Kavankumar Patel, an illegal migrant from India, has been sentenced to a ten-year prison term for participating in a child sex-trafficking ring in Omaha, Nebraska, the Department of Justice announced.
The 27-year-old native of Gujarat, India, was convicted on two counts of sex trafficking of a minor, and handed a ten-year sentence with no chance for parole, the DOJ said in a press release.
The DOJ added that he will be deported immediately upon completion of his sentence.
Police in Omaha had initially been contacted over a case of theft that Patel was allegedly involved in, but upon investigating that case, police realized that there was something more sinister going on. They brought in the Homeland Security Task Force and a joint investigation revealed two young girls, 15 and 16, who had been brought to an Omaha motel for sex.
The girls told investigators that they had been forced to allow hotel employees to have sex with them to get cheaper hotel rates. DOJ says that several hotel employees later admitted engaging in sex with the girls. Patel was one such employee and in court admitted that he schemed to “harbor, obtain, and maintain the minors in the hotel.”
Many U.S. hotels are owned or operated by Indians from the large Patel clan. This coast-to-coast Indian enclave also uses a large inflow of cheap-labor illegal migrants — mostly from India — who are believed to be more likely to facilitate other crimes, including prostitution and drug crimes.
United States Attorney Lesley Woods said:
The United States Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will never tire of working as hard as we need to work to protect the most vulnerable victims in our communities. The Homeland Security Task Force rescued these children from a living nightmare, and anyone with knowledge or suspicion of human trafficking in our communities should reach out to state or federal law enforcement immediately to report those concerns and to be part of the effort to free all of Nebraska’s victims of human trafficking.”
Five other migrants were also charged in the sex-trafficking scheme.
Those arrested and now being prosecuted include Eduardo Jose Perdomo, 36; Michel Martinez-Gonzalez, 28; and Alfredo Zambrano-Hurtado, 24. All were charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit human trafficking, and two counts of sex trafficking minors by force, fraud, and/or coercion.
Sumit Chaudhari, 23, and Vishal Goswami, 31, were charged with two counts of sex trafficking minors by the use of force, fraud, or coercion.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said that charges of human trafficking carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a term of supervised release up to life.
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