Man gets 5 years for harboring undocumented immigrants

McALLEN — Just a few hours after she was raped, the woman, who had traveled several hundred miles from El Salvador, waited for her rapist to fall asleep before she made her escape.

Along with a 16-year-old teen, she arrived at the stash house in Edinburg at around 5 a.m. Oct. 3, 2016. They walked nearly two miles from the house in the 2500 block of north Sugar Road, where they had arrived the night before, to a nearby fast-food restaurant where someone called police.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Michaela Alvarez sentenced the woman’s rapist, Julio Puente Oliva, to five years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of bringing in and harboring aliens, court records show.

Records show prosecutors, in exchange for Puente’s guilty plea, dismissed two additional counts of transporting and harboring aliens.

Prosecutors said Puente, a 53-year-old Mexican national who was in charge of the stash house where the two El Salvadorians had arrived, separated the woman from the teen, leaving the teenager in the residence’s living room, while forcing the woman to join him in his room.

Puente, according to the criminal complaint against him, warned her that if she ever told anyone about what he did to her — he would kill them both.

Hours later, at about 2 a.m., the woman told authorities that Puente forced himself on her, without a condom, and without her consent, for about 20 minutes, the complaint states.

“(The woman) stated Julio had displayed a machete to her and the juvenile and said that he had it and would use it at any time if he needed to,” the complaint states. “(She) stated she felt fear for her safety and of the juvenile because Julio threatened to use the machete earlier in the day. She said she felt coerced to have sex with him hours later or she and the juvenile could be hurt due to the prior threats.”

The woman told investigators that Puente told her he “would keep her captive and use her as his woman for several days.”

Puente, after his arrest confessed to having sex with the woman saying it was consensual, but did admit to displaying the machete to her and the juvenile, the complaint states.

Puente’s sentence, which typically falls within the 46 to 57-month-range, was enhanced because of the woman’s testimony, according to a news release from the Southern District of Texas’ U.S. Attorney’s office.

“The court enhanced the sentence because he raped the victim and brandished a dangerous weapon during the course of the conspiracy. At the hearing, the court heard from (the victim) who testified how Puente tried to force her to consume alcohol and showed her a machete he kept underneath his mattress. She also stated that he said he would ‘use it if he had to,’” the release states.

At a symposium in McAllen earlier this month covering human trafficking and smuggling, Jennifer Harbury, an attorney with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid and the Texas Civil Rights Project, who deals directly with undocumented immigrants, said rape is a common occurrence for immigrant women making their way into the country.

“Some of these women, young girls, they are told about the dangers when crossing into the U.S. — and most of them know this part of it — they use birth control before making the trip,” Harbury said.

Recently there have been at least two cases that went through the courts, both at the state level and at the federal level, that highlight the issue of women being raped at the hands of their handlers.

Pedro Correa Rodriguez, who was accused of beating and raping a migrant woman in late 2015 and early 2016, was sentenced in state district court to five years in prison on a lesser charge after he entered into a plea agreement with the state.

The 36-year-old Mexican national denied the accusations, saying he had paid for the woman to be smuggled into the country and that they had been in a long-term relationship, and even had a baby as a result of the relationship.

An attorney for Correa said he believed the woman had made up the abuse allegations in an attempt to secure a U-Visa, a type of Visa set aside for victims of crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are willing to assist law enforcement and government officials in the investigation or prosecution of the criminal activity — but because the trial never happened, the attorney was not afforded the opportunity to prove that.

Correa was set for deportation as a result of his conviction.

In January another man, 41-year-old Jose Doming Rocha-Montaño, was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison after he, too, plead guilty to one count of bringing in and harboring aliens, according to court records.

Prosecutors said Rocha-Montaño admitted to Homeland Security Investigations agents he was the caretaker of the stash house where nearly 40 people were discovered, according to the complaint.

The 41-year-old man told agents he was paid $30 per person; he also admitted to transporting four female immigrants to a hotel where they spent the night and then left them there because someone else was going to pick them up, the complaint states.

One witness to Rocha-Montaño’s alleged actions, a woman and citizen of Honduras, told agents Rocha-Montaño assaulted her when she arrived at the stash house, the complaint states.

“(The woman) stated that after the man took away her phone, he asked her if she was accompanied, (the woman) answered yes out of fear,” the complaint states. “She said she was with her boyfriend but when she couldn’t provide her boyfriend’s name, the man got upset, grabbed her from the arm and hair, and threw her to the floor.”

The woman also said Rocha-Montaño ordered several of the females to go with him to his house, but doesn’t know what happened to the females because they never made it back to the stash house, the complaint states.

Another witness, a Honduran man, told HSI agents he worried for the women in the stash house because Rocha-Montaño would show up in the middle of the night, drunk and high, and go into the room where the women slept, the criminal complaint shows.

Rocha-Montaño was not charged with any sex-related offenses, according to court records.

Puente will remain in custody pending transfer to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.