Guatemalan boy forced to work on Florida farms to 'repay' man who promised a better life
Brought here to escape the poverty of Guatemala, a 12-year-old boy was forced to work 12 hours a day at farms in Palm Beach County to repay the smiling man who promised the boy’s mother he would give her son a better life.
Working first at a pepper farm near Boynton Beach, then at a nursery and then pulling weeds, the youngster was forced to turn over his wages to the man who pretended to be his father so he and the boy could enter the country illegally.
It was only after the boy plotted with a kindly woman he befriended in the fields, that he escaped from a home near Lake Worth Beach that had become his prison.
The disturbing tale recounted in federal court documents culminated on Friday when 35-year-old Walfre Eliseo Campsoseco Montejo was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges that he forced the boy into labor and violated various immigration laws. After he serves his sentence, he will be deported back to Guatemala, court records show.
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Describing the crimes as “extraordinarily serious ones,” federal prosecutor Gregory Schiller urged U.S. District Judge Roy Altman to send Montejo to prison for at least 10 years.
“The defendant smuggled a 12-year-old, vulnerable, naive boy to enter the United States under false pretenses,” he wrote. “He held the child in fear and forced him to do labor for more than 6 months.”
While Montejo promised to send him to school so he could build a better life, the boy was never allowed to go to school, Schiller said.
Instead, once he arrived at Montejo’s sister’s house near Lake Worth Beach, the youth was told he had to repay the $2,500 it cost to bring him into the country. While he told authorities he earned at least three times that while working as a farm laborer, Montejo wouldn’t let him quit or return to Guatemala to be reunited with his mother.
Sadly, Schiller said, the case isn’t unique.
“Traffickers such as (Montejo) are numerous, established, and widespread,” he wrote. “For every trafficker like (Montejo) who is convicted in court, there are dozens of others who continue to operate in broad daylight.”
Had the boy not had the courage to come forward, like countless others, his horrific predicament would never have been known.
The boy was brought to Palm Beach County in December 2016, escaped six months later and Montejo wasn’t arrested until August.
“Because labor trafficking prosecutions are difficult, they remain relatively rare in (South Florida),” Schiller wrote.
Defense attorney Guillermo Flores Jr. countered that Montejo, too, was desperate to come to the United States. Montejo “speaks no English and knew little if anything about the laws of the United States,” he wrote. Once here, he couldn’t work because he didn’t have necessary papers.
The coyotes and others he paid for the journey from Guatemala to West Palm Beach were demanding $5,000, court records show.
Schiller indicated that the case is still under investigation and others could be charged.
Montejo’s sister, Juliana Montejo, got the boy phony documents, falsely claiming that he was 21 years old, Schiller wrote. Her husband, Ephraim Bamaca, forced the boy to work late at night, cleaning a movie theater for no pay. Bamaca told the boy that the work was to pay for putting a roof over his head.
When he was working at the movie theater, the youth could only sleep for about three hours before he had to get up to work in the fields, Schiller said.
If the boy hadn’t fled to North Carolina with the woman he met while working in the pepper fields, he might not have been rescued. Once in North Carolina, the woman notified authorities about his plight and he was taken into protective custody.
The boy, who would be 15 now and is not identified in court papers, is living with foster parents in North Carolina. Efforts are underway to get him a special visa granted to victims of human trafficking to stay in the United States.
Federal officials urge anyone who believes they are victims of human trafficking or knows someone who is to call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888. Help is also available online at humantraffickinghotline.org.