Kroger's Merger With Albertsons Uncovers Ties To Human Trafficking

When most people think of human trafficking, they likely immediately think about sex trafficking. But there’s another form of human trafficking taking place right here in this country, and some of the biggest companies in America are taking advantage of it. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

When most people think of human trafficking, they likely immediately think about sex trafficking. But there's another form of human trafficking that's taking place right in this country and some of the biggest companies in America are taking advantage of it. Wow. What a heyday, right? For the US Chamber of Commerce, with all the immigration, this is, man, they're high-fiving each other. This is the greatest thing that's happened. Now all these immigrants are coming in, they'll pick our vegetables, they'll pick our fruit. If they die, hell ship 'em back to Guatemala. Nobody knows about it. We don't have to pay 'em wages even close to the minimum wage. We have all kinds of ways to exploit them, right? This is all about immigrant exploitation. That's what this story's about, isn't it?

It is. And this one actually came about because Kroger, you know, huge grocery store chain here in the United States is trying to merge with Albertsons. So, okay, you gotta go through all the regulatory process. We've gotta do background checks on everybody here. And part of that background check that was pretty much ignored by everybody except for The Lever, is, hey, Kroger, you've actually been boasting about how you're using these local, independent farmers and whatnot. But you got one here and you actually use it for several stores, they've literally been caught using trafficked humans to pick their fruits. And when we talk trafficked, we are talking about the, what you would see in a movie type thing. People thrown into the car, their documents stolen from them, beaten, tortured, some of them killed.

Oh, yeah.

And all just so you can have somebody go out for $5 an hour to pick your blueberries.

These are, some of these people are kidnapped. Their, the stories that are endless about being repeatedly raped, being locked in your living area where you can't leave, to where you're working, there's, they will have what they call stores where the owner of the organization will sell food to 'em at a hundred times the rate that it should be. And then they've gotta pay off the store to get food or clothing, or whatever it may be. And so at the end of the day, they may pick a thousand bags of whatever, and you would think they're gonna make some money, but no, you owe the store. You can't do anything until you pay the store off. This is a truly ugly story. Southern Press hired Maria Leticia Patricio, she was prosecuted for trafficking and what she was doing, everybody understood it. I mean, everybody knew exactly what was going on, but they just turned the other way and said, well, these are only immigrants. They're making a little bit of money. They're better off now than they were in Nicaragua. Let's let it happen.

Yeah. And so this woman you're talking about, she owned this labor consulting and contracting company. And so these farmers would go and hire her, and she would say, oh, don't worry. I've got lots of workers. I'll find you some workers. So the farmers didn't know because they didn't want to know. Kroger's then goes, hires the farmer to give them the produce. And Kroger doesn't know, because Kroger probably doesn't want to know. And it's even pointed out, by the way, in this article, that Kroger is not a part of the organization of other grocery stores that actually do vet these farmers to make sure that there's no trafficking. So Kroger did not traffic people, but they certainly, through this chain here, we're making money off of it. Willingly, unwillingly, we don't know. We'll have to wait and see what comes out on this. But it's a disgusting story and definitely not good for them.