LABOR CAMPS KEPT WORKERS IN SERVITUDE WITH CRACK COCAINE

Coalition Of Immokalee Workers Was Instrumental In Helping Expose
Abuse In North Florida And North Carolina

They had heard rumblings about the labor camp for years. The
Coalition of Immokalee Workers had members who toiled in potato and
cabbage fields for Ron Evans Sr., the owner of the North Florida
camp. But they left after what they saw. Workers feared reporting
what transpired behind tall fences with signs that read "WARNING NO
TRESPASSING."

Then the Immokalee workers rights group with a reputation for rooting
out farmworker abuse and human trafficking got a call from a Miami
nonprofit organization seeking its expertise: A labor camp owner was
hawking crack cocaine and beer at jacked-up prices to homeless
addicts for a slice of their paychecks. If they couldn't pay, men
could buy drugs on credit and work it off in a North Florida camp.

Men said they felt trapped. This is what the Rev. Steven Porter,
former executive director of Touching Miami with Love, an urban
ministry serving Miami's homeless through Cooperative Baptist
Fellowship, heard when he was among the first to find workers willing
to go to authorities.

"Have any problems on the job lately?" Porter asked a client in
December 2002. The man started laughing.

"You don't want to know what's really going on," the man told Porter.

"No, we do," Porter said. "He brought in another friend and he
started to tell us a story that was deeply disturbing and eye-opening."

Evans Sr. and those who helped him run the camps hit homeless
shelters throughout the Southeast, including Tampa, Orlando and New
Orleans, in shiny, new vans to recruit black men to work in isolated
labor camps in North Florida and North Carolina, federal documents
and advocates said. They dangled necessities like shelter and food
before the men who had neither. All for 50 bucks a week. They kept
them with crack and debt.

Men eager to get off the Miami streets would climb inside the vans,
advocates said. Some men arrived at the camp mired in debt, the pastor said.

Evans Sr. and Jequita Evans, his 45-year-old wife and camp co-owner,
and those who helped operate the camps sought to lord control over
workers, advocates said. They tapped what made the men weak.

"These people were offering an unending stream of crack," Porter
said. "They were playing upon their weaknesses and addictions. The
vast majority of the workers were African-American. Ron Evans and his
family were African-American.

"One of the witnesses said he brought in a crew of Latinos and they
didn't last long because they couldn't understand what he was saying
and it made him nervous," he said. "The crew leader was stacking the
deck to where he could control people."

Advocates from Touching Miami with Love and Coalition of Immokalee
Workers, including the group's anti-slavery coordinator, Laura
Germino, searched for more people to talk about the Evans camps. The
Coalition hit Laundromats, gas stations and convenience stores. They
talked to workers, clinic officials, priests, waitresses and growers.

What they heard pointed to servitude, a term U.S. Attorney Paul Perez
of the Middle District used in a statement after a federal jury in
late August found 60-year-old Evans Sr. guilty of nearly as many
charges as years he has lived, after years of piecing together the case.

"Causing homeless people to incur large debts by selling them crack,
cigarettes and beer forces these individuals into a form of servitude
that is morally and legally reprehensible," Perez said. "My office
will continue to investigate and prosecute those labor owners and
operators who take advantage of the disadvantaged by such outrageous behavior."

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers began investigating after the
Miami pastor contacted Bruce Jay, who spearheaded a larger effort to
ferret out labor abuse among the homeless. Jay contacted the
Coalition because of the group's experience fighting debt bondage and
human trafficking cases.

The Immokalee group counts nearly 4,000 members. Coalition members
had worked at the North Florida camps in the past.

Germino brought the case to the U.S. Department of Justice, which
began investigating in 2003, while the Immokalee group provided the
Miami organization with guidance on investigating and dealing with
such cases. Germino said the Coalition located about 10 other
witnesses and sources to talk to federal authorities through its
farmworker networks stretching throughout the Southeast.

Coalition members visited Evans camps in North Carolina and Florida
to gather evidence for the case.

"We have informed and educated and aware members because this is an
issue that the community has decided, 'We're going to take this on.
We're going to fight back,' " Germino said. "And we're well-situated
because, oftentimes, it's their own peers, maybe even their own
family members, who are being held against their will or being held
in debt. That gives you a sense of urgency to see that justice is done."

Touching Miami with Love staff unearthed at least a dozen more
witnesses or victims. Chained together, the stories told an epic of abuse.

Federal documents and court records show the following: Evans Sr. and
his wife had been running the criminal operations in North Carolina
and North Florida since the early 1990s. Camp owners and operators
recruited mostly African- American men to work at the camps for about
minimum wage. Every weekday, after dinner, the camp gave workers the
chance to buy crack, untaxed generic beer and cigarettes at a "company store."

Purchases were deducted from the workers' paychecks. Crack "advances"
were available on payday. Most workers spiraled into debt in the
model designed to slash labor costs and pump profit. Trial evidence
showed Evans Sr. and his wife paid workers, on average, about 30
cents on the dollar after deductions. The owners needed chunks of
cash to purchase the highly addictive drug and persuaded farmers to
structure cash transactions to avoid financial reporting requirements.

The North Florida crew worked for Tater Farms and Randy Byrd farms.
When news of the case broke in summer 2005 after a federal raid on
the North Florida camp, many advocates were chilled that the camp
could so easily exploit American citizens.

Germino, of the Coalition, said the power differential between
farmworkers and employers can snowball into exploitation no matter
the immigration status of the workers.

"When
there is an imbalance of power between the employer and his work
force is when you'll see these abuses start to occur," Germino said.
"That kind of climate enables exploitation to take root. When people
are looking for signs workers are in debt to their employer, held
against their will, suffering violent treatment, it does not just
involve undocumented workers. It can be anyone, U.S. citizens, guest
workers, permanent residents, regardless of their citizenship status,
who are vulnerable to abuse."

Last month, a federal jury in Jacksonville found Evans Sr. and
Jequita Evans guilty of a conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, a
charge carrying a mandatory minimum of 10 years, records show. The
jury also found Evans Sr. guilty of engaging in a continuing criminal
enterprise that distributed crack cocaine. For that charge, he faces
a mandatory minimum of 20 years. He was found guilty of 50 counts of
structuring transactions to avoid financial reporting requirements,
among other charges, and his wife was found guilty of 48 counts of
avoiding reporting requirements. Evans Sr. faces sentencing in
November, records show.

Rosa Saavedra, a farmworker organizer in North Carolina, gave the
Coalition of Immokalee Worker contacts for its work in North
Carolina. Saavedra said she had heard about Evans camp several years
ago from a woman who told of abuse. But she and other advocates
didn't move forward at the time.

"Sometimes things are almost incomprehensible and it happens and your
opportunity to see that is so fleeting. You may get a glimpse of it
and if you get enough snapshots of it to finally see it. The
Coalition are really good at looking at these snippets and knowing
what the potential could be in that. They take the steps to move
investigations forward," she said.

"His camp was not a hidden camp. It's what they did and how they hid
it. ... He was doing this almost in plain sight."