United States v. Garcia, 02-CR-110S-01 (W.D.N.Y. 12/2/2003)

• Decision Date: 02 December 2003
• Docket Number: 02-CR-110S-01.
• Parties: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. MARIA GARCIA, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of New York

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. MARIA GARCIA, Defendant.

02-CR-110S-01.

United States District Court, W.D. New York.

December 2, 2003.

REPORT, RECOMMENDATION AND ORDER

KEN SCHROEDER, Magistrate Judge.

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1), all pretrial matters in this case were referred to the undersigned by Hon. William M. Skretny.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

The defendant, Maria Garcia, along with five co-defendants, is charged in a multi-count indictment alleging violations relating to conspiracy, forced labor, trafficking in persons, social security fraud, immigration violations, and violations of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act ("MSPA") under 18 U.S.C. § 371; 982(a)2, (6)(A) (i) and (ii); 1590; 1546(a); 1594(b); 1589; 1594; 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) and (iii); 21 U.S.C. § 853(p); 28 U.S.C. § 2461 (c); 29 U.S.C. § 1841 (b)(1)(A) and 1851; 42 U.S.C. § 408(a)(7)(B). (Docket #1).

The underlying bases for the aforesaid charges consist of alleged conduct by the defendant and her co-defendants whereby men and boys from Mexico were transported by the defendants to New York State and housed in "isolated, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions" and were required "to work in the fields of local growers." Further, the defendants allegedly "refused to permit [these workers] to leave their housing units for any reason other than work" and "failed or refused to pay them their wages" as well as "threatened them with physical violence and with being caught (sic) and deported by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) if they attempted to leave. The workers were repeatedly told that they owed large sums of money to the defendants and could not leave without paying off their debts" and "on occasion, the defendants refused to provide the workers . . . with any food. The defendants also told the workers that, if they tried to escape, they would be hunted down and returned to the defendants." Government's Response to Defendant's Motion. (Docket #58, pp. 2-3).

More specifically, the defendant is charged in Counts 2-10 with "allegedly providing and obtaining and attempting to provide and obtain the labor and services of another by the listed prohibited actions in [ § 1589]." (Docket #43). She "is also charged with aiding and abetting the provision of forced labor in Counts 2-10, and with attempt under 18 U.S.C. § 1594" as well as "conspiring with others to, inter alia, [violate] § 1589." (Docket #43). In Count 11 of the indictment, the defendant is charged with "having trafficked persons for labor by recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing and obtaining persons for forced labor by `obtaining workers in Arizona and transporting them to New York and harboring them there in conditions of forced labor'" in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1590.

The defendant has filed a motion seeking an order "declaring 18 U.S.C. § 1589 unconstitutional as violating the commerce clause" claiming that "Congress exceeded its powers under U.S. Constitution Art. 1, § 8 (the "Commerce Clause")" when it passed § 1589. As a result, it is argued that not only is § 1589 unconstitutional, but also, that part of the conspiracy charge in Count 1 of the indictment that is predicated on § 1589, and the charges in Counts 2 through 11 which are also predicated on § 1589, are invalid by reason of such unconstitutionality of § 1589 and therefore should be dismissed. (Docket #43).

DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS

Although the defendant has submitted a detailed recitation of cases interpreting the application of Article 1, § 8 of the United States Constitution in support of her position, the defendant has missed the mark in that approach. For the reasons hereinafter set forth, the Court does not have to address the applicability of Article 1, § 8 of the United States Constitution in determining whether Congress acted within its authority when it legislated § 1589 entitled "Forced Labor" as part of the "Peonage and Slavery" provisions which were enacted on October 28, 2000 as part of the "Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act," Pub. L. 106-386, Div. A.

Constitutional authority for this legislation is found in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, wherein it is provided:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The United States Supreme Court has expressly held that:

Federal Crimes are defined by Congress, and so long as Congress acts within its constitutional power in enacting a criminal statute, this Court must give effect to Congress' expressed intention concerning the scope of conduct prohibited, (citations omitted). Congress' power to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment by enacting § 241 and § 1584 is clear and undisputed. See U.S. Const, Amdt 13, § 2 ("Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation"), (citation omitted).

United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931, 939-40 (1988).

In analyzing the application of Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment "clothed Congress with power to pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery in the United States." Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer, Co., 392 U.S. 409, 439 (1968). The Court went on to note that "surely Congress has the power under the Thirteenth Amendment rationally to determine what are the badges and the incidents of slavery, and the authority to translate that determination into effective legislation." Id. at 440.

Because the analysis by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals of Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution directly addresses the issue raised by the defendant herein, brevity is intentionally sacrificed and the appropriate part of the Court's opinion is quoted at length.

The Thirteenth Amendment, unlike the Fourteenth, in and of itself reaches purely private conduct.

Thus it has long been settled that the Thirteenth Amendment "is not a mere prohibition of state laws establishing or upholding slavery, but an absolute declaration that slavery or involuntary servitude shall not exist in any part of the United States." Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. at 20, 3 S.Ct. 18. And accordingly, "[u]nder the Thirteenth Amendment the legislation, so far as necessary or proper to eradicate all forms and incidents of slavery and involuntary servitude, may be direct and primary, operating upon the acts of individuals, whether sanctioned by state legislation or not." Id. at 23, 3 S.Ct. 18; see also Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160, 179, 96 S.Ct. 2586, 49 L.Ed.2d 415 (1976) (noting that it "has never been doubted" that the power granted Congress by the Thirteenth Amendment "includes the power to enact laws . . . operating upon the acts of individuals" (quotation marks and citation omitted)); Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer, Co., 392 U.S. 409, 438-39, 88 S.Ct. 2186, 20 L.Ed.2d 1189 (1968) ("If Congress has power under the Thirteenth Amendment to eradicate conditions . . ., then no federal statute calculated to achieve that objective can be thought to exceed the constitutional power of Congress simply because it reaches beyond state action to regulate the conduct of private individuals."). The fact that § 245(b)(2)(B) is applied in this case to reach purely private conduct therefore does not — regardless of what might be the rule in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment — present any obstacle to that statute's being upheld as a proper exercise of Congress's power under the Thirteenth Amendment.

Although the Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1865, was enacted in the historical context of American slavery, which applied most exclusively to African Americans, the interpretation of the Amendment itself has not been so limited. The text of the Amendment nowhere identifies or otherwise singles out those whose servitude the Amendment had specifically been enacted to address. And the Supreme Court early on held that although "negro slavery alone was in the mind of the Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any other kind of slavery, now or hereafter," and would apply equally to "Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie labor system." The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 72, 21 L.Ed.2d 394 (1873). The Court, moreover, re-affirmed this sentiment roughly thirty years later, explaining that the Thirteenth Amendment "is the denunciation of a condition, and not a declaration in favor of a particular people. It reaches every race and every individual, and if in any respect it commits one race to the nation, it commits every race and every individual thereof. Slavery or involuntary servitude of the Chinese, of the Italian, of the Anglo Saxon, are as much within its compass as slavery or involuntary servitude of the African." Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1, 16-17, 27 S.Ct. 6, 51 L.Ed. 65 (1906). There can, therefore, be no doubt that the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibitions extend, at the least, to all race-based slavery or servitude.

Furthermore, "race" as used in Thirteenth Amendment jurisprudence is a term of art, whose meaning is not limited by today's usage.

United States v. Nelson, 277 F.3d 164, 175-76 (2d Cir. 2002).

In order to invalidate a congressional enactment, there must be a plain showing that Congress has exceeded its constitutional bounds. United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 607 (2000).

The defendant has failed to make such a showing and cannot do so since Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment expressly confers power on Congress to enact § 1589 as "appropriate legislation to enforce" the provision set forth in Section 1 of said Amendment. Therefore, it is...