Rancher Gets 3-Year Sentence for Exploiting Migrants

A federal judge on Monday ordered a Ventura County flower rancher originally charged with enslaving hundreds of Mexican laborers to spend three years in prison, a sentence that prosecutors said would send a message to abusive employers throughout the country.

U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall in Los Angeles also directed Edwin M. Ives, 57, to pay $1.5 million in back wages to former workers, the highest fine ever levied in a U.S. immigration case.

Marshall pointedly rejected prosecution contentions that Ives had operated a slave ranch on his 50-acre Ventura County compound during the 1980s. She said the sentence was based solely on Ives’ guilty plea last year to seven criminal violations of labor and immigration laws.

The judge said she had seen “no evidence of slavery,” extortion or racketeering by Ives--charges that brought the case international notoriety as the largest slavery prosecution in U.S. history when it broke in 1990.

But prosecutors were pleased. “This case is an outstanding example of how the federal justice system can protect and vindicate the rights of exploited and abused workers,” U.S. Atty. Terree A. Bowers said.

Ives’ lawyers said the sentence was severe, but it was far less than the 15 years recommended by prosecutors.

“I’m disappointed in the sentence, but it (reflects) exactly what this case was about from its inception. It was an immigration and wage case, not a slavery case,” defense attorney Robert Talcott said.

Ives appeared devastated by the sentence. Afterward, he accepted comfort from his family and dozens of friends.

Ives said in an interview before the hearing: “Basically, I’m looking to forgive everybody and to be forgiven.”

Although it is unclear where Ives will be incarcerated, prosecutors said it is almost certain that he will be sent to a federal minimum security prison because of the length of his sentence.

Although slavery charges were dropped in a plea bargain last year, prosecutors had continued to argue that Ives virtually imprisoned laborers recruited from rural Mexican villages during the 1980s, forcing them to work for sub-minimum wages and to buy necessities at inflated prices from a company store.

“For all the wretchedness of the lives that were at his mercy, he must bear the fullest responsibility,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol L. Gillam said in a memo to the judge.

Ives pleaded guilty last year to corporate racketeering and agreed to pay the $1.5 million in restitution. It was the federal government’s first organized-crime conviction in a civil rights case.

Ives admitted to harboring and transporting illegal immigrants, failing to pay minimum wages and overtime and forcing workers to buy equipment from him that was necessary for their jobs.

In exchange for Ives’ plea, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed to dismiss extortion and peonage counts and to drop charges against Ives’ wife Dolly, 49.