FBI Updates

The girls—some as young as age 12—were smuggled into the U.S. from their village homes in Guatemala. Their impoverished parents were told that their daughters would be working in restaurants
and jewelry stores in California and would earn good wages that could
be sent back to their families.

Instead, upon arriving in Los Angeles, the girls were taken to have their eyebrows tattooed and their hair colored and then forced to work the streets as prostitutes. It was one of the biggest
human trafficking cases we’ve ever investigated, and when it was all
over last year, nine defendants known as the Vasquez-Valenzuela family
went to jail—with the ringleader receiving a 40-year sentence.