Five Hispanic men -including three brothers- who operated a family sex trafficking network from Mexico to New York and other states were sentenced to long prison terms.
Some of the victims had just 20 years, according to US Attorney Breon Peace. The network trafficked Mexican adolescents and young women, for more than a decade, between 2006 and July 2017.
José Miguel Meléndez Rojas (42) received the longest sentence: 42 years and six months. His brothers José Osvaldo and Rosalio followed him very closely, each 38 years and four months. Two other relatives -Francisco Meléndez Pérez and Abel Romero Meléndez- were sentenced to 25 and 20 years, respectively. One of the co-defendants in the case, Fabián Reyes Rojas (42) pleaded guilty in 2019 and will be sentenced in March, the prosecution said in a statement.
Six victims testified at trial in Brooklyn federal court, describing lives of “torment, misery, sexual abuse and prostitution”, according to the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
One of the victims, identified as “Verónica” narrated that José Miguel Meléndez Rojas threatened to “cut his mother into little pieces” if he refused to do sex work. Another victim, “Diana,” said that when she tried to escape, he beat and raped her in front of other family members.
Prosecutors said the defendants used false promises of love, marriage and a better life to lure the young Mexican victims into sex, before forcing them into prostitution.
The victims were taken from their family homes in Tenancingo (Mexico) and initially taken to the homes of the accused. From there, they were smuggled into the US and forced into sex work in New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware.
From 2009, the Department of Justice and Security Nacional has worked with Mexican law enforcement to crack down on human trafficking networks. US authorities have prosecuted more than 170 traffickers in Georgia, New York, Florida and Texas, reported Pix11.
In Queens (NYC), District Attorney Melinda Katz has made the fight against drug trafficking women one of his priorities. It has been repeatedly said that Queens is the capital of prostitution disguised as massages in the USA. This week, Sharice Mitchell (45) and her husband Kareem “Napoleon” Mitchell (38) were accused of allegedly trafficking multiple women for sexual purposes in New York City, including two victims fostered in his home in the Bronx and later rented out, prosecutors alleged.
Previously, in October two NYPD officers were caught offering an expensive “taxi” service to high-end prostitutes who wanted a police escort to their jobs, according to published disciplinary records.