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PALM BEACH POST January 23, 2008
Workers tell tale of captivity in truck Six members of an Immokalee clan have been charged with harboring undocumented farmworkers and falsifying Social Security documents, and at least two of those suspects have also been indicted on slavery charges. According to amended charges filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tampa and a criminal complaint submitted late last year, Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete served as work foremen who kept migrant laborers locked in cargo holds of trucks at night to prevent them from escaping and finding work elsewhere. The case came to light in November when three workers broke out of a truck in which they had been locked and told their story to Collier County deputies. According to the complaint, one of the escaped workers, Mariano Lucas of Mexico, told deputies that members of the Navarrete family had locked him and others "inside box trucks and they were beaten if they attempted to leave the property." "Lucas stated that he had escaped from the property on Nov. 18 through a ventilation hatch on a box truck," the complaint read. Two other workers, Jose Vasquez and Jose Hari, said they escaped with Lucas and confirmed his story. Lucas and Vasquez had contusions and abrasions on their faces, which they said had been caused by beatings doled out by Navarrete family members. They and other workers subsequently interviewed by investigators said they slept in vehicles on property owned by the Navarretes at 209 S. Seventh St. in Immokalee. Lucas said he was charged $30 per week for accommodations. He and others said they paid $50 weekly for food - eggs, rice, beans and tortillas; twice a week they had some sort of meat. Also indicted on the lesser charges, including the harboring undocumented aliens for profit, visa fraud and misusing Social Security documents, were Jose Navarrete, Villhina Navarrete, Ismael Navarrete and Antonia Zuniga, who was identified as a former girlfriend of one of the Navarrete men and part owner of the Immokalee property.
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