NEW YORK (AP) - Six of seven people facing international sex trafficking charges have been arrested in the United States and Mexico, authorities announced Tuesday.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a joint release that an indictment returned in September was unsealed last week, revealing charges against members of a sex trafficking ring that operated largely as a family business from 2000 until this year.
They said it exploited adults and children in Mexico and the U.S. through threats, false romantic promises, and physical and sexual violence.
Bharara called the trafficking ring “brutal and predatory” and said the defendants “allegedly raped, beat, tortured, and enslaved their victims, often minors who were coercively separated from their families.”
“Human trafficking is a corrosive and degrading practice that goes against both the rule of law and the most basic standards of human dignity,” Lynch said.
The six people indicted were arrested last week. Two of them were arrested in the United States, and four were taken into custody by authorities in Mexico. The seventh person remains at large.
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