Fernando Maldonado

"It was slave labor. We could not leave. We realized we had entered the mouth of the wolf." After paying $450 to a border smuggler, Fernando Maldonado was taken from his home in a remote area of Mexico to a ranch in California. There he was forced to work 16 hours a day, six days a week for $1 an hour. From 3am to 8pm, Fernando cleaned and packed flowers, with breaks for 10 minutes in the morning and one hour for lunch. Only during these times could he drink water or use the toilets.

The foreman charged Fernando for his filthy barracks, sheets, tools, and toilet paper. The company store charged three times the supermarket price for food. The foremen insisted on filling out the workers' time cards, which, in the end, recorded only three to six hour days. After three weeks, two men snuck under the ranch's barbed wire fences and rescued Fernando and his son.

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