David Estes, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, revealed that multiple state employees allegedly conspired to smuggle workers into Georgia. As the result of an investigation dubbed “Operation Blooming Onion,” Estes alleged that two Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) workers are linked to one of the largest U.S. human trafficking cases ever prosecuted, as reported by Yahoo News via USA Today. The employees are Brett Donovan Bussey and Jorge Gomez.
The case involved foreign agricultural laborers brought to the U.S. on seasonal visas in what Estes called a case of “modern-day slavery.”
“Bussey, who left government service in 2018, has been indicted along with 23 others for conspiring to engage in forced labor and other related crimes,” according to The Crime Report. Gomez, whose sister and nephew still work at the GDOL, is still employed and has not been accused of wrongdoing, but his relatives have been indicted.
“It’s very concerning,” Estes told the Savannah Morning News. “Obviously, we have victims here. So we’re very concerned about moving out and making sure that we were able to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s and provide safety for the victims as soon as possible, while at the same time, maintaining our investigation as such that we can eventually prosecute and convict individuals.”
“Federal prosecutors say the defendants required guest farmworkers to pay illegal fees to obtain jobs, withheld their IDs so they could not leave, made them work for little or no pay, housed them in unsanitary conditions, and threatened them with deportation and violence,” The Crime Report said.
Bussey and Gomez were both involved with the GDOL’s efforts to report, resolve, or refer suspicions of labor violations, according to The Crime Report. They were also tasked with working directly with workers who sought to resolve or file complaints against their employers.
Court records said five workers were kidnapped and one was raped, while two others died from the heat. The indictments allege that members profited more than $200 million from the scheme, The Crime Report said.
“It’s beyond troubling,” Shelly Anand, a former U.S. Department of Labor lawyer and co-founder of Sur Legal Collaborative, an Atlanta-area nonprofit organization that educates workers about labor rights and helps them file complaints, told the USA Today Network.
Though the indictment does not mention links to Georgia’s government, information uncovered by USA Today, the Savannah Morning News, and the Augusta Chronicle pieced together public records and reviewed social media posts. Through this research, the newspapers found that a 2018 tip to a trafficking hotline led to an investigation that discovered more than 100 foreigners had been trafficked for forced labor since 2015.
All defendants who have entered pleas so far have pleaded not guilty in the case, USA Today reported.
