The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that eight Venezuelan illegal immigrants were arrested and charged with allegedly operating a transnational sex trafficking ring with ties to the Tren de Aragua gang.
In a Wednesday press release, the Justice Department announced that eight defendants had been charged with “various offenses arising from their respective roles in a transnational commercial sex enterprise.” According to the press release, the eight illegal immigrants used motels in Nashville to conduct “an illegal commercial sex and sex trafficking enterprise” from July of 2022 to March of 2024.
“According to the indictment, once the defendants facilitated the victims’ arrival in the United States, the defendants utilized online commercial sex websites to post advertisements for the victims and then used the internet and their cellular phones to direct commercial sex buyers to engage in commercial sex with the victims at the motels before collecting the proceeds from that commercial sex for the defendants’ benefit.” the Justice Department stated.
According to The New York Post, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Robert McGuire told reporters on Tuesday that when the sex trafficking ring victims arrived from outside the United States and were “far from home,” the women were “bullied, intimidated and threatened to have sex with total strangers.”
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Law enforcement officials noted that some of the victims had their immigration documents and children taken from them to ensure that they complied with the orders of the sex trafficking ring, according to The New York Post.
The Justice Department identified Yilibeth Del Carmen Rivero-Del Caldera and her son, Klebier Daniel Mota Rivero, as the leaders of the sex trafficking ring. Law enforcement officials claimed that the leaders of the sex trafficking ring used their connection to the Tren de Aragua gang and the gang’s “reputation for violence” to threaten the victims and to “compel them to continue engaging in commercial sex acts until the defendants deemed their debts repaid.”
Addressing the recent indictment against the eight Venezuelan illegal immigrants, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David B. Rausch emphasized that law enforcement officials will not “stand by and allow TdA or any criminal organization to get a stronghold in Tennessee.”
“They are not going to be here. They will not be allowed to commit crime here. We will hunt these bad actors down,” Rausch added. “We will dismantle them, and we will work with every tool that we have under the law to hold these violent criminals absolutely accountable for my fellow Tennesseans.”
