Criminal charges for Stearns County dairy farmer accused of withholding immigrant workforce’s pay

A Stearns County dairy farmer who paid a quarter-million dollars to settle wrongful housing allegations in October is now being prosecuted for wage theft against immigrant workers who often worked long hours and lived in inadequate housing.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office charged Keith Lawrence Schaefer, 57, of rural Richmond, manager of Evergreen Acres Dairy, with four counts of wage theft and one of racketeering Monday in Stearns County Court.

According to court documents, law enforcement interviewed more than a dozen former workers, many of whom claimed persistent underpay and retaliation.

In some instances, according to an affidavit, when workers did raise concerns to management, Schaefer or his dairy bosses routinely threatened to deport workers to Mexico or housed them in hallways or garages.

In October 2021, a former worker said Schaefer tried stabbing the employee in the face with a pencil. When the worker quit, the dairy withheld the worker’s last two weeks of pay, amounting to nearly 170 hours of unpaid labor.

A statement from Ellison’s office noted that the Stearns County Attorney’s Office referred the case to the state prosecutor. An attorney for Schaefer did not respond to a request for comment.

Just a year ago, attorneys in St. Paul pursued civil charges against Schaefer and Evergreen Acres Dairy for housing immigrant workers in substandard bunkhouses, lacking easy access to toilets or heat. But the latest filing offers a larger picture of how workers were allegedly treated at the farm in the heart of Minnesota’s dairy belt, with allegations of mistreatment going back over half a decade.

The worker who told law enforcement he was attacked by Schaefer said he began working at the dairy when he was 15. According to an affidavit filed by an officer with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, he lived with his father in a home with 10 other workers that was “infested with bed bugs and cockroaches.”

After the pencil attack, the father approached supervisors to complain and was told, according to the complaint, to “go back to Mexico.” When the father did quit, his last paycheck was withheld. It amounted to $3,000.