“Guatemalan workers sue Iowa egg company, alleging human trafficking”

Six Guatemalan nationals who worked for Iowa industrial egg supplier Centrum Valley Farms are suing the company alleging human trafficking and claiming they and other immigrant workers were denied overtime pay and threatened with deportation in retaliation for their complaints.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa by attorneys for Guatemalan citizens…

Named as defendants are Centrum Valley Farms of Clarion and company manager Jose Cornejo…

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for harassment, discrimination and retaliation; wrongful discharge; human trafficking related to forced labor; violations of wage-and-hour laws related to overtime pay, and violations of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.

The plaintiffs claim Centrum Valley Farms recruited them to work at the company’s Clarion egg farm and packaging facility and helped them obtain work-authorization documents from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, with Cornejo acting as their supervisor.

On a daily basis, Cornejo, who is Mexican, made “repeated unwelcome comments disparaging the plaintiffs for their Guatemalan national origin,” the lawsuit claims.

When the Guatemalans complained about Cornejo to other managers, the harassment allegedly grew worse with Cornejo threatening to have them deported…