Federal prosecutors have unsealed charges against five people accused of running a scheme that used fraud, confiscated documents and threats of violence to control agricultural guest workers in Georgia. The indictment, made public Tuesday, describes a conspiracy built around the H-2A visa program, a seasonal agricultural labor pathway meant to bring foreign nationals to the United States for temporary farm jobs.
The case centers on Martha Aquino, Evangelina Aquino De Galvan and Julio Cervantes, all described as living in Alma, Georgia, along with Marco Cervantes of Rowlett and Juan Felipe Romero-Lopez, who authorities say is from Mexico, according to The Center Square. Prosecutors allege the defendants demanded improper payments from workers before they could even apply for H-2A visas or begin working in the United States, according to WJCL.
Once workers arrived, the indictment alleges, the scheme relied on confiscating passports and other identification documents to keep them in place, sometimes paired with threats or violence, per the same station's report. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that federal investigators described a broader conspiracy to profit from Mexican farmworkers by fraudulently exploiting the seasonal visa program, with conspirators allegedly using intimidation, threats and violence to keep migrant farmworkers from leaving.
Fees, Fraud and Threats Alleged Throughout the Scheme
An updated version of the indictment also accuses the defendants of lying about where H-2A workers would actually live and work, the WJCL report notes. According to The Center Square, the complaint alleges the defendants threatened or used violence against workers to deter them from leaving employment or failing to show up for shifts.
Once a worker's short-term visa expired, prosecutors allege, conspirators offered to transport them to other locations in the United States in exchange for additional improper payments — an arrangement that itself allegedly violated immigration law, per the AJC. The charges filed against the group include conspiring to commit visa fraud, visa fraud itself, and encouraging or inducing aliens to enter the country illegally for commercial advantage and private gain, The Center Square reports.
Arrest Timeline Disputed Between Reports
Accounts of when defendants were taken into custody differ. WJCL reported that Aquino, Julio Cervantes and Marco Cervantes were arrested during the week of September 15, with De Galvan still at large. The AJC report does not provide a separate account of when those defendants were taken into custody. Romero-Lopez, according to WJCL, was already in custody after being charged in May with unlawful possession of a firearm by a person authorities say is in the country illegally — one of the charges The Center Square also lists among those unsealed Tuesday.
The reporting also diverges on the scale of the case. WJCL and The Center Square both describe five defendants facing charges in the Southern District of Georgia, while the AJC reported on a conspiracy and alleged visa-program exploitation without specifying a defendant count in the excerpt reviewed for this story. The dossier reviewed for this story does not establish whether the reports describe the same defendants or separate groups of charges.
Why H-2A Workers Are Especially Vulnerable
The H-2A program allows qualifying U.S. employers or agents who meet federal regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals into the country to fill temporary agricultural jobs for up to three years, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The U.S. Department of Labor also lays out recruiting requirements employers must follow when hiring prospective H-2A workers.
Advocates point to systemic pressures that make farmworkers broadly susceptible to exploitation. Immigrants make up more than 75 percent of farmworkers nationwide, and about 30 percent live below the poverty line, according to CLASP. The organization also notes that heat-related illnesses are the leading cause of death among farmworkers, who are 20 percent more likely than other workers to die from them, and that farmworkers face growing exposure to wildfires and wildfire smoke as extreme heat fuels more natural disasters.
Those vulnerabilities, combined with a temporary visa tied to a single employer, can create a power imbalance that makes it difficult for workers to walk away from abusive conditions — a dynamic described in the AJC's reporting on the Georgia case. The allegations against the five defendants remain charges at this stage, and prosecutors have not established guilt in the case.
