A labor contractor in California has been fined for a number of offenses including hiring foreign laborers, instead of local workers. The U.S. Labor Department found that Empire Farm Labor Contractor failed to appropriately compensate foreign workers, and confiscated their documents. As a penalty, the company has been forced to pay back wages and has been fined for the abuses that it has committed. This particular case is the second instance of abuse of the agricultural guest worker program in California, in just two weeks.
See "Farm labor contractor pays fine after picking foreign worker over local worker, officials say", Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2019