Sixth Immokalee slavery case suspect arrested - Group accused of keeping beating, stealing from Immokalee laborers
In one of the largest slavery prosecutions Southwest Florida has ever seen, authorities arrested a sixth suspect Wednesday, charging her with making money off unpaid illegal immigrant farm workers.
Antonia Zuniga Vargas appeared in court for the first time Thursday to listen to the charges: conspiring to make money off workers from Mexico and Guatemala, forging documents and committing identity theft. The details are laid out in a 17-count indictment filed Wednesday.
Vargas, along with her co-defendants, are connected to an Immokalee business operation allegedly designed to hold workers in involuntary servitude and peonage.
“Slavery, plain and simple,” said Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy.
Answering questions “yes” and “no,” Vargas listened to the charges and said, “None of that is true.”
For two years, federal prosecutors claim, Vargas, along with Cesar, Geovanni, Jose, Villhina and Ismael Navarrete held more than a dozen people as slaves on their property. They made them sleep in box trucks and shacks, charged them for food and showers, didn’t pay them for picking produce and beat them if they tried to leave.
Molloy, who’s been a prosecutor in this region for more than two decades, said he’s never seen a similar case. Both the number of cooperating law enforcement agencies - six federal agencies and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office - and the number of charges are unprecedented, he said.
“They really did cover the gamut in a criminal enterprise for slavery,” Molloy said of the defendants.
In the past 10 years, prosecutors have handled several slavery cases, but none as large as this. In 1999, Abel Cuello pleaded guilty to buying smuggled workers from Mexico and holding them captive. In 2005, three Guatemalans were arrested in Fort Myers for holding a 13-year-old Guatemalan girl as a slave.
According to the federal indictment, the Navarrete family and Vargas threatened the immigrants, held their identification documents, created debit accounts they couldn’t repay and hooked them on alcohol to keep them working. The documents list 13 instances when the workers were beaten. Molloy said he couldn’t reveal where they are today, but said they’re safe.
“Some of the folks have been there for years,” Molloy said. “It is the hope to send back money to their families, and they hang on to that hope. It’s just a situation that’s difficult to get out of.”
Molloy said it’s too early to estimate how much prison time each defendant could face. The first 10 counts, which apply to Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete, each carry a penalty of up to 20 years. Penalties for some of the other charges range from 5 to 10 years.
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Grand jury re-indicts Immokalee family charged with aiding illegal aliens
A federal grand jury re-indicted members of an Immokalee family today, who were charged with harboring and helping 15 illegal aliens stay in Immokalee on their property back in December.
Cesar Navarrete, Geovanni Navarrete, Jose Navarrete and their mother Villhina “Virginia” Navarrete, were arrested on Nov. 29 after a nine-day investigation.
During the investigation, at least one of the illegal aliens told authorities the suspects charged the men fees for what they needed, such as $5 to take a shower with a garden hose. Others were forced to live in shacks and trucks on the family’s property.
The last two suspects involved in the case, Ismael “Michael” Navarrete and Antonia Zuniga Vargas were later taken into custody, with Zuniga Vargas being arrested Wednesday, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Molloy said in an interview Thursday.
According to the 17-count indictment, Cesar Navarrete and Geovanni Navarrete beat, threatened, restrained and locked workers in trucks to force them to work for them as agricultural laborers. The defendants underpaid the workers and imposed escalating debts on them, threatening physical harm if workers left their employment before their debts had been repaid.
Cesar, Geovanni, Jose, Villhina, Ismael Navarrete and Antonia Zuniga Vargas are also charged with harboring undocumented foreign nationals for private financial gain, commercial advantage, document fraud, and identity theft. Cesar Navarrete is charged with feloniously re-entering the United States after being convicted of a felony and deportation. Jose Navarrete and Ismael Michael Navarrete are charged with re-entering the United States after being deported.
If convicted, Geovanni and Cesar Navarrete each face maximum sentences of over 200 years imprisonment. Antonia Zuniga Vargas and Villhina Navarrete face imprisonment of 40 years, and Jose and Ismael Navarrete face imprisonment of 42 years.
Molloy said Thursday’s indictments come after a more than month long investigation involving several federal agencies, including the FBI, the Social Security Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
He called what the Navarrete family was doing slavery.
“It’s a crime that we take really seriously,” said Molloy.
An arraignment hearing is scheduled before U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas N. Frazier on Wednesday in Fort Myers.
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Six indicted on slavery charges
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA - A brutal case of slavery in Southwest Florida was revealed on Thursday afternoon.
Six people were indicted on federal charges, accused of enslaving the undocumented workers they recruited from Mexico and Guatemala to work the fields in Southwest Florida.
Chief Assistant US Attorney Douglas Malloy tells WINK News, “Slaves are typically recruited in their home and what they really want to do is send money home to their families. So, they pin all of their hopes and dreams on these smugglers to bring them here.”
But when the people got to the United States, they were allegedly subjected to violence and sometimes locked away for hours at a time inside trucks if they threatened to leave.
“There’s a great deal of violence in this case,” explained Malloy, “They actually locked some of the slaves in box trucks at night and let them out in the morning to work the fields. Their money was confiscated and like I said, if they complained, they were either beaten or imprisoned.”
The allegations of abuse go back as far as 2005 in Collier and DeSoto Counties.
The smuggled workers plans to send money to their families at home would not happen.
“They would accrue a smuggling debt and in this case, the debt never went down because the enslavers charged them. They would take money out for food, transportation to the fields or for their green cards. In this case, they even charged them for showers and so the slave debt never goes down and they continued to be indebted to the slavers,” said Malloy.
There accused enslavers are facing 18 counts together, which carry a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count. All six are being held in the Lee County Jail without bond.
Defendants: (from the indictment)
Cesar Navarrete
Geovanni Navarrete
Joe Navarrete
Villhina Navarrete
Ismael Michael Navarrete
Antonia Zuniga Vargas