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THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1980<br />
voL,.cxxx .... NO. 44,741 c!~~~khtO 1080The New Y o r k h<br />
Thousands of Aliens Held<br />
In Virtual Slavery in U.S. -<br />
By JOHN M. CREWDSON<br />
Spd.lto'IhcNtrYorkT~<br />
--<br />
IMMOKALEE, Fla. -Uncounted thousands<br />
of Spanish-spealung aliens who flee<br />
da this country each<br />
-<br />
year to escape the<br />
erushing poverty of their homelands are<br />
being virtually enslaved, bought and sold<br />
en sopbti-ted ~11d-d labor ek<br />
They the<br />
country in consignments by selfde<br />
an c l guarded by day, beaten or threatened<br />
with harm or even death if they try<br />
to escape, their children held hostage to<br />
insure their continued servitude. Some<br />
ma ffnd themselves locked up by night<br />
times the workers held in bondage are little<br />
more than . children . . themselvps. .<br />
Of the 25,000 or so agricultural workers<br />
scribed labor contractors who deliver who come to Florida at the peak of the<br />
them to farmers and growers for bun- winter harvest season, Mr. Williams estidreds<br />
of dollars a head.<br />
mates, perhaps 2,000 are "trapped in<br />
how many find themselv=<br />
bound to<br />
ca‘m~;~&~;g,<br />
4 aesp<br />
who take advantage cially when they find the working condiof<br />
their illegal status, their na'ivete and<br />
their cultural alienation is not known.<br />
t i ons not to their libg, and that brings in<br />
the nastier elements of violence."<br />
But dozens of Immigration and Natu- When the harvest ends, the worker, if<br />
ralization Service officials, migrant aid he is lucky, is set free, often with only a<br />
lawyers, prosecutors, social workers, few dollars to show for weeks of labor. If<br />
union organizers and others who he is not so lucky he is sold by the farmer<br />
-k closely with migrant laborers said to mother farmer for several hundred<br />
&hterwews that they believed the prac- dollars, and the process hems again.<br />
. . . .<br />
tice. while not common, was probably a Peonage Moves With Migrants<br />
gmwing one involving thousands of mig<br />
rants Peonage, though it exists on farms and<br />
from the<br />
of ranches of the Southwest, is relatively unto<br />
the<br />
Virginia* common there because of the proximity<br />
the of Texas to to the Mexican border. California, Ari<br />
the orange groves of Florida.<br />
zona and Texas are flooded with lllega<br />
alien workers, and "there just isn't that<br />
Rising Tide of Immigration much excess demand for labor here,"<br />
"You're not talking about something said Lupe Sanchez of the Arizona Farrnisolated,"<br />
said William Burk, an assist- workers Union.<br />
a Border Pam1 chief in ~~1 Ria, Tex. Rather, it is in the c i t and ~ winter<br />
~umbmo MO-0, a senior official of the vegetable belts of Florida and the mato<br />
immignflm agrrtd. a<br />
fields of Idaho and on the tobacco farms<br />
of Virginia and North Carolina that farmsignificant<br />
mount of that going he are at a premium, so much go<br />
said. that the coyotes who smuggle them north<br />
. * . * . * or east can easily command fees of a<br />
worker.<br />
Existence is hard enou for the inegal<br />
aliens who toil ir~ the fie1 e<br />
. a -<br />
from sunup t~ Federal officials say one ot the largest<br />
sundown, picking lemons in Arizona, let- smuggling opefations is run by two Flortuce<br />
in California or melons in south ids men who operate a tomato farm.<br />
Texas for a few dollan a day, cooking They are under investigation by the +imover<br />
W fires, sleep@ in the fields at migration service and the Justice Deni%t<br />
and watching, always, for the went, and a Federal grand jury-is<br />
r-afomd agents of La Mima, the<br />
nit& States Border Patrol.<br />
But for those who unwittingly stumble<br />
into the underworld of the slave traders,<br />
life can be infinitely worse. Shackled with<br />
inflated debts they can never repay, they<br />
f<br />
hearin evidence in the CW.<br />
Unti recently, tne vast majority of<br />
f-worken in the south and Southeast<br />
were black. ~ uthe t makeup of the farm<br />
labor force is changing rapidly all along<br />
the Eastern Seaboard.<br />
143<br />
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