A California couple has been charged with forcing a Guatemalan woman and her two children to work in the couple’s Shasta Lake businesses, the U.S. attorney’s office announced Monday.
Nery Martinez Vasquez and Maura Martinez's restaurant in Shasta Lake where they allegedly forced a Guatemalan woman and her daughters to work for low wages.
According to the indictment, the Martinezes paid $5,139 to bring the immigrant woman and her two young daughters to the U.S. with temporary visitor visas and then forced them to stay and work for them after their visas expired. The Guatemalan family, unnamed in court records, was promised a better life in the U.S., with a livable wage and education for the young girls, who were born in 2001 and 2008, prosecutors said.
When the mother expressed a desire in January 2017 to return to Guatemala, the couple told her she owed them $12,000 — though they paid only $5,139 for the family’s travel arrangements — and could not go back home until she worked another 16 months for them, according to the indictment.
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