Five Mexican Nationals Jailed for International Sex Trafficking Ring
Notorious trafficking enterprise forced underage girls from Mexico into prostitution
© press
Five Mexican nationals who were members of an infamous international sex trafficking enterprise that forced underage girls from Mexico into prostitution in the United States have been jailed.
A total of eight defendants, all members of the human Trafficking Operation, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering, and other charges following their arrests.
The family-based Rendon-Reyes Trafficking Operation located in Tenancingo, Tlaxcala, Mexico, routinely smuggled young women and girls from Mexico and Central America, forcing them into sexual slavery, according to information provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.
U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman sentenced five of the Mexican nationals in federal district court in Brooklyn, New York.
© press
[RELATED] Prosecutors Announce Largest Ever International Sex Trafficking Bust in the US
“Jovani” Rendon-Reyes, 32, took 20 years in prison.
Saul “Satanico” Rendon-Reyes, 41, received 15 years.
Felix Rojas, 48, was given a 25-year sentence.
Odilon Martinez-Rojas, 47, and Severiano Martinez-Rojas, 53, each got more than 24 years in prison.
According to Breitbart: In a statement, Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said:
“These well-deserved sentences reflect the gravity of the human trafficking crimes these defendants committed.
Whitaker added:
“The defendants operated an extensive sex trafficking enterprise that preyed on vulnerable young women and girls, deceiving them with false promises, coercing their compliance, and compelling them into submission through beatings, threats, isolation, and intimidation.”
According to the press release, court documents filed between December 2004 and November 2015 reported traffickers targeted helpless young women, some as young as 14 years old, from poor areas of Mexico and Central America.
Rendon-Reyes male members often used hollow promises of love and marriage to entice their victims into sexual slavery where they forced victims to perform as many as 45 sex acts a night and took all of the prostitution proceeds, funneling the money back to Mexico.
© press
“These individuals will now face the consequences of their callous criminal actions exploiting women and girls whom they forced into sex slavery for profit,” said Derek Benner, executive associate director of Homeland Security Investigations.
“Investigating human trafficking remains a priority for HSI, whose primary focus is to rescue victims and release them from the grip of their captors.”
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Richard Donoghue called the crimes committed by Rendon-Reyes Trafficking Organization members “brutal and shocking.”
He hoped these lengthy sentences would “give the victims, in this case, some sense of justice.”
Three more defendants who are also Mexican nationals will be sentenced on January 15, according to the press release.
They are Jose “Gusano” Rendon-Garcia, 35; Guillermina Rendon-Reyes, 48; and Francisco “Pancho” Rendon-Reyes, 30.
The court will decide what all those sentenced will pay in restitution.
Whitaker credited the victorious prosecutions of the Rendon-Reyes crime syndicate to “strong partnerships” among the U.S.
Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the New York Office of the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations and their Mexican law enforcement counterparts.
