm workers would be eligible for overtime, and be entitled to regular meal and rest breaks during the day.

The legislation also expressly prohibited retaliation against workers, and allowed employees to bring claims to district court or the state Department of Labor and Employment.

“These are workers that have really been left behind from worker protections, and I think Senate Bill 87 brings them in line with the protections that are enjoyed by every other worker in Colorado,” sponsor Sen. Dominick Moreno, a Commerce City Democrat, said at the time.

Farmers said the process made them out be the villains, with a few bad apples placing unfair blame on the entire industry.

In June 2022, Talbott and a group of farmers sued the state over one of the law’s key provisions, which allows certain service providers — such as health care workers, government officials or attorneys — the right to speak with workers at their places of employment. The group argued this violated their constitutional rights, saying they’ve been “targeted by activists” who will invade their private property or bring diseases to their crops.

They dropped the case the following year.

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Originally Published: September 1, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.