Operation Blooming Onion
Operation Blooming Onion was an investigation conducted by the federal government of the United States into alleged fraud and criminal activity stemming from the H-2A visa program, primarily in South Georgia.
In South Georgia, many migrant workers, primarily from Latin America, are employed in agricultural work, including the harvest of Vidalia onions.
Their investigation revealed that the TCO had brought in many migrant workers from Latin America who had been subject to exploitation and poor living and working conditions.
[3] Workers involved in the visa program are also required to be paid a fair wage, which in 2021 typically amounted to between $10 and $12 per hour (equivalent to between $11 and $13 in 2023).
[2] From the 2010s through the 2020s, the H-2A visa program grew significantly as farm owners struggled to hire enough domestic workers to tend to their crops.
[11] Additionally, according to Human Rights Watch, female migrant workers are especially susceptible to incidents of harassment and violence, including rape.
[15] According to the federal agents, the investigation revealed that, starting since at least 2015, Patricio and several others had operated as a transnational criminal organization (TCO), based in South Georgia, that had engaged in multiple crimes related to the H-2A visa program.
[16] According to the investigation, members of the TCO illegally withheld travel and identification documents from the workers and forced them to perform physically demanding work for little or no pay under threat of deportation or violence.
[15][4] At the work camps, the foreign nationals were subjected to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, with limited access to food and drinking water and inadequate plumbing,[15] leading to some raw sewage leaks.
[15][4][2] In a 2021 press release, the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia referred to the conditions as "modern-day slavery".
[15] In the Southern District of Georgia, the criminal activities were suspected to have occurred in the following counties: Atkinson, Bacon, Coffee, Tattnall, Toombs, and Ware.
[3][16][15] Additionally, members of the TCO gambled millions of dollars at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tampa, which cooperated with the federal agents in their investigation.
[19] On March 31, 2022, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia stated in a press release that three of the accused individuals, Javier Sanchez Mendoza Jr., Aurelio Medina, and Yordon Velazquez Victoria, had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to multiple months in prison.
[22][23] Mendoza, who plead guilty to conspiracy to engage in forced labor, admitted that, between August 2018 and November 2019, he had been a leader in the scheme, overseeing operations in Glynn, Pierce, and Ware counties in Georgia.
[23] Additionally, both Mendoza and Medina are subject to possible deportation following their sentences, as both are Mexican citizens illegally living in the United States.
[28][17][5] According to Acting U.S. Attorney Estes, the operation "[freed] more than 100 individuals from the shackles of modern-day slavery and will hold accountable those who put them in chains".
[32][12] Multiple farmworker advocacy groups have requested reforms of the system from President Joe Biden,[8][11] and in a letter to the Cabinet of Joe Biden, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia said,[31] This crime, forced labor, physical abuse, sexual abuse and coercion is all too widespread, not just in Georgia, but nationally.
[33] In the summer of 2024, a new rule from the DOL was set to go into effect that would have given H-2A visa holders more rights, including further prohibitions against sponsors confiscating their passports and allows them to invite people into their employer-owned housing.
[6] In 2023, journalist Shane Mitchell won two James Beard Foundation Awards for her story on the operation and the Vidalia onion industry in Georgia, "Blood Sweat & Tears", which was published in The Bitter Southerner.
[1] In a hearing on March 30, 2022, Special Agent Julio Lopez of the HSI told U.S. Assistant Attorney Tania D. Groover that the Patricio TCO had bribed employees of the Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) in order to have them approve housing for the migrants they were exploiting.
