McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — The owner of a cantina in the South Texas border town of Mission has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for trafficking young girls from Mexico and forcing them to perform sex acts for her bar patrons, officials said Friday.
Rita Martinez, 65, was sentenced to 360 months in prison. Her son, Genaro Fuentes, 41, must serve six years in prison. Both pleaded guilty to facilitating commercial sex, U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani said.
Chief U.S. District Judge Randy Crane, in McAllen, also ordered them to pay a total of $860,000 in restitution to the victims. Martinez’s bar, Perez Lounge, and Rita’s Sports Bar, also were forfeited by the court, as was her home.
“Martinez’s decades-long business model was simple yet evil: Travel to Mexico, entice poor, young girls across the border with false promises of a better life and then force those girls to engage in sexual acts with her bar’s male patrons,” Hamdani said. “Martinez treated the victims like chattel, while physically and psychologically imprisoning them. Today’s sentence ensures the only person left imprisoned, for decades to come, is Martinez and sends a strong message to human traffickers moonlighting as bar owners — you’re next.”
The court heard testimony of a woman who was 12 when Martinez brought her from Mexico and started trafficking her as a sex worker in her cantina.
Martinez smuggled women and girls from Mexico across the South Texas border and forced them to engage in commercial sex at her bar with male patrons prosecutors said. She accepted money from clients before allowing the girls to leave the bar for sex acts, they said.
She claimed to use the money toward their fee for being brought into the United States, and some were forced to live in her home.
“Human trafficking cannot be tolerated, especially those who exploit many victims and use the promise of America to lure vulnerable women and children into the United States, only to coerce them into commercial sex acts,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said. “The Justice Department remains committed to identifying and prosecuting human trafficking cases, and seeking restitution for the victims who survived these heinous crimes.”
The FBI also helped with the investigation.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline is free at (888) 373-7888.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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