Bar owner in human smuggling ring gets probation

[Robbien]

Source: Examiner

A federal judge in Newark today gave a bar owner accused in a human smuggling ring probation in return for her help in convicting a local mayor on corruption charges.

Luisa Medrano, 53, of Cliffside Park, N.J., will have to spend six months under home confinement as part of her three-year probation for harboring illegal aliens and tax evasion.

Medrano, who owned several Hudson County bars, was connected to a network that snuck young women from Honduras into the country amid the promise of good jobs -- only to force them to pay off their supposed benefactors as virtual slaves.

The women danced and drank with bar patrons and were raped by their handlers, authorities said. Anyone who objected was beaten or told their loved ones at home would be hurt, according to a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Medrano was treated differently after becoming federal prosecutors' star witness in a corruption case against Guttenberg Mayor David Delle Donna and his wife, Anna, a planning board member. She told jurors she gave the couple thousands of dollars in cash and gifts in return for preferential treatment from the borough

Read more: http://www.examiner.com/x-2446-Newark-Crime-Examiner~y2009m1d14-Bar-owner-in-human-smuggling-ring-gets-probation

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Getting probation would seem way too lenient except for the fact that the article mentions the maximum punishment for committing human trafficking is just 24 to 30 months in prison.

The Mayor and his wife only got little more than 4 years punishment for accepting the bribes.

[rpannier]

1. 24 to 30 months

For what happened to those women and what happens to people in other fields that are trafficked into the US is criminal itself.

Bet if they were trafficking in rich people and forcing them to work as slaves the penalties would be harsher

[catgirl]

2. She wasn't charged with human trafficking

She was charged for tax evasion and harboring illegal aliens. Where's the justice for the girls who were
beaten, raped and forced to dance? Human trafficking in this country is a dirty little secret that no one
seems to want to touch.

[Phred42]

3. It wasn't personal - it was just business

[JerseygirlCT]

4. That's screwed up

Gee, small-time bribery or slavery?

Those terms are nuts. Human trafficking is an increasingly bad problem. Not treating it as seriously as it deserves only asks for its perpetuation.

And needless to say, yet another sign of the long way we still have to go in the treatment of women.