picture story

 Immokalee After Dark

Immokalee after Dark -- "When the sun set, it's not the end of the day for this hard-working agriculture town, where quitting time arrives late and mornings start awfully early."

This agriculture town in South Florida is mostly populated with migrant workers and immigrants from Central America and Haiti who work the fields and packing houses.
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The Price of Pork
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Forbidden Freedom

Guatemala has become the source of most of the human trafficking cases uncovered recently in Southwest Florida, including two cases from neighboring villages hidden in the highlands of Huehuetenango, in the western Highlands of Guatemala. Children as young as 10 from this region are crossing the border alone, and it's not rare to find 12- and 13-year-old children traveling the Central American migrant corridor headed for the United States. Families are often happy to see their children make the trip to the United States in spite of the dangers. The young indigenous Guatemalans are willingly smuggled into the United States to help provide for their families mired in poverty in Guatemala, but after arriving in their new home, the victims often end up as slaves with no way to escape.
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Teen Mothers

Juanita Alejos, 16-years-old and pregnant with her third child, recently moved to Our Mother's Home in San Carlos Park. The home for teenage mothers is one of only four homes in Florida that targets teen mothers and their babies in foster care. Tucked in a San Carlos Park neighborhood, the Our Mother's Home houses eight girls and their babies until the mothers turn 18 years old and age out of the foster care system. The story chronicles a year and a half of Juanita's life at Our Mother's Home, from a few months after she arrived to the day she left the home. Following publication of the five-part story, there was significant community reaction and discussion on teenage pregnancy.
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Passing Time on Johns Road

Buster Johns, is a link to the past in Naples, Florida. Buster and his family, including mother, brothers, children, grandchildren live on 20 acres outside Naples that is slowly being surrounded by expensive new home developments, department stores, strip malls, colleges and a planned new across the road from his cypress home. The developments and Northerners moving to the now-popular tourist destination are pushing 'Florida Crackers' like Buster out of the area. Rising property values and continuous changes to their way of life aggravate Buster, but he and the rest of his family are determined not to sell out their 20 acres of land next to the famous Swamp Buggy Race grounds.
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