Staffing Agency Boss Pleads Guilty to Harboring Aliens in Small Pennsylvania Town

On February 24, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania announced that Andy Ha, owner of temporary staffing agency “Prosperity Services”, had pled guilty to two counts of harboring illegal aliens. Those aliens were working in a small town that became a political flashpoint over migrant concerns during the 2024 general election. Don’t be surprised to hear similar stories in coming months, as the Biden migrant surge unwinds.

“Haitian Migration Roils Town in Key Battleground State”. The town is Charleroi, Pa., and the Census Bureau reported after the 2020 decennial census that it was home to 4,234 residents — 97.1 percent of whom spoke English, 0.7 percent of whom spoke Spanish, and 1.6 percent of whom spoke some other “Indo-European language” at home.

Things have changed in Charleroi a lot since then.

The Guardian (UK) reported in October that so many Haitian migrants had flocked to the Rust Belt town that: “Two years ago, Charleroi established a community liaison officer position, filled by a Haitian national, to help enroll immigrants in English-language classes, register children at schools and set up health-testing sites at a local library, among other measures.”

That influx of migrants caught the attention of then-candidate Donald Trump, who referenced both them and Charleroi during a campaign speech in Tucson, Ariz., in September:

[A] small 4,000-person, town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Have you heard of it? Charleroi. What a beautiful name, but it’s not so beautiful now. Has experienced a 2000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris. So Pennsylvania, remember this when you have to go to vote, okay? Just remember this. 2000% increase. This is a small town. All of a sudden, they got thousands of people. The schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak not a word of English, costing local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the town is virtually bankrupt. This flood of illegal aliens is also bringing massive crime to the town and every place near it.

Shortly after that speech, the Washington Post alleged that Trump had “sketched a misleading caricature” of the town even while conceding that the candidate had “also tapped into real tensions and a powerful anger in Charleroi and far beyond — stemming from a widespread conviction that America did too much for newcomers and not enough for citizens”.

Days later, Fox News published an article headlined “Haitian migration roils town in key battleground state with signs of pro-Trump support on the rise”, which detailed both the political debate over illegal immigration and the impact of the Haitian migrant surge on Charleroi.

On the one hand, the outlet explained:

Some officials and residents say that talk of them being overwhelmed is overstated. They say that the numbers have been increasing, but it isn’t the 2,000% Trump spoke of. Officials say the last census showed around 700 Haitians in the town of 4,000. They also say that they are helping revitalize a town, finding employment including at a nearby food processing plant.

Various Charleroi denizens offered Fox News a different perspective, complaining about an uptick in crime and uninsured motorists after the newcomers arrived.

One resident, unidentified in the article aside from the fact that she had “Trump paraphernalia outside her house”, told Fox News:

More than probably half of the population here is them now at this point? So if there’s only so many houses, so many resources in any town, of course, they’re going to be affected. So that’s the other thing … there’s been multiple burglaries, robberies, accidents, constantly, sirens going off all the time, people having car accidents, driving the wrong way, going the wrong directions down one way roads.

Fourth Street Foods. Most national reports from Charleroi in the closing weeks of the campaign underscored the positive economic impact migrants were having on what had been a struggling town.

Consider the following, from the New York Times, which highlighted the personal experiences of one migrant, Amos Vougar:

Once a glass manufacturing hub, Charleroi had been shrinking for years, as residents watched one employer after another pack up and leave, so Mr. Vougar thought the arrival of immigrants like him would be seen as a boon to the town.

Many immigrants have opened businesses along the borough’s main avenue, where a store selling Trump apparel stands not far from another selling Pittsburgh Steelers gear. At some of the remaining factories in town that were struggling to find workers, immigrants fill the assembly lines.

To be fair, the Times did present some of the residents’ complaints about the influx. Notably, however, the paper also explained why migrants were headed to Charleroi, of all places:

Many of the new arrivals moved here to work at a food packing plant, Fourth Street Foods, where a diverse group of migrants assembled breakfast sandwiches and bowls on a recent workday, packing the products into boxes and moving large pallets through fluorescent-lit corridors.

The reference to Fourth Street Foods is “notable” because conservative columnist Chris Rufo conducted his own investigation into Charleroi and offered his perspective about both the town and the business a couple weeks after the Times article appeared.

Rufo referred to the business as the “center” of what he termed “the web of institutions that have facilitated the flow of migrants from Port-au-Prince”, Haiti’s capital.

As per Rufo:

The firm employs many temporary workers, and, with the arrival of the Haitians, has found a new group of laborers willing to work long days in an industrial freezer, starting at about $12 an hour.

Many of these workers are not directly employed by Fourth Street Foods. Instead, according to [Chris Scott, the CEO and COO of Fourth Street Barbeque, the legal name of the firm that does business as “Fourth Street Foods”], they are hired through staffing agencies, which pay workers about $12 an hour for entry-level food-processing roles and bill Fourth Street Foods over $16 per hour to cover their costs, including transportation and overhead.

Rufo claimed that three businesses are the “key conduits for labor in the city”, but for his part Scott refused to confirm any of them provided labor to Fourth Street, “citing nondisclosure agreements”.

Prosperity Services. Absent from Rufo’s list is Ha’s shop, Prosperity Services, but that may be because the conduct alleged by the government in its criminal charges occurred “from September 2022 to April 2024”, predating Rufo’s visit, and because the federal investigation into Ha only became public after Rufo published his findings on October 8.

An October 11 piece from ABC affiliate WTAE “Action News” in Pittsburgh reported that Prosperity Services had, in fact, provided workers to Fourth Street Foods:

Action News Investigates has learned federal authorities are investigating a company that supplies immigrant workers to a major Charleroi employer.

Fourth Street Foods in Charleroi makes prepared meals that are sold in grocery stores across the country.

It employs 700 immigrants from 41 countries, many of them Haitians.

…

Many of Fourth Street’s workers are actually employed by a contractor, Prosperity Services. Prosperity also transports workers in vans, which can be seen throughout Charleroi.

When asked by WTAE Action News about the criminal allegations against Prosperity Services, David Barbe, owner of Fourth Street, responded, “I don’t know anything about it.”

The Harboring Charges. To be clear, neither the U.S. Attorney’s Office nor the IRS in its press release on Ha’s admissions ever mention Fourth Street Foods, let alone allege that the company engaged in wrongdoing. That business has not been accused of any misconduct, and none should be implied by the foregoing.

Rather, the government alleged that Ha had paid “25 workers who were not legally authorized to be in the United States to stay in a former hotel”, and that his firm “paid for vans to transport those workers to and from their work”.

In his response to WTAE Action News, Barbe made clear that his contracts with staffing agencies require them to “hire only legal immigrants” — not illegal aliens of the sort Ha was charged with harboring.

In any event, by housing those aliens in an erstwhile hotel and providing transportation for them “to and from” work, Ha ran afoul of section 274(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Under section 274(a)(1)(A)(ii) of the INA, it’s a crime for any individual who “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien” in this country.

Similarly, under section 274(a)(1)(A)(iii) of the INA, it’s a crime for any person, “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien” is here illegally, to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, or to attempt to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation”.

Harboring was not the only misconduct that the government alleged and it explains why — in an area flush with migrants the Biden administration had released into the United States and provided work authorization to — Ha chose aliens who weren’t authorized to be here.

When he filed his taxes, Ha only listed workers legally authorized to work — “less than 10% of the actual total number of workers employed by Prosperity” — and didn’t claim income from the rest. That cost the government “at least $3.1 million” in lost tax revenue.

Immigration Crimes — in Western Pennsylvania. Note that these are not the only immigration-related criminal offenses that this particular U.S. attorney’s office has brought of late.

On February 11, a Guatemalan national was charged with illegal reentry after removal, as was a Mexican national the same day. Neither was caught at the border — they were in western Pennsylvania, more than 1,000 miles from the U.S.-Mexico line. One week prior, a different Mexican national who had been deported seven times before faced the same charges. Each of those crimes is a federal felony.

Trump plainly touched a nerve on the campaign trail when he discussed the impacts of the Biden border surge on Charleroi and similar towns across the United States.

An influx of cheap foreign labor might help struggling industries, but it often brings disruption and offers illicit opportunities to unscrupulous actors. Legal immigration can blunt some of those negative impacts, but not all. Illegal migration rarely even tries. Don’t be surprised if similar charges are filed elsewhere.