Immigrants accuse landscaper of forced labor, lack of food

Mynor Chox was looking for a summer job during college break in his native Guatemala when a friend told him about a chance to earn some cash in Tennessee.

The money was good, the job as a landscape laborer required no experience and his employers would arrange for housing, transportation and a temporary work visa known as H2-B to allow him to work legally.

But after arriving in Murfreesboro last Spring, Chox, 24, claims he was forced to live in a trailer in a remote location with roughly 10 other workers, a "few small, dirty mattresses"  and one working toilet. They were transported to and from work sites six days a week but had no way to get to a store to buy food. He and two other men claim they routinely worked 60 or more hours per week but were not paid for the hours they worked – or paid on a regular basis. When they were paid, their employer deducted $200 per month for housing and utilities. The allegations are spelled out in legal filings in federal court.

And in a cell phone video taken several weeks after taking the job, Chox captured a tense and profanity-filled confrontation with an unidentified landscaping company supervisor dropping him off at the end of the workday when Chox insists, first in Spanish and then English, that he is hungry and needs food and money.

"It's not my problem," the man said. "Figure it out."

"I need food," Chox said.

"I'm going to whip your a** if you don't get out of this g**d***** truck," the man says before he forcefully grabs Chox, yanks him from the truck as Chox says repeatedly in Spanish, "don't touch me." The man appears to push him down on the gravel road beside it. As he drove away he yells: "You're a dumb m*****f*****."

Chox and two former co-workers, Jorge Alvarado and Julian Alvarado, have filed a federal lawsuit against the landscaping company,  Murfreesboro-based Outdoors Unlimited, accusing them of trafficking immigrants for the purpose of forced labor. They are also seeking wages they said they were denied when they worked for the company in May, June and July 2016.

An attorney for the company declined to comment saying he could not ethically speak about a pending case. Company owner Burke Skelton, who is named in the suit, did not return a message left at his office.

In its legal filings, the company has denied that the men were not paid for hours worked and disputed cell phone snapshots of timecards provided by Chox showing more hours worked than reflected in his paychecks.

Outdoors Unlimited, in its legal response, said the time card system it used was "incredibly inaccurate" because employees frequently lied about their time and punched cards for other employees so the company instead relied on crew supervisors to report hours. The company wasn't required to pay workers for the time they spent travelling to sites across middle Tennessee or for the time they spent waiting for other crews to finish up before they started work.

The company, in its filing, also said it was not required to provide housing or transportation for its workers. It did so as a "courtesy" because the $200 monthly rent was cheaper than market rate, and the workers did not have transportation or drivers licenses.

Immigration attorneys and advocates say that the phenomenal growth in Nashville and surrounding communities is fueling a demand for workers to fill landscaping, construction, hotel, housecleaning and other jobs. Workers Dignity, a Nashville nonprofit, has offered evening clinics to help immigrant workers settle disputes over pay and workplace treatment that have drawn scores of workers.

"I think it's safe to say that abuses like these have grown as Nashville has grown," said Karla Campbell, Chox's attorney and a lawyer who has represented a growing number of immigrant and non immigrant workers in disputes over pay and treatment by employers.

In many cases, employers are bringing in workers from rural areas or other countries to pay them lower wages, she said.

In Chox's case, Campbell said, "He was brought here by their employer under a program that in theory provides minimum standards for their work conditions, their housing. He was exploited. The visa program was exploited."

Chox said he was treated like a "servant" and threatened with deportation when he complained.

“We couldn't eat,” he said in Spanish with his attorney, Karla Campbell interpreting. “I knew what they were doing was wrong.”

Campbell asked that Chox's current location, immigration status and photographs not be included in the story, citing instances in recent months of immigrants being detained by immigration authorities after speaking to the media.

Chox eventually left the landscaping job after being befriended by a local resident who offered him a ride to Nashville. When he returned to collect his belongings at the trailer, he said he was picked up by company owner Burke Skelton and dropped off at the airport with a plane ticket home. Francisco contacted a woman he had met with Workers Dignity who picked him up.

He agreed to file a lawsuit to get his wages, but he said his other motivation was broader.  "I want people to know how we were treated."

A March 2018 trial date has been set in U.S. District Court in Middle Tennessee.

Reach Anita Wadhwani at awadhwani@tennessean.com, 615-259-8092 or on Twitter @AnitaWadhwani.