PORTLAND, Ore. — The mother and daughter operators of a Tigard adult foster care home made their first appearance in federal court on Friday after they allegedly coerced three Haitian immigrants, including a minor, to work grueling hours amounting to indentured servitude.
Marie Gertrude Jean Valmont, 66, and her daughter Yolandita Marie Andre, 30, were arraigned on a seven-count federal indictment for conspiring to commit forced labor, committing forced labor and benefitting from forced labor.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon, Valmont and Andre ran Velida's Care Home in Tigard together. In 2023, court documents allege, they invited two adults and a child from Haiti to travel to the U.S. and work for them at the care home.
The three alleged victims arrived in early Sept. 2023, before being forced to work 17- to 19-hour days at the care home for $2 an hour at most, federal prosecutors allege. While the minor victim did attend school, she was also made to work for no pay at all. Eventually, all three were made to sleep on the living room floor, according to court documents.
Valmont and Andre allegedly took the victims' immigration paperwork and used intimidation to keep them from leaving Velida's. Valmont, prosecutors said, would variously threaten deportation, the use of Voodoo curses, arrest on false allegations, or arranging the murder of victims' family members in Haiti.
Authorities from the Oregon Department of Justice learned about the scheme when the minor victim talked about their situation to a pediatrician in the summer of 2024, federal prosecutors said. The minor was taken from Velida's and placed in a foster home. The two other victims got out a few weeks later, in late July.
Court documents show that at least two other witnesses spoke to investigators about conditions at Velida's, one of them closely associated with Andre.
When authorities searched the care home, they also encountered a care worker who said "she had not personally been exploited" but feared she would, based on things she'd heard or seen, prosecutors said. That worker said she was paid $110 per day and worked from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, but "often worked longer" to care for a client in need of 24/7 monitoring, court documents allege.
The FBI arrested Valmont and Andre on Thursday.
Arguments against release
Court documents show that each of the victims wrote a letter to prosecutors, pleading for Valmont and Andre to be held in jail pending trial and saying that they were in fear of their lives. They all said that Valmont had threatened to harm not only them, but their families in Haiti.
"Please do not let (Valmont) out of jail," one wrote. "She has much power and control over her daughter, Yolandita Andre. Yolandita will do anything her mother tells her to. They should both be in prison."
"I am afraid every time I drive through Tigard now, and I worry that if she sees me or knows where I live now, she will follow me back to my new residence and harm me physically," a second victim wrote. "She told me she would, and I believe her."
"Since (Valmont) sent her daughter, Yolandita Andre, to my school two weeks ago to look for me, I cannot sleep at night," wrote the minor. "I have constant nightmares that (she) is in my bedroom to kill me. I am scared to be alone, and I am always afraid she will find me and hurt me."
Prosecutors, for their part, argued that Valmont has misused the U.S. immigration in the past, including the use of fraudulent travel documents, and is "able to move from country to country with ease." They said she should be detained as a flight risk and a danger to the community.
Both defendants pleaded not guilty during their court appearance Friday and were released, pending further court proceedings.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, charges of committing and benefitting from forced labor are each punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison per count.
Defendants respond to allegations
On Friday, KGW sat down with Yolandita Andre, hours after she and her mother were released from federal custody after pleading not guilty to all seven counts.
"It's insane that they could say these things about us right now," she said. "No, they weren't employees. We had hired other people to work, you know, and we only had two clients. There was no need for us to hire five, six, seven, eight people to care for only two [elderly] people when my mother and I were already in the house. And we already hired two other people."
Andre said although some of the relatives she sponsored to bring over from Haiti for up to two years were staying at their home — which also functioned as a care home — they were never contracted employees. She said, several people — including the alleged victims — came to the United States through a Humanitarian Parole program.
"My mom and I, we sponsor some of our relatives to come to the United States," Andre said. "Just being a woman, you hear the stories of the things that are being done to young girls down there. I felt like I have a responsibility to do something about it."
She said she and her mother helped her relatives get proper paperwork and ID cards, paid for food, clothing and for medical expenses, and would send money back to Haiti. Andre said it was shocking to be criminally charged for allegedly holding people in indentured servitude.
"Growing up with a mother who was undocumented, a Black woman, who had no papers, I have seen the way that the world has treated her. I would never do that to anybody," she insisted.