When Michigan’s Orduna Plumbing Inc. decided to run their business on a soggy foundation of exploited and illegal alien labor, they didn’t just wrench a few loose bolts – they flooded the job site.
According to federal prosecutors [1], the company’s owners, Moises Orduna-Rios and Raquel Orduna-Rios of Plymouth, Michigan, reportedly stacked around 253 workers into overcrowded homes and hotel rooms – passports confiscated [2], dignity flushed – while pulling in about $74 million from 2022 to 2025 from their operations in New York, Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio.
It wasn’t a trickle of wrongdoing but a full-blown deluge: only six of those workers were allegedly legally authorized to be employed. The rest lived and worked in conditions so cramped they made a sardine can look spacious – nine people crammed into a small residence, for example.
If that wasn’t enough, messages obtained by investigators show the company boss counseling employees to be less visible to law enforcement – i.e. drive slow, skip errands, don’t have family barbecues.
According to the press release, the charges carry up to 10 years in prison and a $3,000 fine for every “unauthorized” worker the couple employed. If more so-called “employers” faced consequences like that, maybe the illegal-hiring industry would dry up – and a few folks might even start self-deporting on their own.
So, while the couple was supposed to be keeping the pipes clean, they were really just clogging up the labor market – and now they’re facing charges ranging from harboring unauthorized workers to money laundering. If convicted, they could be going down the drain for good.