THE US REPORT

(Columbia, SC)—Jesus Perez-Laguna, a citizen of Mexico, was sentenced today in federal court in Columbia, SC, on charges stemming from a sex trafficking ring involving at least one teenage girl. Perez-Laguna was sentenced to more than 14 years imprisonment and ordered to pay $52,500 in restitution to his victims. After his release from prison, Perez-Laguna will be on federal supervised release for the rest of his life. As a condition of supervised release, U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Anderson ordered that Perez-Laguna be surrendered to immigration officials for deportation proceedings and further ordered that Perez-Laguna not return to the United States while on supervised release.

In April, Perez-Laguna’s co-defendant, Ciro Bustos-Rosales, was sentenced to 70 months in prison, ordered to pay restitution, and ordered to comply with similar terms and conditions of release as those included in Perez-Laguna’s sentence.

During their guilty plea hearings in September 2007, both men admitted that they were involved with transporting a 14-year-old girl across the border between the United States and Mexico and the border between North Carolina and South Carolina in order for the minor to engage in prostitution. Additionally, both men admitted that they harbored illegal aliens for the purpose of prostitution.

"Perez-Laguna and Bustos Rosales ruthlessly stole the innocence of young girls and profited from their exploitation," said Kenneth Smith, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Investigations in Atlanta. "Bringing these criminals to justice would not have been possible without cooperation among international, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies."

Many Americans express concern not over immigration, but over those who come to the US illegally, possibly with intent to commit crime. Gary Bauer, in the essay, ‘Will Obama’s ‘hateful rhetoric’ draw Hispanic voters?’  for Human Events, noted, “During the first half of 2008, ICE deported 5,889 illegal immigrants in Florida, including 1,251 criminal aliens with criminal records that included everything from murder and sex offenses to drug crimes.  ICE also has played a key role in arresting persons involved in child pornography.” Bauer further notes, “In the first nine months of fiscal year 2008, ICE returned 7,345 illegal aliens to their home countries who had been living in Washington, Oregon and Alaska, a 39 percent increase in the volume of deportations from the three states since 2007.  Of the more than 7,300 deportations, over 2,000 had prior criminal convictions in addition to being in the country illegally.”

Perez-Laguna and Bustos-Rosales are two of three defendants indicted in August, 2007 by a federal grand jury in Columbia following a federal sex trafficking investigation. The third co-defendant, Guadalupe Reyes-Rivera, also known as "Mama Martina," is a fugitive.

[Source: Dept. of Justice Release, Jul, 18, 2008; no photo of the fugitive was posted with the release. Photo by Kay B. Day: Traffic heading north on I-95.)