OHIO
Two defendants plead guilty to luring Guatemalan migrants, exploiting and forcing them to work on an egg farm in Ohio, officials announced today.
Eight minors, as young as 14, and two adults were identified in the indictment unsealed July 2 as victims of the forced labor scheme.
Aroldo Castillo-Serrano, 33, of Guatemala, plead guilty Monday to a labor trafficking conspiracy, one count of labor trafficking, one count of witness tampering and a related immigration offense.
His co-conspirator, Conrado Salgado Soto, 52, of Mexico, plead guilty earlier this month to participating in the same labor-trafficking conspiracy, as well as an immigration offense, officials said.
“Our laws and a sense of common decency require that people not be treated like commodities,” said U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach. “This defendant treated workers as if they were less important than the eggs that they would help produce. Now he is going to learn the hard way that in this nation, there is a big difference.”
The forced labor counts and the witness tampering count each carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The charges involving immigration violations and false statements carry statutory maximum sentences of five years in prison.
These are the allegations according to an indictment:
- 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 for minimal amounts of money.
- The work included cleaning chicken coops, loading and unloading crates of chickens, de-beaking chickens and vaccinating chickens.
- The defendants threatened workers with physical harm and withheld their paychecks in order to compel them to work.
Castillo-Serrano also pleaded guilty to convincing a witness to lie to the FBI about the scheme.
“These defendants exploited children who were poor, vulnerable and entirely at their mercy,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “We will pursue and prosecute such behavior with all of the tools at our disposal.”
Charges are still pending against a third co-conspirator, Ana Angelica Pedro Juan, 21, of Guatemala.
Pedro Juan is charged with labor trafficking and conspiracy to commit labor trafficking, as well as witness tampering and making false statements to law enforcement.
Two other defendants, Conrado Salgado-Borbon and Bartolo Dominguez, have pleaded guilty to immigration offenses in connection with this case.
The investigation is ongoing. T
he case is being investigated by the FBI Cleveland Office’s Mansfield Resident Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Marion Police Department and the Marion County Sherriff’s Office.