Houston: Sex Ring Crackdown

From the Chron:

The farewell party was in full swing at midnight when police came for Maximino "El Chimino" Mondragon, his accomplices and his victims — scantily dressed women and girls he forced to sell beers and sexual favors under the flashing lights of a revolving crystalline disco ball inside his strip mall bar off Hempstead Highway.

Mondragon was celebrating his retirement at El Potrero de Chimino bar, also known as the Wagon Wheel. He had a one-way ticket back to his native El Salvador and blueprints in the bar for a brand-new hotel back home.

Then uninvited guests arrived.

Pickups packed the parking lots at five related bars and restaurants in northwest Houston, as more than 100 officers from federal, state and local agencies rushed in the night of Nov. 13, 2005. Interviews with the arresting agents and documents recently obtained by the Houston Chronicle provide the first detailed account on how one of the nation's largest sex trafficking rings was dismantled in Houston — considered both a center of operations and transit point for international sex and labor traffickers.

Task force members — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Harris County Sheriff's Office and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission — had expected to find 50 or 60 women. Eventually, they rescued about 120 victims.

In interviews, victims told agents they had been forced to work six or seven nights a week and to allow men to buy them overpriced drinks in exchange for their company or for sexual favors.

The main targets were the lead cantina owner, Mondragon; head smuggler, Walter Corea; as well as their relatives and wives. Corea was sentenced in May to 15 years; Mondragon's sentencing, the last, is set for Sept. 22.

Faced with reams of evidence, seven have pleaded guilty.

To the members of the then-nearly new Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance, the mass arrests and rescues represented a significant enforcement victory. The size of the Mondragon ring, as well as others dismantled elsewhere, convinced law enforcement authorities that the problem of forced labor in the U.S. is likely much larger than anyone anticipated and continues to proliferate in Houston.

For years, the ring preyed on women and girls from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, illegally bringing them to Houston with false promises of legitimate work and then forcing them to work in cantinas to pay off smuggling fees from $8,000 to $15,000 — as well as all living expenses, according to court records and interviews with investigators.

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Washington D.C. Couple Charged with Sex Trafficking

Adams Morgan, Washington D.C.

From the Examiner:

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - A D.C. couple was arrested on charges of human trafficking and prostituting young females from Mexico and Honduras, according to charging documents filed in federal court.

The arrests of Franklin Yasir Mejia-Macedo and Yaneth Martinez grew out of an investigation centered in North Carolina, according to court documents.

“These arrest were made out of an ongoing investigation, that is really all I can say,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Richard Rocha. Mejia and Martinez had business cards printed up for services such as “Hair Cuts for Men Only” and “Flowers Home Delivery,” and handed them to men on the streets of D.C.’s predominately Hispanic neighborhood such as Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights, authorities said. The business cards are commonly used to advertise prostitution, according to an ICE special agent who signed the charging document filed in U.S. District Court.

“Based on my experience in investigating human trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution and related offenses, I know that such language [is] commonly used as code language to advertise prostitution,” the special agent wrote.

The human trafficking and prostitution operation came to the attention of federal law enforcement when Martinez, 33, unwittingly handed one of her cards to a federal source, according to documents. On Monday, federal agents arrested her and Mejia at their Petworth residence. A 24-year-old woman at the residence told agents she served as a prostitute and shared her earnings with Martinez, according to documents.

Mejia admitted that he was a native of Honduras and living illegally in the United States. Mejia was charged with unlawful transportation of an alien. Martinez was picked up on arrest warrant out of North Carolina on charges of sex trafficking.

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Three Get Max Sentences for Roles in Human Trafficking Ring

From NJ.com:

A federal judge in Trenton today sentenced three people to the maximum sentences allowed for their role in a human trafficking ring that smuggled young women from Honduras and forced them into indentured servitude working in Hudson County bars.

"I've been around criminal law a long time -- since 1974," U.S. Distirct Court Judge Joel A. Pisano said. "I don't know that I've seen a more brazen, outrageous and depraved course of conduct" as this case.

"The facts of this case are horrific," the judge added. "We have threats, physical abuse, psychological abuse, coercion, and we have death."

Pisano sentenced Noris Elvira Rosales-Martinez, 31, to six and a half years in prison, the maximum allowed under federal sentencing guidelines. Rosales-Martinez's older sister and fellow illegal immigrant Ana Luz Rosales-Martinez was also sentenced yesterday to the maxiumum 57 months behind bars for her role in the ring.

Noris Elvira's boyfriend, Jose Dimas Magana, 41, a legal immigrant from El Salvador, was sentenced to 51 months, also the maximum allowed under the guidelines.

The three had pleaded guilty to forced labor, conspiracy and harboring of illegal aliens. All three are expected to face deportation when they complete their sentences.

Today's hearing brought the total number of suspects sentenced in the case to five. Three more have entered guilty pleas and are awaiting sentencing. And four more are awaiting trial in Honduras.

The Rosales-Martinez sisters admitted they helped oversee dozens of illegal Hondurans who were forced to work six days a week and live in cramped Hudson County apartments until they could repay smuggling fees as high as $20,000.

The immigrants earned $5 an hour, plus tips, by dancing and drinking with male patrons at bars in Union City and Guttenberg. One ring member said the girls were encouraged to prostitute themselves; another said they were beaten if they ignored the house rules.

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