MARION, Ohio, Aug. 25 (UPI) — One of the two men charged with luring Guatemalan minors and adults into the United States under false pretenses and later forcing their labor through physical threats, pleaded guilty Monday.
Guatemalan-born Aroldo Castillo-Serrano, 33, pleaded guilty to a labor trafficking conspiracy that he and Mexican accomplice Conrado Salgado Soto, 52, have organized.
Soto already pleaded guilty on Aug. 5.
Serrano also pleaded guilty to one count of labor trafficking, a count of witness tampering and a related immigration crime. Soto pleaded guilty to both the scheme and another immigration crime. The pleas are awaiting approval from a federal court and are not deemed final until this approval is issued.
The forced labor and witness tampering counts carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, while the immigration crimes carry a maximum of five.
Serrano’s guilty plea was announced by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta and U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach of the Northern District of Ohio.
An indictment released July 2 details the men’s scheme. The two would recruit workers from Guatemala, some as young as 14 years of age, under the fake promise of good jobs and an opportunity to go to school in the United States. The men then organized the smuggling and transportation of the workers to a trailer park in Marion, Ohio, where they forced them to live in run-down housing and work at Trillium Farms for up to 12 hours a day for very little money. The work was physically demanding and included cleaning chicken coops, loading and unloading chickens, cutting off their beaks and vaccinating them.
If the workers refused to work, the men would threaten to withhold their paycheck and to inflict physical harm.
Eight minors and two adults were identified as victims of the scheme by the indictment. The investigation into the men’s scheme continues, with staff from the FBI Cleveland Office’s Mansfield Resident Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Marion Police Department and the Marion County Sherriff’s Office working on the case.
Charges against a third conspirator, Ana Angelica Pedro Juan, 21, of Guatemala, are pending. She is charged with labor trafficking, conspiracy to commit labor trafficking, witness tampering and lying to law enforcement. Two more individuals, Conrado Salgado-Borbon and Bartolo Dominguez, have pleaded guilty to immigration offenses connected to the scheme.
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