Subject: Migrant Farm Labor Crew Operators Indicted

From: [email-masked] (Nigel Allen)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1993 08:02:13 GMT

Here is a press release from the U.S. National Archives.  

I downloaded the press release from the PR On-Line BBS in Maryland at
410-363-0834. 

 Justice Investigation Results in Grand Jury Indictment of Migrant
Farm Labor Crew Operators
 To: National Desk, Agriculture Writer
 Contact: Julie Anbender of the U.S. Department of Justice,
          202-514-2007

   WASHINGTON, July 28  -- Acting Assistant Attorney 
General for Civil Rights James P. Turner today announced
that a federal grand jury has indicted the operators of an alleged
three-state ring of illegal immigrant farm labor crews on
violations of conspiracy, labor, peonage, and narcotics laws.
   The indictment was returned yesterday against Carrie Mae Bonds,
Willie Bonds Sr. and Willie Bonds Jr. in Raleigh, N.C., following
an 18-month investigation by the Justice Department's Civil
Rights Division, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Labor.
   The Bonds operated labor crews in North Carolina, South
Carolina and Georgia, the indictment said.  The defendants
recruited homeless people from soup kitchens and temporary labor
pools and promised workers high wages, free lodgings, drugs,
alcohol and cigarettes, the indictment said.  The defendants
conspired to keep workers in conditions of peonage, threatening
them with violence and preventing them from leaving until they had
paid off debts for food and housing, the indictment said.
   "The Department of Justice is determined to ensure that farms and
labor operators who use seasonal and migrant workers abide by
federal laws," said Turner. "We want to insure that those trying to
rise out of poverty do not fall into peonage."
   Counts one to three of the indictment charge conspiracy and
substantive violations of 29 U.S.C. 1851, the Migrant and Seasonal
Agricultural Worker Protection Act ("MSPA").  Count four charges
a conspiracy to hold workers in a condition of peonage, in violation
of 18 U.S.C. 371 and 1581.  Count five charges the distribution
of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. 841.
   The indictment also alleges that the Bonds were cited numerous
times by the Department of Labor beginning in 1987 for numerous
safety and other violations of MSPA but nonetheless continued to
operate migrant crews into the 1990s.
   The maximum penalty on each of the MSPA counts is one year
imprisonment, a $100,000 fine or both.  The maximum penalty on the
conspiracy to engage in peonage count is five years imprisonment,
$250,000 fine, or both.  The maximum penalty on the narcotics
distribution count is 40 years imprisonment, $250,000 fine, or
both.

 -30-

-- 
Nigel Allen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada  [email-masked]