A people smuggler operating in the US has pleaded guilty to running a scheme where Guatemalan teenage migrants were released into his custody by federal authorities, then forced to work on egg farms in Ohio.

Arodolo Rigoberto Castillo-Serrano pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Cleveland to single counts of forced labor conspiracy, forced labor, witness tampering and encouraging illegal entry into the country. Prosecutors say the boys were fraudulently plucked from US custody by conspirators posing as friends or family who forced them to work as virtual slaves.

What happened here was they took advantage of a system that was overwhelmed and they did it at the expense of children David Leopold, Cleveland immigration attorney

In 2014, when prosecutors say seven of the teen victims crossed the border from Mexico into Texas, states along the border were dealing with a humanitarian crisis as thousands of unaccompanied children arrived from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Castillo-Serrano, a 33-year-old Guatemalan, has been in the US illegally for much of the past decade, prosecutors say. In some cases he made victims’ family members sign over deeds to their property in Guatemala to pay for transporting the boys, with assurances they would be enrolled in school in the US. This never happened.



The boys, aged 15, 16 and 17 when they arrived from Guatemala, were threatened with violence if they complained or stepped out of line, prosecutors said in court documents. Vans picked them up before dawn at the trailer park in Marion, about an hour’s drive north of Columbus, to take them to work, then brought them back at night.

US immigration policy dictates that unaccompanied minors trying to escape dangerous situations can not be turned away. Once the teens were in federal custody, false paperwork was submitted to the US Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to the indictment issued in July. The conspirators then took custody, promising to provide shelter and get them to court dates that would determine their immigration status.



Instead, paid drivers known as “coyotes” whisked the boys to Ohio, where they essentially went underground – forced to work long hours, live in dilapidated trailers and hand over most of their earnings to pay for their passage to the US.

Federal agents found 10 victims – eight teens and two men in their twenties – in this case, but witnesses say many others had been brought to the US from Guatemala through Castillo-Serrano’s pipeline.

A spokesman for the US Department of Health and Human Services, Kenneth Wolfe, wouldn’t comment on the criminal case but said in an email case managers assigned to unaccompanied children are supposed to verify a potential sponsor’s identity and relationship before releasing the child to the sponsor. That is supposed to include a background check and checking fingerprints against the FBI database. It’s not clear if all that that was done in these cases.



“You have a law that is designed to protect unaccompanied children and put them in the care of HHS until their situation can be resolved, and you have unscrupulous people who took advantage of it,” said David Leopold, a Cleveland immigration attorney familiar with last year’s parade of unaccompanied minors to the US border.

“I think what happened here was they took advantage of a system that was overwhelmed and they did it at the expense of children.”



The web started to unravel after the first alleged victims and their families began to talk to authorities in 2013. Then in December 2014 federal agents swarmed the remote trailer park and moved the victims out. The grand jury indictment charged Castillo-Serrano and three others with crimes including forced labor conspiracy, lying to the government, encouraging illegal entry into the US and harboring an immigrant in the country illegally.



One defendant is scheduled for sentencing in December after pleading guilty to single counts of forced labor conspiracy and encouraging illegal entry. Two others have pleaded not guilty.

Federal officials would not comment on what’s next for the Guatemalan boys who were rescued. “We view them as victims who are witnesses in our case,” said Michael Tobin, a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office in Cleveland. “So we’re making sure they get the services they need.”

The teens were put to work at Trillium Farms, which relied on a contractor, one of the people charged in the case, to recruit and hire the workers. Trillium, which produces more than two billion eggs per year at various farms around central Ohio, has not been charged and says it was unaware of what was happening with the contractor and the workers.