Earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn, Paulino Ramirez-Granados, a member of the Granados family sex trafficking ring, based in Tenancingo, Tlaxcala, Mexico, was sentenced to over 15 years’ incarceration and five years’ supervised release by United States District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, based on his guilty plea to trafficking young Mexican women into the United States and forcing them into prostitution. He was also ordered to pay restitution to Jane Doe #1 in the amount of $1,229,760. Paulino Ramirez-Granados is the latest member of the Granados organization to be sentenced in this case since 2013.

The sentence was announced by Robert L. Capers, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Angel M. Melendez, Special Agent-in-Charge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), New York. The sentence was based on the defendant’s guilty plea last July to federal sex trafficking charges.

As established during court proceedings, the defendant, working with other members of the Granados family, smuggled numerous young women from Mexico to New York between 2000 and 2010, and then forced them, using threats and violence, to work as prostitutes in New York City and elsewhere. The male members of the Granados trafficking ring used false promises of romance and marriage to lure the victims into relationships and convince them to travel to the United States to make money so that they could build homes for themselves in Mexico. As further established in sentencing proceedings in this investigation, the victims of the Granados family were also routinely subjected to violence, threats and sexual assaults by the defendants. The defendant Paulino Ramirez-Granados additionally impregnated one of the women and then threatened that she would never see her child again if she did not continue to prostitute for him.

"This extensive Mexican sex trafficking operation has preyed upon countless young women, exploiting and dehumanizing these victims in terrible ways, in order to line their own pockets. This prosecution and sentence signify the dismantling of an exploitative family organization and our continued commitment to seeking justice for its victims,” stated United States Attorney Capers.

“With a promise of companionship and a better life in the United States, Paulino Ramirez-Granados, instead trafficked unsuspecting women from Mexico into a life of exploitation and prostitution here in New York,” said HSI New York Special Agent-in-Charge Melendez. “HSI agents will relentlessly pursue human trafficking organizations and its members until they are all dismantled and brought to justice.”

Jane Doe #1 stated that the defendant Paulino and his co-conspirator “made promises that we would escape poverty if I worked in prostitution. But it never happened …. Women who are forced into prostitution never do so. [The defendant and his co-conspirator] were the ones who escaped poverty through the sexual slavery of myself and other women. I see now how I was utilized and forced into prostitution with false promises of love, and I never received that love. I lost the best moments of my life, when I could have been with my family.”

“For years I cried in silence. I carry with me the scars of [the defendant and his co-conspirator’s] abuse every day, but I can no longer be silent. I am here today so that [the defendant] may never be able to force another woman into prostitution. For myself, for the other women he has victimized, and for the women I hope he never has the chance to hurt in the future…”

Since 2009, the Department of Justice and HSI have collaborated with Mexican law enforcement counterparts in a Bilateral Human Trafficking Enforcement Initiative aimed at strengthening high-impact prosecutions under both U.S. and Mexican law. The initiative is aimed at dismantling human trafficking networks operating across the U.S.-Mexico border, bringing human traffickers to justice, reuniting victims with their children and restoring the rights and dignity of human trafficking victims held under the trafficking networks’ control. These efforts have resulted in successful prosecutions in both Mexico and the United States, including U.S. federal prosecutions of more than 50 defendants in multiple cases in New York, Georgia, Florida, and Texas since 2009, and numerous Mexican federal and state prosecutions of associated sex traffickers. In the Eastern District of New York’s comprehensive anti-trafficking program, more than 70 defendants have been indicted in sex trafficking cases to date, and provided assistance to more than 135 victims, including 39 minors. In addition, through the Eastern District of New York’s anti-trafficking program, 18 children have been reunited with their victim-mothers.

The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s Civil Rights Section. Assistant United States Attorney Jennifer M. Sasso is in charge of the prosecution.

The Defendant :

PAULINO RAMIREZ-GRANADOS

Age: 39

Tenancingo, Mexico

E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 11-CR-557