Victims: Include Mexican females, ages 14 and 19
By Adam Beam and John Monk
Immigration officials are searching for a Mexican national they say forced young Mexican women — including a 14-year-old girl and a 19-year-old deaf woman — to work as prostitutes in Columbia, sometimes servicing up to 40 clients a day each.
Guadalupe Reyes-Rivera, an undocumented Mexican immigrant also known as “Mama Martina,” paid salaries to at least two other undocumented Mexicans to smuggle young girls into America and oversee their work as prostitutes, Craig Hannah, a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testified in federal court Tuesday.
Court officials said cases involving forced prostitution of undocumented aliens are unusual.
The young girls lived and worked in Richland County, most recently from a mobile home in Columbia about a mile north of I-20 off North Main Street, federal agents said. Officials have no evidence as to who the clients were, but law enforcement officials said their experience is that Hispanic prostitution rings mostly serve Hispanic men.Reyes-Rivera is a fugitive, sought on suspicion of importing and harboring undocumented aliens.
Hannah identified the two men who oversaw the prostitution as Jesus Perez-Laguna, 36, of Charlotte, and his partner, Ciro Bustos-Rosales, whose age and address were unavailable. Both men were in federal court in Columbia on Tuesday.
An investigation is ongoing. It’s unclear how many Mexican girls or women worked, or were forced to work, for Reyes-Rivera. Only two, identified in court documents as “A.R.” and “C.B.” have been described as forced to work as prostitutes.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/16983359.htm