The Biden administration told you the H-2A farm worker program was humane, legal, and well-regulated.
Federal prosecutors just unsealed a 35-count indictment proving it was a pipeline for modern-day slavery.
Now three people – including an illegal alien living freely in the United States – are facing up to 20 years in prison for each forced labor count, and what they did to vulnerable workers on farms across three states is something you need to hear.
Passports Confiscated. Workers Threatened. Investigators Lied To.
Martha Zeferino Jose, 42, ran a farm labor contracting company out of Washington, North Carolina called Las Princesas Corporation.
She recruited workers from Mexico with promises of legitimate H-2A employment – legal wages, proper housing, real jobs.
Instead, according to the DOJ indictment unsealed Friday, she and her partner Jose Rodriguez Munoz – a Mexican citizen living in the U.S. illegally – and her 23-year-old son Jeremy Zeferino Jose ran something else entirely.
Workers arrived in America already in debt, charged illegal recruitment fees before they ever crossed the border.
Then their passports and visas were confiscated so they couldn't leave.
Then they were forced to labor at farms and plant nurseries across Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida – long hours, no breaks, no water – and housed in crowded, filthy residences with no heat, no air conditioning, no hot water.
https://twitter.com/BreannaMorello/status/2025999166774583401?s=20
They were forbidden from leaving unaccompanied.
Forbidden from speaking to anyone outside the group.
Threatened with deportation if they complained.
And when some workers' visas expired, the defendants didn't tell them they were legally required to go home – they told them to stay and kept cashing in.
When the Department of Labor finally launched an investigation, Martha returned the confiscated passports right before investigators arrived and told workers to lie – to say everything was fine and their documents had never been taken.
Munoz allegedly warned workers they'd be deported if they told the truth.
This Is a Pattern Not an Accident
Here's what the media won't tell you: this isn't a one-off scandal.
It's a documented, recurring feature of the H-2A program that the Biden administration refused to take seriously.
In 2021, federal prosecutors busted Operation Blooming Onion – one of the largest human trafficking investigations in U.S. history.
Twenty-four defendants ran a slave labor ring across South Georgia farms, fraudulently petitioning for over 71,000 H-2A visas.
Workers were forced to dig onions with their bare hands at 20 cents per bucket, held in fenced work camps, threatened at gunpoint, and traded between conspirators like property.
At least two died on the job.
The criminal enterprise pocketed over $200 million.
Same playbook. Same program. Four years later, a different state and new defendants.
A federal GAO report covering fiscal years 2018 through 2023 found that farm labor contractors – the exact business model Las Princesas used – accounted for 37% of all H-2A program violations while making up just 21% of investigations.
They were responsible for more than half of all program debarments between 2020 and 2023.
The trap clicks shut the same way every time: saddle workers with debt before they arrive, confiscate their documents once they're here, and use deportation threats to keep them in line.
Trump's DOJ Is Actually Doing Something About It
Biden's DOJ buried these cases.
Trump's isn't.
"These charges reflect the Department's commitment to protecting the integrity of our lawful immigration system and holding accountable those who corrupt it to exploit and abuse foreign workers," said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva.
U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle for the Eastern District of North Carolina was blunter: "We will find and eradicate any illegal immigration we find here in the EDNC. We do not tolerate abuse of the system to hurt unsuspecting victims of human trafficking."
Trump declared January 2026 National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month and directed DHS – under Secretary Kristi Noem – to dismantle trafficking networks nationwide.
Since August 2025, Homeland Security Task Force operations have produced over 3,200 arrests targeting rings tied to the Sinaloa Cartel, MS-13, and Tren de Aragua.
The North Carolina case fits directly into that push.
Homeland Security Investigations and the DOL Office of Inspector General ran the Las Princesas investigation.
The U.S. Marshals executed the arrests.
Martha Zeferino Jose faces up to 20 years per forced labor count plus additional exposure for visa fraud and obstruction conspiracy.
Munoz faces the same forced labor exposure plus obstruction charges of his own.
Jeremy faces forced labor and alien harboring counts.
The message to every labor contractor running a slave operation in the American heartland is simple: the people doing this used to get away with it.
They don't anymore.
Sources:
- U.S. Department of Justice, "Owner of Washington farm labor contracting company, others indicted on 35 counts of trafficking ag workers into servitude," DOJ.gov, February 21, 2026.
- Michelle Vecerina, "Three Mexican Citizens charged with trafficking agricultural workers into servitude on farms in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida," FloridaNewsTimes.com, February 23, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security, "Secretary Noem & President Trump Take Sledgehammer to Human Trafficking Networks," DHS.gov, January 22, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Justice, "Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security Recognize National Human Trafficking Prevention Month," DOJ.gov, January 23, 2026.
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, "H-2A Visa Program: Agencies Should Take Additional Steps to Improve Oversight and Enforcement," GAO-25-106389, 2025.
- U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Georgia, "Human smuggling, forced labor among allegations in south Georgia federal indictment," DOJ.gov, November 22, 2021.
