Migrant workers accuse Iowa egg farm of human trafficking, sexual harassment, suit says
.png "Centrum Valley Farms in Clarion is accused in a lawsuit of racial and sexual harassment of six migrant workers.")
Six Guatemalan nationals are suing an Iowa egg farm after they say they faced human trafficking, harassment and discrimination while working there.
A federal lawsuit was filed March 14 against Centrum Valley Farms in Clarion, about a 90-mile drive north of Des Moines.
McClatchy News reached out to Centrum Valley Farms March 20 for comment but did not immediately hear back.
According to court documents, all six former workers had “varying immigration status in the United States, but they were all given work authorization to perform agricultural work.”
The six plaintiffs were hired between 2016 and 2022. During their employment, they reported racial and sexual harassment, as well as being forced to work beyond 40 hours without overtime pay.
One manager, in particular, repeatedly degraded the workers, calling them racial slurs and making comments about their work ethic, the lawsuit said.
The manager told an employee he believed Guatemalans were “lower than him” and made comments about wanting to fire all the Guatemalan workers, the lawsuit said.
The manager told one employee “all Guatemalans are whiners that should be replaced with hardworking Mexicans” and referred to another employee as “his faithful dog,” “his slave,” and a “Guatemalan (slur),” according to the civil complaint.
All six of the former employees reported their concerns about the manager to upper management, but were threatened with termination if they kept complaining, according to the lawsuit, and were told the manager had the company’s “full support” and “they trusted” him.
One employee told the manager she was being sexually harassed by a coworker, but in response he told her not to report it to HR, the complaint said.
The worker decided to report the harassment anyway, explaining that “she was struggling mentally and emotionally with the trauma of being sexually harassed,” the lawsuit said. However, Centrum Valley Farms “failed to take appropriate corrective action and failed to provide (her) with any support,” according to the complaint.
On May 24, 2024, about a year after she started working at the farm, the employee announced her intent to resign, the lawsuit said.
However, the manager told her she “did not have the right to resign” and if she did “he would make sure that no other company in the area would hire her,” the lawsuit said.
Still, she submitted her resignation form, stating the reason as “various retaliations against me for telling the truth and speaking about my rights,” the complaint said.
Another employee experiencing harassment was told by supervisors “if she had a problem with the way (the manager) managed his employees, there was nothing she could do about it because the human resources department would protect him,” the lawsuit said.
She was also told “nobody would believe her if she made a complaint about him” and “she would be fired if she spoke out against the harassment,” according to the complaint.
Several former employees said in the lawsuit the manager threatened to deport them or prevent them from working for any other company if they quit or continued to complain.
The lawsuit said because the former employees were intimidated to work, and not paid correctly for overtime hours, they were the victims of human trafficking.
“The term ‘human trafficking’ is used to describe a modern-day form of slavery. Such slavery can present itself in a variety of ways, including involuntary labor. A frequent form of labor trafficking involves noncitizens paying to be illegally transported to the United States, and upon their arrival, they find themselves ‘in the servitude of the traffickers.’ Traffickers take advantage of the fact that these noncitizens are ‘surrounded by an unfamiliar culture and language’ and ‘without identification documents, fearing for their lives and the lives of their families,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit is asking for an undetermined amount in damages.
This story was originally published March 20, 2025 at 11:48 AM with the headline "Migrant workers accuse Iowa egg farm of human trafficking, sexual harassment, suit says."
