First Love, Forty Years: The Cortes-Meza Trafficking Ring

The closets

From the street it was an unremarkable house in a quiet Atlanta neighbourhood. Then immigration agents went inside.

They found closets measuring six feet by eight, cold and uninsulated, with stained mattresses. These were the rooms where girls and young women were made to have sex with strangers.

Among the condoms and the filth, agents found notebooks. The covers showed Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.

Some of the ring's victims were children. The youngest had been 14 when she was brought across the border by a man who told her he loved her.

His name was Amador Cortes-Meza, and he came from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala. A jury would later convict him on every count, and a judge would send him to prison for 40 years.

First love

Cortes-Meza did not snatch his victims. He courted them.

In Mexico he presented himself as a boyfriend, sometimes as a future husband. For many of the girls he was their first boyfriend and their first sexual experience.

Then came the offer. He would take them to the United States, where there was work in restaurants or minding children, and they would build a life together.

None of it was true. He already had a wife and children in Mexico.

The victims came from poor, rural families. One woman, courted at 24, grew up on a farm that raised corn and beans. Another told reporters she did not know what prostitution was until he explained what she would be doing.

Between spring 2006 and June 2008, he and his relatives brought about ten girls and women across the border this way. Four were under 18. For one of the juveniles he obtained a fake birth certificate.

One crossing shows how determined he was. Caught entering Arizona with two victims, he was deported. He came straight back, bringing both of them with him.

How the ring ran

Once in Georgia the romance ended. The girls were housed in homes around Norcross, north-east of Atlanta, cut off from their families and told what they would now do. Members of the ring took turns watching them.

Every evening, drivers collected them and took them to apartments and houses around metropolitan Atlanta: Duluth, Chamblee, Canton, Marietta, Forest Park. Some trips went as far as Alabama and North Carolina.

The girls kept nothing. Cortes-Meza took the money. One victim told the court she was his property.

He kept count. One woman described how he put condoms in her purse and tallied how many men she had to see: 25, 35 or 40. He did not appear to work himself, she said. He spent his days playing cards with his relatives.

Control was enforced with violence.

• One woman was beaten with a rod and an electrical cord, then hit in the head with an iron hard enough to split her scalp.
• Another was beaten with a broomstick and a closet rod. Her finger was broken and never healed properly.
• He threatened to kill one victim's parents in Mexico.
• He pulled a knife on the girl he had brought in at 14, whom he kept in prostitution for about three years.

The victims were never left alone. They could not make a phone call without permission, and one was beaten for what she said to her own mother.

How it ended

The conspiracy described in court ran until June 2008. It ended with a series of arrests by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The appeal court's opinion explains how it unravelled. Agents arrested two of the defendants and, in doing so, rescued two victims. Those two told investigators how the operation worked and who else was involved. Agents then searched two houses and arrested Cortes-Meza and the rest of the ring. Two women had already escaped on their own before the rescue.

What the agents found inside became evidence. So did something more personal. Over the defence's objection, the judge allowed the jury to read entries the women had written in their diaries while under Cortes-Meza's control. The entries described their depression and their loss of hope.

The family fell one by one. Within months, the nephews began pleading guilty. His brother followed in July 2009. Amador Cortes-Meza alone chose to face a jury.

The verdict

The trial in Atlanta's federal court lasted two weeks. Nine victims took the stand against the man who had once promised to marry them, by the appeal court's count. NBC News put the number at ten. Six federal agents and two doctors also testified.

The jury needed one day. On 23 November 2010 it found him guilty on all 19 counts, including sex trafficking of minors, sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, conspiracy and smuggling.

On 24 March 2011, Judge Richard W. Story sentenced him to 40 years, followed by five years of supervised release. He also ordered $292,000 in restitution, split among eight victims who were identified only by their initials.

A sixth defendant, Otto Jaime Larios Perez, also pleaded guilty.

After the sentencing, NBC News reported, the victims hugged the agents and prosecutors who had brought the case. The prosecutor, Susan Coppedge, called what had been done to them "modern-day slavery".

Where it stands

Cortes-Meza appealed. He argued, among other things, that the jury should never have seen the women's diaries. He also asked for a new trial, relying on a witness who claimed the women had worked willingly, and he called his sentence excessive. On 13 April 2017 the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected every argument and affirmed both the conviction and the 40-year sentence. The judges found the other evidence against him overwhelming. By the court's reckoning he could be released shortly after he turns 69.

The women were rebuilding by the time he was sentenced. NBC News reported that one had found work in hospitality and another at a food processing plant, and a third planned to study. One, who was 15 when he drew her in, said she had lost her most important years and found it hard to trust anyone.

They told reporters they did not want revenge. They wanted families in Mexico and the United States to be wary of anyone who promises to take a daughter north.

Why this case matters

Three things set it apart.

• It was tested. His relatives all pleaded guilty. He went before a jury, the victims testified in open court, every count held, and an appeal court upheld it all.
• It shows the method plainly. No kidnapping, no strangers. A boyfriend, a promise and a border crossing were enough.
• It happened in ordinary places. The customers were in suburban apartments. The house was on a quiet street.

The ring took a 14-year-old girl who believed she had met her first love and sold her for three years. The price was $25.

Sources and help

Court and government sources

• Jury verdict release, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, November 2010 (archived)
• Man found guilty of forcing women and juveniles into prostitution, US Department of Justice, November 2010
• Sentencing release, US Attorney's Office, Northern District of Georgia, 24 March 2011
• Sex trafficking ring leader sentenced to 40 years, US Department of Justice, March 2011
• Head of sex trafficking ring sentenced to 40 years, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, March 2011
• Co-defendants sentenced, US Attorney's Office, Northern District of Georgia, April 2010
• Juan Cortes-Meza guilty plea, US Attorney's Office, Northern District of Georgia, July 2009
• Government appeal brief, No. 11-11476, Eleventh Circuit
• United States v. Cortes-Meza, No. 11-11476 (11th Cir. 13 April 2017), appeal opinion affirming conviction and sentence

Reporting

• Victims' accounts and the raid, NBC News, March 2011
• Head of sex trafficking ring gets 40 years, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 2011

The names of all victims have been withheld. Details in this article come from court records, official releases and published reporting, listed above.