Man admits forcing immigrant teenagers into egg farm work

The thousand-mile journey to the Texas border was supposed to bring the Guatemalan teenagers to a better life.
Instead, it was the beginning of a terrible ordeal: Prosecutors say they were fraudulently plucked from US custody by conspirators posing as friends or family who forced them to work as virtual slaves.
As the country's immigration system was being overwhelmed by an unprecedented flow of unaccompanied children fleeing unrest in Central America, one of their countrymen orchestrated the scheme to force them to work on egg farms in Ohio, prosecutors said.
Arodolo Rigoberto Castillo-Serrano pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court in Cleveland to single counts of forced labor conspiracy, forced labor, witness tampering and encouraging illegal entry into the country. His sentencing date is to be set.

Castillo-Serrano, a 33-year-old Guatemalan, has been in the US illegally for much of the past decade, prosecutors say.
In some cases, prosecutors say, he made victims' family members sign over deeds to their property in Guatemala to pay for transporting the boys, with assurances they would be enrolled in school here. That never happened.

His attorney yesterday declined to comment until the sentencing.
US immigration policy dictates that unaccompanied minors trying to escape dangerous situations can't be turned away.
Once the teens were in federal custody, false paperwork was submitted to the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to the indictment issued in July. Then the conspirators took custody, promising to provide shelter and get them to court dates that would determine their immigration status.