"Migrant workers say company took their passports, charged illegal fees, threatened retaliation", 26 February 2023

...Two migrant farm workers from Guatemala are suing an Oceana County farm labor contracting company, alleging that it confiscated their passports, required them to add one of the company’s owners to their bank accounts as a condition of employment and, at times, had them working more than 100 hours a week while paying them only for 60.

The lawsuit, filed last year in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, also alleges that Emilto Moreno Gomez, one of the owners of Purpose Point Harvesting, charged workers thousands of dollars in illegal recruitment fees and repeatedly told them that he would make sure they were barred from the federal government’s temporary agricultural worker program if they complained or cooperated with any investigations.

The lawsuit is seeking class action status.

The company’s owners, Gomez and Lucille Jean Moreno, have denied the allegations and, in a countersuit filed earlier this month, laid out a very different version of events.

The plaintiffs, Luis Gomez-Echeverria and Hervil Gomez-Echeverria, are Gomez’s cousins, the countersuit says, and their lawsuit is part of a complicated plot for them to receive U.S. citizenship.

The plaintiffs haven’t formally responded to the countersuit. But Ben O’Hearn, the litigation director of Migrant Legal Aid, which is representing the workers, said, the idea that someone would bring this sort of case in the hope that it would benefit their immigration status is “pretty ridiculous”...

Purpose Point’s attorney Robert Alvarez declined to speak on the record about the case.

...The company hires temporary workers to harvest apples, cherries, asparagus, zucchini, Christmas trees and other crops on farms in west Michigan, according to filings in the case and recent job postings...