Ripped off: Migrants not paid for work Trapped between the Rio Grande and border checkpoints, Sandro Garcia Moreno is among thousands of undocumented immigrants being ripped off by unscrupulous employers.

Ripped off: Migrants not paid for work Trapped between the Rio Grande and border checkpoints, Sandro Garcia Moreno is among thousands of undocumented immigrants being ripped off by unscrupulous employers.

McALLEN — Sandro Garcia Moreno feels trapped in the Rio Grande Valley. He hides in a small, linoleum-floored bedroom with the curtains drawn, his refuge from his former employers, who he says threatened to kill him.

He wants to find work to the north but fears he’ll be caught and deported. At night he lies alone in bed, swiping through cellphone photos of his wife and daughter, who fled back to Mexico for their own safety.

An undocumented, low-wage worker, Garcia Moreno won a federal labor complaint two years ago against Pollos Medina, a chain of three barbecue restaurants in Mission.

He and co-worker Jose Arciga Garcia won a $108,000 judgment when the restaurant was found in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which entitles all workers, regardless of immigration status, to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and overtime pay.

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Their case was one of thousands filed against employers in the Rio Grande Valley, a national hotbed for wage theft. In the past 10 years, the Labor Department has investigated more than 1,350 wage theft cases in the region, resulting in payments of more than $8.5 million in back pay, records show.

“As far as I know, it has been an epidemic in the Valley forever,” said Kathryn Youker, an attorney with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. “It just is sort of a facet of daily life down here.”

The Valley’s underground workforce of undocumented immigrants is a key component of the economy and a prime target of unscrupulous employers who pay less than the minimum wage, deny overtime pay, threaten to turn complaining workers over to the Border Patrol and sometimes beat their employees, police reports and court records indicate.

Since the Labor Department began keeping public records in 1984, three of the five cities with the highest number of wage theft investigations are in Texas. And eight of the top 20 ZIP codes in the country with the most investigations are in South Texas. Five of them are in the Rio Grande Valley.

Violations are most pronounced in the service industry(including restaurants), agriculture and among domestic workers.

A native of Durango, Mexico, Garcia Moreno grilled chickens 12 to 15 hours a day, six days a week on a large black barrel grill in front of Pollos Medina.

“They started at 40 (dollars a day) and then lowered me to 30 because there were no sales and they were starting out,” Garcia Moreno said, “but once they began to sell more, they were going to give us less hours and higher wages. And no, it was the reverse, they gave us more hours and lower wages and more hard work.”

Workers at Pollos Medina weren’t given breaks, according to Garcia Moreno and court records. When time allowed, one chicken was split between four or five workers, and they were expected to eat on the job. On average, each worker made $2.50 to $3.50 an hour.

Pollos Medina, which since has closed, was owned by Blanca Medina, her husband, Francisco Garcia, and their son.

Garcia Moreno and other workers said Medina called her all-immigrant staff names like “muertos de hambre” (“worthless beggars”) or “marranetes” (“fat pigs”). Medina would scream at the workers, sometimes throwing trash at female employees and demanding they clean it up.

Garcia Moreno said Garcia bragged that he knew Mexican hit men and could “kill a man and get out of here.”

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Francisco Garcia did not respond to requests for comment. Blanca Medina said in an interview that her family had been done a great injustice.

“Listen, we are Christian people and we are leaving it to God,” she said. “God is the one who knows. We know that it is an injustice but we do not want to touch the subject. We have a lawyer. He is the one in charge.”

When asked whether she paid her employees as little as $30 a day for 12 or more hours of work, Medina said, “it is a lie. Talk to the lawyer, he will explain. We can tell you nothing. God bless me.”

Their lawyer, Florencio Lopez, did not respond to requests for comment.

Garcia and his wife frequently threatened to call immigration and, for Garcia Moreno, when thoughts of protesting or leaving came to mind, memories of Garcia’s proclaimed Tamaulipas sicario (hit man) connections usually followed.

“That’s typical, those types of threats,” said Hector Guzman, director of Fuerza Del Valle Worker’s Center in Alamo, where Moreno first turned for help. “That’s a key factor in the whole anti-migrant sentiment, the xenophobia, the whole, ‘Oh, you are undocumented, you have no rights.’ That type of attitude feeds into the exploitation and low wages that we’re seeing in the Rio Grande Valley.”

“It’s a plantation mentality,” he said. “‘I have these workers that work for me, I can do whatever I want with them.’”

Two-to three-dozen workers a month turn to Fuerza Del Valle with exploitation claims. Most of them complain about wage theft, defined as an employer failing to pay workers the full wages to which they’re legally entitled. Some say they have been held against their will, beaten or sexually violated.

A 2017 report by the Economic Policy Institute found that, in the 10 most populous states, about 2.4 million workers lost $8 billion to minimum wage violations in 2016. The report found violations are most egregious in Texas and Pennsylvania, where the average victim is cheated out of more than 30 percent of his or her earned wages.

“It is not primarily an undocumented worker issue,” said Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. “But undocumented workers suffer from higher rates of wage theft than the workforce as a whole.”

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According to the Pew Research Center, of the hundred largest U.S. metro areas, the McAllen/Edinburg/Mission area has the highest number of undocumented immigrants per capita in the nation, accounting for 10.2 percent of the population of more than 806,000 residents.

Wage theft often is an early symptom of the more severe problem of labor trafficking, a form of modern-day slavery where workers are forced or coerced to perform labor or services.

More than 230,000 labor-trafficking victims are estimated to reside in Texas, a 2016 University of Texas study found.

“It’s very common for employers to threaten to call immigration,” said Rosa San Luis, a community organizer with Fuerza Del Valle, “especially when workers try to reclaim unpaid wages. ‘If you raise your voice, I will take you to Border Patrol. I know where you live.’”

“People who arrive in the Valley and can’t get beyond the checkpoints are just stuck here,” Youker said, referring to Border Patrol checkpoints on highways north of the border. “I think a lot of employers realize that and have set the wages so low.”

“The oppression and the fear, they are one, because we are undocumented,” said San Luis. “We live in a military zone. We are invisible to the system.”

Garcia Moreno’s take: “It is a prison here.”

‘We had no life’

Garcia Moreno had been working at Pollos Medina for less than a month when Medina and Garcia asked his wife, Gloria Hernandez, to start cleaning their house every day. Soon, Medina insisted that, after the housework was done, Hernandez had to pull a full evening shift at Pollos Medina.

“That’s when the whole problem started,” Garcia Moreno said.

Their day would begin around 6:30 or 7 a.m., rising to prepare breakfast for their 7-year-old daughter and take her to school. By 9 a.m., Garcia Moreno was at Pollos Medina and Hernandez was cleaning.

In the early afternoon, he would pick up their daughter at school and take her to the restaurant, where they would remain until around 10 or 11 p.m.

“We had no life,” Garcia Moreno said. “They gave us a day of rest, it was a Tuesday or a Monday, but there was nothing we could do with the salary they gave us.”

One day in September 2014, Medina asked Garcia Moreno to stay late and work a private party. “They were going to give me $15 to work from 11 to 2 in the morning,” he said.

Garcia Moreno agreed. He thought it would be easy. When the time came, he saw the party was to be huge with dozens of chickens to prepare and cook.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going to stay.”

Voices were raised. Medina spat insults. Garcia Moreno stood his ground. Francisco Garcia picked up a shovel. He approached from behind and, according to court records and the accounts of both Hernandez and Garcia Moreno, struck him across the back, then again, and again. He collapsed. He said the blows kept coming and he could hear his wife and daughter pleading.

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“They thought he was their property,” Guzman said. “‘How dare you not want to work?’”

After the beating, Garcia Moreno fled with his daughter. Hernandez stayed to work the shift.

Garcia Moreno quit but Hernandez stayed. The family needed the money. In turn, she became the focal point for Garcia and Medina’s rage. They frequently threatened to send the police to arrest and deport her husband if he didn’t come back to work.

Francisco Garcia was a friend of Alton Police Chief Enrique Sotelo, who frequently came to Pollos Medina and ate privately with Garcia, Hernandez said. They posted the photos of a hunting trip together on Facebook. Sotelo was fired from the police force last year amid an investigation of sexual harassment.

About a month after Garcia Moreno quit, he was followed home by an Alton police officer, cited for failure to use a turn signal and arrested in front of his daughter as she got off the school bus. As an undocumented resident, he did not have a valid driver’s license. Arrested in front of his house, he begged the officer to call his wife to come pick up their daughter.

He was fined $443, almost twice his former salary of $225 a week at Pollos Medina. Moreno was followed home again on Feb. 8 by an Alton police officer, cited for failure to use a turn signal and arrested for failure to provide a driver’s license. This time, he was held overnight.

“When my wife called, they lied and told her I’d been turned over to ICE,” he said. Hernandez called Carlos Moctezuma Garcia, an immigration lawyer, who brokered Moreno’s release the following morning.

Moctezuma Garcia contacted Hector Guzman at Fuerza Del Valle, who asked Pollos Medina employees if they could corroborate Garcia Moreno’s accusations of low wages.

When 20 employees showed up, Guzman, Moctezuma Garcia and Efrén Olivares of the Texas Civil Rights Project began building a wage theft case.

“I remember that they all were very scared,” Guzman said.

Slowly, that number dwindled to five, then two employees - Garcia Moreno and Arciga. Hernandez did not sign on to the case. She did, however, quit her job at Pollos Medina. Arciga could not be reached for comment.

On April 14, 2015, officer Joby Garza of the Mission Police Department responded to a harassment complaint filed by Hernandez.

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According to Garza’s report and Hernandez’s account, Hernandez had been at her new job at Blankita Pasteles, a cake shop in Mission, when Blanca Medina showed up. Medina insisted Hernandez come back to work at her restaurant. She threatened to have Hernandez deported and to have her husband arrested by placing narcotics in his vehicle if she didn’t comply with Medina’s wishes.

“The victim further stated she felt that what the suspect is doing to her and her family was harassing (in) nature due to the fact that they can’t afford any incidents with the police,” officer Garza wrote. “The victim then stated that the suspect had gone to her residence … several times prior verbally threatening the victim and her family in the same manner as this incident. The victim also stated that her husband had been arrested and taken to jail for threats the suspect has made against her in the past to keep working at the suspect’s restaurant.”

Alejandra Garcia, owner of Blankita Pasteles, remembers Medina’s visits.

“Twice she came here,” Garcia said, “and afterward (Hernandez) was crying. The Alton police were friends of theirs. For this reason, (Hernandez and Moreno) were very afraid.”

Weeks later, Hernandez returned to Pollos Medina.

Threats escalate

The wage case was filed July 20, 2015. Soon after, police reports state, Medina threatened to plant narcotics on Garcia Moreno. On Oct. 9, 2015, Garcia Moreno was leaving his new job when he saw a man in a Land Rover parked next to his minivan.

“Hey, my truck is dead,” the man said. Garcia Moreno drove him to a gas station. When exiting the station, he was pulled over by Palmview police officer Mario Alberto Ochoa, who since has been fired on unrelated charges of engaging in organized criminal activity.

“You are nervous,” Ochoa said. “I’m going to check the van.” He looked inside, asked Garcia Moreno to get out and, according to Garcia Moreno, handcuffed him.

“I advised Mr. Garcia (Moreno) to stand in the rear of his vehicle or where he had full view of my search procedure,” Ochoa wrote in his incident report. “Mr. Garcia (Moreno) was advised at any moment during my search process he could terminate the search process.”

“He tells me, ‘I found something in your truck,’” Garcia Moreno said, “‘An expert is coming; he’s going to check if it’s drugs.’ And no, no expert ever arrived, the tow truck arrived.”

Garcia Moreno was arrested.

Hernandez was at Pollos Medina when it happened. She’d been there all day. In the morning, she said, Medina had said to her, “Listen, they saw your husband. They saw your husband acting very weird in his minivan.”

“I mean, like, she was already warning me,” Hernandez said. “I told her, ‘I don’t think so because he went to work.’”

Garcia Moreno spent four nights in Hidalgo County Jail. The confiscated substance, which Ochoa had described in his report as crystal meth, was sent to a police lab for analysis.

“When it came back,” said Olivares, the civil rights lawyer, “the case was dropped.”

Garcia Moreno was released at 4 a.m. He had to climb in through a window at home because Hernandez, at Moctezuma Garcia’s recommendation, had left with their daughter to avoid possible retaliation by Medina and Garcia. Mother and daughter took refuge at Mujeres Unidas, a shelter for victims of domestic violence.

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The family moved to a new home, but Medina and Garcia found them. The threats continued.

Garcia Moreno recorded one phone call with Medina.

“Come to my side and nothing will happen to you,” she told him. Then, speaking of Garcia Moreno’s co-plaintiff Arciga, “we’re going to cut his tongue out as soon as we catch him.”

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Hernandez was working long hours. Medina would give her Monster energy drinks to keep her awake.

“They gave me pills to give me more energy,” Hernandez said. “I stirred them with the Monster and afterword began to suffer a lot of anxiety.”

She would wake up at night, her hands sweating and start to cry. The problem escalated to panic attacks that required four hospitalizations.

“My hands would tremble,” Hernandez said. “I could not be in a closed place. I would cry for everything. I could not concentrate.”

She took their daughter back to Mexico. Garcia Moreno stayed. He moved again. He persisted with the case and, eventually, along with Arciga, won the judgment against Medina and Garcia.

Lawyers for Garcia Moreno and Arciga repossessed two vehicles from the Pollos Medina owners valued at $20,000. The remaining $88,000 of the judgment remains unpaid. Pollos Medina has closed, but Medina and Garcia have opened new businesses. Records show they own multiple properties in Mission.

“How do we solve this wage theft problem?” Guzman asked. “We need organized people that are suffering this to point the direction. The victims need to lead the movement.”

“At the municipal level people don’t think about low-paid workers, unpaid workers, and what the city can do,” he said. “The city could shut these operations down.”

Said Rosa San Luis, “God, we’re not asking for anything extraordinary, just basic human rights and dignity. It seems that, in many ways, we are not worthy of dignity.”

Out of work and hiding

In September 2017, Medina and Garcia discovered Garcia Moreno’s whereabouts. They came to his house and knocked on the door. Garcia Moreno shouted that he’d called the police. After they left, he fled.

Garcia Moreno later rented a small three-room apartment. He blacked out the windows and took the first job he was offered, cooking chicken on an open-air grill at a new establishment named Snack Shack.

“They told me they were just starting out so they could only pay me a little,” Garcia Moreno said, “but they were going to pay me more.”

Soon after his car broke down and he couldn’t afford to fix it. Garcia Moreno moved into the office of Snack Shack.

In September, he said, he quit because of long hours, low pay and poor living conditions.

In Mexico, Hernandez lives with their daughter.

“She misses her dad,” Hernandez said. “There are so many changes for her. She failed a year of school.”

A few months ago, she said, she had to change their phone number after an anonymous caller threatened to kidnap her if she didn’t return to Texas.

Garcia Moreno took his savings and moved into the small, linoleum-floored bedroom with the curtains drawn. Afraid to be seen walking around town, he spends his mornings looking for day labor work on Facebook and asking would-be employers if they can pick him up.

He has applied for a visa, to which all of his hopes are now attached.

On a recent evening, Garcia Moreno sat outside his apartment sharing bits of his dinner with a stray dog.

“See,” he said, pointing at the dog as it disappeared with a sliver of chicken wing, “he has more rights here than I do.”

***

Mara Esquivel contributed to this report.

lwhyte@express-news.net

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