OXNARD : Workers Protest Rancher’s Sentence

Farm workers and their advocates gathered in Oxnard on Wednesday to protest a reduced sentence handed down earlier this week to a Somis flower rancher originally charged with enslaving farm workers.

U. S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall changed the three-year prison sentence of Edwin M. Ives, 57, to one year in a halfway house and two years of house arrest under electronic surveillance.

“How can there be one standard of justice for those who have money and one for those who don’t,” said Karl Lawson, a former United Farm Workers union employee, one of about a dozen people who protested the change of sentence.

Ives was initially sentenced in September after he pleaded guilty to seven criminal violations of labor and immigration law, including transporting and harboring undocumented immigrants and paying less than minimum wage.

Although prosecutors dropped the slavery charge in a plea bargain, they have continued to argue that Ives virtually imprisoned the laborers he recruited from rural Mexican villages.

Ives has remained free pending a requested change of sentence. On Monday, Marshall changed the sentence, saying that Ives’ imprisonment would cost dozens more farm workers their jobs.

Emanuel Benitez, a community worker for California Rural Legal Assistance, said many farm workers believed Ives’ original three-year prison sentence was too light.

“But they felt that at least the message it would send to growers and the farm worker community is that this abuse cannot be tolerated,” Benitez said. “Now this is sending the wrong message.”

Luis Teran, a disabled celery worker from Oxnard, said Ives should not be allowed to escape prison time.

“I believe that for our people there are no laws,” Teran said. “I believe the law works only for the rich.”