Brett Donovan Bussey, a former employee of the Georgia Department of Labor (DOL) who left government service in 2018, has been indicted along with 23 others for conspiring to engage in forced labor and other related crimes, according to The Crime Report.
A human smuggling operation brought more than 100 immigrants into the country to work in forced labor conditions, according to the federal indictments which followed a multi-agency investigation.
David H. Estes, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, revealed that multiple state employees conspired to smuggle workers into Georgia. The investigation has been dubbed "Operation Blooming Onion," and what has been uncovered was dubbed "modern day slavery" by Estes.
The sister and nephew of Labor Department employee Jorge Gomez, were among those indicted. Gomez has not been accused of wrongdoing, The Crime Report stated.
Federal prosecutors say the defendants required guest farm workers to pay illegal fees to obtain jobs, withheld their IDs so they could not leave, made them work for little or no pay, housed them in unsanitary conditions and threatened them with deportation and violence, The Crime Report stated. Bussey and Gomez were both involved with the Georgia DOL's program to report, resolve or refer suspicions of labor violations. They were also tasked with working directly with workers seeking to resolve or file complaints, the story said.
Court records say that five workers were kidnapped and one was raped, while two others died from the heat, the story said. The indictment alleges that members profited more than $200 million from the scheme.
Although the indictment doesn’t mention links to the Georgia government, USA TODAY, the Savannah Morning News and the Augusta Chronicle pieced information together from public records and a review of social media posts, Yahoo News reported. A 2018 tip to a trafficking hotline led to an investigation that found more than 100 foreigners had been trafficked for forced labor since 2015.
“It’s beyond troubling,” said Shelly Anand, a former U.S. Department of Labor lawyer and co-founder of Sur Legal Collaborative, an Atlanta-area nonprofit that educates workers about their labor rights and helps them file labor complaints, Yahoo News reported.
