Unaccompanied Minor Trafficker Pleads Guilty

Child victims of human traffickers during the Obama administration were "caged" in 2013.

Saying that the case serves as a “stark reminder that human trafficking hides in plain sight all around us,” stated U.S. Attorney Rendon after the final defendant Ana Angelica Pedro Juan, the remaining indicted defendant in a Unaccompanied Alien Minor human-trafficking ring, pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday.

“It underscores the need for all of us to be vigilant where we live and work. When something seems suspicious, we need to report it, not ignore it,” stated Rendon.

Pedro Juan, 22, of Guatemala, pleaded guilty to conspiring to lure Guatemalan minors and adults into the United States on false pretenses, then coercing their labor at egg farms in Ohio.

Pedro Juan pleaded guilty to a labor trafficking conspiracy. Her co-conspirators, Aroldo Castillo Serrano, 33, of Guatemala, and Conrado Salgado Soto, 53, of Mexico, pleaded guilty in August 2015 to participating in the same conspiracy in addition to immigration offenses. The guilty pleas are pending approval from a federal court judge and are not final until that approval is granted.

According to the indictment, which was unsealed on July 2, 2015, the defendants and their associates recruited workers from Guatemala, some as young as 14 or 15 years old, falsely promising them good jobs and a chance to attend school in the United States. The defendants then smuggled and transported the workers to a trailer park in Marion, Ohio, where they ordered them to live in dilapidated trailers and to work at physically demanding jobs at Trillium Farms for up to 12 hours a day. The work included cleaning chicken coops, loading and unloading crates of chickens, de-beaking chickens and vaccinating chickens. Eight minors and two adults were identified in the indictment as victims of the forced labor scheme.

As set forth in the indictment, Pedro Juan’s role in the scheme included falsely representing herself to government officials as a family friend of the minor victims in order to have them released to her custody. In doing so, she pledged under oath to ensure that the victims went to school and were protected from abuse. She also arranged to have victims released to the custody of other associates in exchange for money. Pedro Juan also oversaw the trailers where the victims were housed and arranged for their wages to be transferred to co-conspirators in Guatemala and elsewhere.

“Ana Angelica Pedro Juan, along with two other defendants, forced adults and children to work and live in deplorable conditions in exchange for false promises,” said Special Agent in Charge Stephen D. Anthony of the FBI’s Cleveland Division. “These reprehensible actions are unacceptable, and the FBI will continue to work with our partners to bring to justice those who engage in human trafficking.”

Pedro Juan’s sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date. The charge against her carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Castillo-Serrano, Salgado Soto and another defendant, Pablo Duran Jr., will be sentenced on April 11. Duran Jr. pleaded guilty to an immigration offense on Dec. 14, 2015. Two other defendants, Conrado Salgado-Borbon and Bartolo Dominguez, have pleaded guilty to immigration offenses in connection with this case and were sentenced to six and 12 months, respectively.

Whistleblowers in Arizona, who have worked in shelters operated by Southwest Key have reported on lack of care taken by authorities for assessing who the children would be turned over to, and the tactics used to lure the children.

Despite these reports and guilty pleas, authorities in Arizona have so far refused to take meaningful action to protect the children. In response, one lawmaker, Rep. Bob Thorpe has proposed legislation, HB2682, that will force the federal government to be able to assure the State that the recipients of the Unaccompanied Alien Minors, who continue to pour across Arizona’s border, will be placed in safe environments. The bill requires any person that takes legal responsibility for a refugee to submit a full set of fingerprints to the Department of Economic Security to obtain a state and federal criminal records check. The bill also prohibits a person convicted of specified offenses from taking legal responsibility of a refugee.

Opponents to the bill know that the federal government has shown little and has no interest in placing the children in safe homes. The government’s goal all along has been to simply process as many children as possible.

Rep. Bob Thorpe stated, “The allegations are shameful and deplorable. The State of Arizona must ensure that unaccompanied, undocumented children and youth are protected and treated properly and humanly, and then safely returned to their homes and reunited with their families.”

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