These foreign workers have some of the hardest jobs in Idaho. Are they mistreated, too?

A Basque sheepherder worked for close to a decade at a ranch near Mountain Home, under conditions he described in a lawsuit as close to imprisonment: forbidden from obtaining a driver’s license, unable to get to town to receive medical care or buy food, which his boss, John Anchustegui, did not provide him enough of. For nearly a decade, he was owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in the minimum wage paychecks he earned working as a sheepherder and farm hand, according to the complaint.

Near the Snake River at the northern edge of Owyhee County, Anchustegui ran his sheep ranch for over 40 years. He imported most of his migrant farm laborers through the federal H-2A visa program, which allows foreigners to temporarily work in the U.S. Since the early 2000s, the Idaho Department of Labor knew about the complaints from Anchustegui’s workers, two of whom escaped to a neighbor’s house hungry and asking for help, according to complaints filed with the department.

Labor officials also knew about Anchustegui’s treatment of state employees who inspected his workers’ housing, with years of documented tales of threats and intimidation that resulted in a standing warning that inspectors never go to his property alone.

But despite the years of persistent, documented mistreatment, the Idaho Department of Labor — which is tasked with protecting the vulnerable workers by federal law — continued to help Anchustegui procure more migrant agricultural workers.

Anchustegui was one of six sheep ranchers in the past decade who faced worker complaints in Idaho. Four ranchers were sanctioned with fines after investigations. Only one stopped getting help from the state labor department to procure more workers. Advocates say the complaints show a persistent pattern of exploitation in an industry, with limited oversight, that employs some of the most vulnerable workers in the country — workers isolated, without social networks, who often don’t speak English.

“If you complain, you can go back to Peru,” said one sheepherder interviewed by the Idaho Statesman on condition of anonymity, “and you’re not coming back.”

Records detail worker mistreatment allegations

More than 600 herders tend sheep for ranchers across Idaho in environments that make them almost invisible to much of the public: working alone or in pairs, camped along the distant slopes of some of the state’s most remote public lands. Most come from Peru, Mexico or other South American countries.

The Idaho Department of Labor helps ranchers in the state hire foreign workers for jobs U.S. workers won’t apply for, such as sheepherding. That means they help ranchers with job postings.

The agency is also expected to help enforce worker protection laws by inspecting sheepherder housing and accepting complaints, often translated from Spanish, on behalf of workers. Those complaints are generally forwarded to the federal Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, a law enforcement agency that conducts fact-finding investigations. If employers show a pattern of abuse or an unwillingness to cooperate, their ability to retain workers can be revoked.

In Anchustegui’s case, allegations stacked up. Complaints stated food delivery for the sheepherders was often delayed, at times up to a month. Sometimes meat had spoiled after sitting in the back of a pickup truck or been partially eaten by a dog riding along in the truck bed by the time it arrived, according to records obtained by the Statesman. The state compiled complaints in over 100 pages of correspondence between state labor department employees and others, which the Statesman obtained through Erik Johnson, a migrant farmworker attorney with Idaho Legal Aid Services.

In 2008, an inspector reported that the housing Anchustegui provided for workers had missing floor tiles in multiple rooms, holes in the ceiling of a bedroom, cracks, missing light bulbs, rusted metal at the entrance of a shower stall, a broken toilet and an empty first aid kit. All three of the inspected sheep wagons were “unclean” and had mouse droppings. Mattresses inside were torn up, and there were no first aid kits.

In 2012, a local sheriff’s deputy went to a bunkhouse at Anchustegui’s ranch on a Wednesday after a worker complaint had been filed, according to a narrative included in labor department emails. Part of the complaint had bemoaned the insufficient food, but when the deputy and inspector arrived, Anchustegui exhibited a well-stocked pantry.

In front of the sheriff’s deputy and state employee, Anchustegui angrily asked his worker why he had complained about the food, the narrative said. The inspector translated for the worker, who replied, “You just brought that food on Monday.” Anchustegui called to another worker who was out in the garden to ask him whether there was sufficient food. “The worker seemed startled, stared at us and shook (his) head ‘yes’,” the narrative said. A few minutes later the sheriff’s deputy left after he felt there was adequate food, according to the report.

The worker who had complained refused to stay at the bunkhouse that night for fear of what Anchustegui might do to him, the narrative said, and days later he left the country.

Over the course of 16 years, state labor officials in emails reported allegations that Anchustegui mistreated his workers, that he was “dangerous” and uncooperative, and that he attempted to block proper inspections or the ability for inspectors to speak with his workers. Yet every year, according to available labor data from 2008 until present, the government approved Anchustegui’s requests to procure workers with the assistance of the state labor department.

Over a 20-year period, Anchustegui was subject to at least four federal investigations — the last one in 2014 — and fined $7,800 in total for wage and employment-related failures.

Anchustegui died in June. His widow, reached by phone, declined to comment.

“The state should be discontinuing services to those ranchers who repeatedly violate the law,” Johnson told the Statesman. “I think that the Department of Labor does not want to take such a controversial stance in a state that is highly dependent on agriculture. I think they’re sensitive to the politics of that.”

The conditions described for Anchustegui’s workers weren’t unique, and today, some sheepherders continue to struggle to have their basic needs met.

In interviews with four sheepherders, who the Statesman has elected not to identify because they fear retribution from their employers, the Statesman noted at least three circumstances that a leading federal labor department enforcement official said were likely violations of employment law. Interviews with sheepherders were conducted in Spanish through an interpreter.

Ranchers could not “afford to run this business without captive foreign labor,” Johnson said. “They cannot pay a fair wage and provide decent housing, living conditions and make a profit.”

Two of the workers interviewed by the Statesman had no first aid kit. One said they used to have one, but that the boss “doesn’t want to spend money on that.” Food is brought to them once a week, and they said medicine can be brought if they ask for it.

But if they get ill in the interim, they have to wait for the next delivery. The herders said they are able to ask their boss for fresh vegetables, but have no way to store them. They don’t have a cooler, they told the Statesman on a near-cloudless day that was over 80 degrees before noon.

Both herders said they are fearful of getting in arguments with their boss over working conditions, which could jeopardize their access to a job and wages that far exceed those paid in their home country. Not getting their contract renewed sends these workers back to Peru, where the economy is struggling amid significant political unrest.

“If we complain too much, we won’t get a new contract,” a sheepherder interviewed by the Statesman said.

In a statement, Idaho Department of Labor Director Jani Revier said 12 employees monitor farmworker conditions and “make sure farmers meet their obligations for providing fresh drinking water and a safe and sanitary work environment.” She said those employees sometimes help farmworkers file complaints, and that the agency follows federal rules when a law enforcement agency determines bosses violated employment laws, which require the department to begin the process of ceasing to help them get more workers.

The agency has stopped services to two agricultural employers since 2019, though neither of them were sheep ranchers, spokesperson Georgia Smith said.

The department declined to comment on Anchustegui’s repeated investigations.

Rancher associations help provide workers

Ranchers must also apply to obtain workers through several federal agencies, including Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of State. Nonprofit associations in the Mountain West — one of the largest of which is based in Idaho — help ranchers navigate the bureaucracy by charging a fee and acting as their agent.

While the state government did not deny Anchustegui’s requests for workers, Mountain Plains Agricultural Services, a Wyoming-based association, continued to help him apply for new workers, despite knowing that he had a history of complaints. Anchustegui’s workforce rose to as many as five H-2A workers in the early 2010s, dropped to one, and then rose back to three from 2019 until this year.

In 2004, the director of Mountain Plains sent a fax to the state Department of Labor. The fax from the director at the time, Oralia Mercado, made two observations: Anchustegui had illegally deducted more than $2,000 from a worker’s paycheck, and he was not paying his workers monthly as is required. Mountain Plains kept doing business with Anchustegui for the next 18 years. Mercado did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview, the group’s director, Kelli Griffith, said Mountain Plains’ board has in the past stopped working with certain ranchers based on the findings of a government investigation. Griffith started at the association in 2011 and said Anchustegui’s files “do not indicate any findings of abuse or mistreatment.”

Griffith said Anchustegui asked the association to help submit paperwork during a 2014 federal investigation. The investigation ultimately resulted in $4,000 in fines, but Griffith told the Statesman she was unaware of the outcome.

‘Who’s gonna watch the sheep?’

Firsthand testimony from herders can be difficult to obtain, since workers are fearful of retribution and can be closely watched by their employers. An Idaho Department of Labor employee wrote in a 2008 report about Anchustegui’s ranch that during a housing inspection, the rancher was always at the inspector’s side, “never allowing them to speak with or ask questions of the workers, either alone or with the employer present.” The same report also said Anchustegui restricted “outsiders’ access to these workers, and they never go anywhere unless they are accompanied by the employer or his foremen.”

It wasn’t until a state legal aid firm sued Anchustegui that any firsthand allegations against him were publicly aired.

Sabino Leibar, one of Anchustegui’s employees, sued him in 2017 with allegations that went beyond those already detailed in the federal investigations. They included withholding $264,000 in wages for years and preventing Leibar from seeking medical care.

Anchustegui took his employee to a doctor in Mountain Home — 32 miles from the ranch — in 2010 for “severe osteoarthritis,” high blood pressure and cholesterol, according to the lawsuit. The doctor prescribed medication and advised that he periodically return for follow-up treatment. But after that, Anchustegui “refused to transport” the sheepherder to get medical care or to allow him to leave on his own, according to the complaint.

During the years the employee worked for Anchustegui, three colleagues died “either from lack of access to medical care or in an attempt to walk away from the ranch,” according to the complaint. Based on Leibar’s account, one man attempted to walk to town in the winter and allegedly froze to death, while two others died of untreated heart conditions. The Statesman could not verify the three deaths, details of which remain scant, with the Elmore County Coroner’s Office.

The paychecks to Leibar ended in 2009, once he started receiving Social Security retirement benefits, the complaint said, though Anchustegui did not pay Social Security taxes owed for his employee’s labor.

When confronted about the nonpayment of wages by a state labor employee, Anchustegui denied it and stated that he always paid his workers “what they wanted to be paid,” according to a 2008 narrative detailing allegations against him. “It’s understood that he will hold onto their money until they need it — or want it,” the state employee wrote. “Mr. Anchustegui commented that the workers don’t like to have all that money on them.”

In 2017, Anchustegui denied all the allegations against him in court filings, including that he had not paid wages properly or prevented his workers from obtaining medical care. Anchustegui said that from 2009 to 2017, Leibar often only worked on his “private garden.”

Anchustegui told the Associated Press in 2017 that the case was “fictitious slander.” He claimed Leibar was “the only one who has ever complained about anything like this.” Anchustegui also filed a counterclaim against him, seeking damages.

Johnson told the Statesman the lawsuit ended in a settlement paid out to the herder. He declined to disclose the amount but said the result was “satisfactory” to Leibar. The counterclaim was dismissed. Leibar could not be reached for comment.

U.S. Department of Labor spokesperson Michael Petersen said the Wage and Hour Division’s investigations into Anchustegui found a failure to provide “complete and accurate” work contracts or complete wage statements, wages paid less frequently than required, and, in one investigation, housing safety and health violations and a wage violation.

The Wage and Hour Division has authority to debar employers who have “substantially” violated employment laws, which prevents them from obtaining H-2A workers for three years. In Anchustegui’s case, Petersen said, “the scope and the severity of the violations found in the earlier cases did not rise to the level of debarment.” But he added that during the 2014 investigation, which included wage and housing safety violations, the division “considered pursuing debarment. The employer, however, made credible and specific assurances that these violations would not occur in the future.”

Legal aid groups in states like Idaho and Colorado represent herders and said in interviews they’re often aware of cases that involve withheld wages, refusal of medical care or insufficient food or water for herders.

“We hear a lot of stomach issues, or just the flu, dental problems that just go untreated,” said Jenifer Rodriguez, the managing attorney at the Migrant Farmworker Division of Colorado Legal Services. “Their employers refuse to take them to get treatment for that because, ‘who’s gonna watch the sheep?’”

‘HE needs US’ to get his workers

Years of emails and written reports showed Anchustegui’s alleged mistreatment was not only directed toward workers themselves but bled over into his conduct with state employees. One inspector recounted that Anchustegui is “very intimidating” and said inspectors were told to never go to his property alone. The same inspector said Anchustegui “yelled at him” when he opened a cupboard to see if he provided his employees with dishes. When the inspector asked the employer to clean a bathroom, “he rudely stated he would not.”

“This employer has over the years mistreated his workers and our staff,” read a 2017 email from a Department of Labor employee. “I actually consider him dangerous (there are many stories about him waving a gun or threatening to shoot workers). … I am surprised our department exposes our staff to this kind of treatment. The employer wants to participate in the program and HE needs US to perform the housing inspection in order to get his workers.”

The staffer suggested sending him a cautionary letter ahead of inspections to make the process go more smoothly for Department of Labor employees, and the state agency did. The employee advised for the letter to tell him he needed to cooperate and “treat our staff with respect and courtesy,” noting that “without our assistance he cannot participate in the program.”

A 2008 letter from the state to the U.S. Department of Labor enclosed with a set of allegations said the following: “Since over the years there has been a pattern of apparent violations against this employer, this department is particularly interested in the outcome of your investigation.” That and one other investigation resulted in a $3,000 fine. Another investigation six years later ended in $4,000 in fines.

The four ranchers with Idaho ties who were fined by the U.S. Department of Labor also included Forrest Arthur, of Paul, who prompted a news release that noted he had failed to reimburse workers for their travel from Peru — which is required for H-2A workers — withheld wages and failed housing and transportation safety standards. He was ordered to pay $8,387 in back wages to 14 workers and $12,105 of fines in 2019. Arthur did not respond to a request for comment.

One complaint in 2017 against a Utah-based rancher, Royce Larsen, said a herder “has not been paid for five months and did not have any food or water.” State labor staff visited the site and found the worker had empty water jugs and a partial case of bottled water. The rancher was later fined more than $4,000. Larsen could not be reached for comment.

Of the four sanctioned ranchers, the Idaho Department of Labor only stopped providing services to one ranch, owned by Jim and Carrie Marek of White Bird. An investigation found the ranchers failed to pay their workers the wages they were due and had not cooperated with the state agency’s investigation, didn’t respond to repeated calls and attempted to apply for more workers under a different business name.

Jim Marek declined to comment. Carrie Marek could not be reached.

Because the H-2A program is designed to not take away opportunities from U.S. workers, sheepherder jobs must be offered annually on a state website before the Department of Labor will allow ranchers to look out of the country. For decades, the number of U.S. workers willing to become a sheepherder and take on the long hours, low pay and isolation has been slim to none.

Johnson said he filed another case with the U.S. Department of Labor earlier this year, and is involved in cases with 14 herders, including three labor trafficking cases for ranchers in Idaho, Nevada and Arizona. Idaho Legal Aid gets two to four calls per year related to labor issues involving sheepherders. Johnson said that while the complaints are serious, it often takes a severe situation for a worker to file a complaint in the first place.

“What’s common is the herders will put up with a lot,” Johnson said, noting how challenged the economy is in Peru. ”A herder is not going to complain until it gets really, really bad. He will try to stick it out.”

Sometimes, sheepherders leave their jobs to take work in construction or at restaurants, where some states’ minimum wages promise pay multiple times higher than a sheepherder’s earnings. Since the H-2A visa is tied to a particular job, those workers become undocumented if they switch careers.

In the past, the Idaho Woolgrowers Association has pushed to stop workers from leaving by passing legislation. In 2013, the association and a sheep rancher, former state Sen. Jeff Siddoway, backed a bill that would have made it a misdemeanor for sheepherders to leave their jobs without notifying their employer. Misdemeanors in Idaho are punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.

Lawmakers never gave the bill a hearing. But in an interview with the Statesman, Siddoway said he still supports making it a misdemeanor for sheepherders to walk off the job because ranchers spend a lot of money to bring workers to the U.S., including their travel expenses.

He said two of his 16 sheepherders have left their jobs this year, and that sometimes it’s as many as six who leave to take jobs at nearby dairies or in construction. He said ranchers often invest about $3,000 in sheepherders getting them into the U.S., and that if they leave unannounced, a herd of sheep — worth $500,000 or more — could get separated. Sheep, dogs and horses could be left unattended in the mountains for days.

“If someone just takes off, that really leaves us in a mess,” Siddoway said. “You’ve got millions and millions of dollars worth of stuff out there, you have to have someone with them out there all the time.”

Getting a replacement herder can take three to six months, leaving a rancher scrambling to watch over his herd in the meantime, he said.

Siddoway said the driver of the legislation was to prod federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — better known as ICE — to get involved in pursuing herders who leave. ICE officials had told ranchers they won’t deport or detain immigrants without a criminal record, Siddoway told the Statesman. Making sheepherders who left the job face a misdemeanor would give them a record, he said.

“Back then, ICE would tell us that they’re not going to enforce any of the immigration problems unless the person has some kind of a record,” he said. “That was the whole stick behind the program. If we could get a misdemeanor against them, then ICE could go in and say this guy’s having an infraction, so we can pick (him) up.”

Because information travels quickly among herders, Siddoway said, he thought such a law would have a quick impact.

“The next thing you know, we wouldn’t be having a problem again,” he said. “Because they’d say if you leave, you’re going to get hauled away.”

Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke, who was House Speaker when the legislation was proposed, said the state had no place regulating such disputes between employers and their employees.

“If you don’t show up to work tomorrow, I don’t think you’re guilty of a misdemeanor,” he told the Statesman.

Standards ‘are not being met’

The sheepherders’ tent was miles off-trail in the mountains of Idaho, staked on a sagebrush hillside with a wide valley splayed out before it. But the herders — and their 2,000 sheep — were nowhere to be seen.

For sheepherders living in Idaho, mountainous distances are all part of a day’s work. Awaking at dawn, herders interviewed by the Statesman sometimes travel miles to reach their sheep, spending the morning with them before returning over steep terrain to their canvas tent for lunch at midday. After a break of 30 minutes to an hour, they return to work, traveling on horseback with a pack of sheep dogs in tow. They often don’t return to camp until dark.

Those long, daily hours, filled only with sunshine, wind, buzzing insects and the yip of scurrying dogs, are compensated at some of the lowest rates of any workers in the U.S.

The unusual lives of herders make for circumstances that struggle to meet the labor expectations for migrant workers.

Summertime for sheepherders in Idaho is an extended camping trip, with laborers living in wagons or tents along dirt roads or mountain hillsides. They do not have running water, bathrooms or showers. They do not have kitchens other than propane camping stoves. They do not have refrigeration. They do not have electricity, save for a solar phone charger if their employer provides them with it.

Two herders interviewed were living in a canvas tent full of holes, which they said leaked water when it rains. Range housing, as sheepherder accommodations are called, has less stringent safety and health requirements than standard worker housing.

“Nonetheless, we find with some frequency that even those flexible standards are not being met,” said Daniel Chapman, a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.

Sheepherders are also exempt from the federal minimum wage, and are instead paid a rate for “range occupations” that is around $1,900 a month. Given the 12-hour or longer days sheepherders work seven days a week, that computes to $5 or $6 an hour. Though some states have raised the minimum wage for herders, as high as $3,850 in California and $2,423 in Colorado, Idaho has not.

This array of circumstances — what supporters call a pastoral idyll and critics call ripe for worker abuse — has led to frequent conflict between labor advocates and ranchers in recent years.

On an 85-degree July day, two sheepherders interviewed said they are not brought sufficient drinking water and instead rely on a nearby, trickling stream. Though they’ve asked their employer for a way to treat or filter their water to ward off disease, such protection has not been provided, they said. The herders showed the Statesman a dish towel they use to filter their drinking water.

Richard Longo, the deputy regional administrator for the Wage and Hour Division at the federal Department of Labor, told the Statesman that ranchers who don’t provide clean drinking water are likely violating labor laws “no matter what.” But they could be more or less severe violations if the water were tested by investigators for potential pathogens.

Longo said that the dilapidated housing and lack of a first aid kit encountered by the Statesman were also likely violations of employment law.

It is common for sheepherders to not be provided drinking water, in large part because it would be impractical: The workers are sometimes miles away from roads or trails. Often, that means employers are the only ones who know where their workers are, forcing investigators to contact ranchers before doing on-site inspections.

And while Longo said investigators would pursue investigations if they were aware of them, the government has few full-time labor investigators in Idaho. And no mechanism requires natural water sources to be tested in advance of use, even though the practice of drinking water from streams is common in the sheep industry. While working in the mountains, sheepherders could be collecting water from innumerable sources as they move across the landscape.

In 2016, Johnson represented a sheepherder who got severely ill with fever, convulsions and a condition that eventually left him unable to move his hands or speak. The illness was thought to have originated in the water the sheepherder had been drinking, and Johnson said he obtained hospital records about what happened. But an insurance company denied the workers’ compensation claim because he could not prove direct causation — leaving the sheepherder with steep medical bills to pay on his own.

“The ranch is supposed to supply clean drinking water, and he wasn’t, and the guy gets sick,” Johnson said. “But because we didn’t have any evidence testing the water that he drank at the time, we couldn’t prove the causation. So that sounds crazy to a layperson, right, but that’s the way the workers’ comp law works.”

‘Better just to make it illegal to own sheep’

The two herders interviewed by the Statesman who were living in a tent said they liked their work, which was largely peaceful and reminded them of home. One of the herders said he liked working in nature and formed strong bonds with his dogs.

The enticement of U.S. wages — even wages that are well below those of most other jobs — is powerful for herders, many of whom are able to pay to put children through school or buy a farm back home. Hundreds if not thousands of herders have worked in Idaho for dozens of ranchers over the last decade, and only a few have resulted in formal complaints.

Ranchers interviewed by the Statesman said the claims of worker advocates are overstated.

“That’s contrary to logic,” said Bedke, a cattle rancher. “If I’m in the sheep business and I’m trusting my sheep to a sheepherder, I’ve got to be on top of that. … Good, satisfied labor is absolutely integral to the success of my sheep operation, and anything that takes advantage or cuts corners with regard to the labor, I think that can’t last for long.”

Siddoway said providing more amenities, or having stricter regulations, is largely impossible: There can’t be refrigeration because there’s no electricity, and coolers don’t work because ice wouldn’t last for 10 days and food deliveries are only once every 10 days. Packing in water to herders — rather than relying on streams — would mean loading 800 pounds onto pack horses for each trip, requiring more horses than he has.

“You can make rules and laws and regulations that have absolutely no common sense to them and enforce things, (but) it probably would be better just to make it illegal to own sheep in the United States,” he said, adding that would take jobs away from many herders. “You can overburden any industry with regulations, if that’s what you’re looking to do. You can get enough pressure against people to put guys like me out of business.”

State Rep. Douglas Pickett, an Oakley Republican and rancher, told the Statesman he would like to see the H-2A system reformed to make it easier for sheepherders to get permanent residence in the U.S., and to allow their spouses and children to visit them while they are working in Idaho.

Some sheepherders have been working for the same ranch for decades, and in some instances, employers have helped their workers apply to live permanently in the U.S. The flowing water in Idaho’s high peaks comes from snowmelt, which ranchers said is clean.

“We have no concept in our mind of what they’re coming from,” Pickett said. “It’s not possible in our state of prosperity to understand what it means not to have running water or electricity in your primary residence, let alone out at the sheep wagon somewhere, or even a septic system or any of those things. … These people live on the land, and they barter for what they need. And so it’s an opportunity for them to be able to come here and provide some income for their families.”

Pickett, whose family has been raising sheep in Idaho for 140 years, said if instances of neglect or mistreatment occur, ranchers should be disciplined.

“You have to provide adequate housing,” he said. “And so if you’re not doing that, the process is there to take care of that, and that just needs to be followed through.”

This report was made possible in part by the Fund for Environmental Journalism of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Monica Carrillo-Casas provided Spanish interpretation and contributed reporting.