Mexican Slavery In Immokalee, Florida
09/23/2011
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In Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, Barry Estabrook writes:

"As a United States attorney for Florida's Middle District based in Fort Myers, Douglas Molloy has had more than a decade of experience dealing with crime in Immokalee. More specifically, Molloy, who is in his early fifties and has wavy salt-and-pepper hair and a deeply lined face, has gained an international reputation by specializing in prosecuting an act that was supposed to have vanished from the United States 1 45 years ago. At any given time, Molloy works on six to twelve slavery cases. Immokalee, he says, is 'ground zero for modern-day slavery. ' He also says that any American who has eaten a winter tomato, either purchased at a supermarket or on top of a fast food salad, has eaten a fruit picked by the hand of a slave. 'That's not an assumption,' he told me. 'That is a fact.'"

Both slaves and slavemasters are immigrants, mostly illegal—the example he gives is an illegal Guatemalan victimized by a Mexican.

Immigration enforcemt could free the slaves (and send them back to their home countries) but it's blocked by the National Council of La Raza, the NAACP...and the growers. You know, the people we have called "the New Slave Power"?

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