Migrant Farm Worker Left Disabled by Heatstroke in North Carolina Despite Prior Fatality at Company

Carlos Vargas Moreno suffers from severe brain injury and can no longer walk or care for himself after collapsing from heatstroke in a North Carolina watermelon field.

What Happened

On 19 July 2022, Vargas Moreno was weeding a field in Goldsboro when temperatures reached 90F with a heat index of 98.3F, a level classified as hazardous by safety agencies. After pausing for water just before 6pm, the 38-year-old worker staggered and collapsed into a seizure. Rather than calling emergency services immediately, company founder Jose Gutierrez instructed workers to wait for him. Vargas Moreno was transported to a roadside in an unairconditioned bus and then loaded into the open bed of a pickup truck, arriving at the emergency room with a body temperature of 109F.

Company Background

Vargas Moreno was in the United States on an H-2A agricultural visa working for Florida Orange Gold, a labor contracting firm formed in 2017. The company obtained about 500 temporary workers in 2022, sending 314 to North Carolina. Nearly two years before Vargas Moreno's collapse, another employee named Carmen Sebastian Hernandez Mosqueda died from heatstroke while weeding a North Carolina field for the same company. Court documents and worker testimony revealed repeated safety failures, including a lack of on-site supervision and inadequate access to drinking water and breaks.

Context

Federal and state regulations currently lack specific mandatory standards to protect agricultural workers from extreme heat hazards. Farm labor contractors operate across the United States as intermediaries for crop farmers, employing vulnerable migrant laborers in an industry that frequently faces serious regulatory violations and minimal oversight.