Mexican workers escape and accuse Putnam greenhouse of labor trafficking

Three weeks after their boss stopped paying them, two Mexican seasonal laborers claim, they escaped from a Putnam County nursery and greenhouse compound and sought legal help to recover lost wages.

Victor Alvarez Garcia and Martin Magallon Del Rio accused their boss of luring them to America with a promise of lucrative jobs and decent work conditions, under the H-2A visa program, according to a complaint filed Oct. 14 in U.S. District Court, White Plains, only to “extract their labor for unlawfully low wages.”

Their boss, Jesus Flores, is the president of Berkshire Nursery & Supply Corp. in Patterson — the business authorized to employ H-2A visa laborers — and CEO of Rosa Contracting Inc. and two similarly named businesses in New Rochelle that were not authorized to employ the men.

Flores did not respond to email messages asking for his side of the story.

The H-2A visa program allows businesses to hire nonimmigrant foreign laborers for seasonal agricultural work, if there are no willing and qualified U.S. workers available for the jobs.

Flores, according to the complaint, uses a family network in Mexico that recruits seasonal workers.

In February, Flores was seeking 12 laborers for Berkshire. (According to a U.S. Department of Labor database, Berkshire was approved for ten workers.)

The 45-acre property includes greenhouses and a nursery for gardening and landscaping customers, according to its website, and the business also sells statues, stone work, fire pits and outdoor furniture.

Garcia and Del Rio claim that Flores’ brother-in-law recommended them for jobs at Berkshire, and they met with Flores’ father and mother as Flores listened in by telephone.

Flores allegedly said they would work in the greenhouses for 40 hours a week at $15.66 per hour, from March 28 to December 23.

“He stated that the work was not hard, that they would be given a place to live,” according to the complaint, “and that the only requirement was to have a good work ethic and be enthusiastic.”

The men would have to leave their young children for nine months, but the offer “looked like a good opportunity to work and earn more money than (they) could expect to make at jobs in Mexico.”

But instead of greenhouse gardening, Garcia claims, he worked mostly on landscaping and construction jobs in New Rochelle, Mamaroneck, other Westchester locations and at Flores’ house. Instead of 40 hours and five days a week, he worked 12 hours a day and seven days a week and was never paid overtime. He got an extra $256 per week, minus Social Security deductions for which he was not eligible and for which no paystubs were provided.

Del Rio claims he worked mostly as a mechanic, including on Flores’ personal vehicles. He says he worked seven days and up to 66.5 hours a week. He got an extra $156 to $256 in cash for weekends minus the deductions and paystubs.

They lived with six other men in a house behind the nursery, according to the complaint. They had no cars, so they were driven to worksites, a grocery store, and to a check cashing business to collect their wages.

Flores’ brother told them there would be problems if they did not do their assigned work, according to the complaint, and a nephew told them that Flores had used his connections in Mexico to intimidate workers’ families “and drive them out of their hometown.”

Their paychecks were often late, the complaint states, and when Garcia and Del Rio complained, Flores stopped a foreman from driving them to the check cashing store.

Eventually, Flores allegedly stopped paying them.

Now the men could not afford to buy groceries or send money back home to their families. They escaped, according to the complaint, by arranging for a taxi to take them to a friend’s house in Westchester.

Flores, according to the complaint, threatened to deport them if they did not return to work. Instead, they contacted the New York Department of Labor and got help in recovering part of their wages for their last three weeks of work.

Garcia and Del Rio are accusing Flores and his businesses of subjecting them to involuntary servitude and forced labor, under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act. They also are charging violations of federal and state minimum wage, overtime, unlawful deductions and retaliation laws.

They are represented by attorneys Maureen Hussain and Cristina Brito of the Worker Justice Center of New York, in Hawthorne.