Man Gets 40 Years In Prison For Human Trafficking

Posted: 4:54 pm EDT March 24, 2011
Updated: 8:15 pm EDT March 24, 2011

ATLANTA -- A federal judge in Atlanta sentenced Amador Cortes-Meza to 40 years in prison Thursday for trafficking in human beings in an international sex slavery operation.

United States Attorney Sally Yates said metro Atlanta has become a hub for the international sex slavery traffic. She said Cortes-Meza and his co-conspirators, mostly relatives, lured girls as young as 14 years old from their families in Mexico with promises of true love, marriage and prosperity in America, and as soon as they got here forced them into prostitution with dozens of men each night.

Brock Nicholson, the special agent in charge of Atlanta’s Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the men beat the girls with wooden and metal rods, disfiguring them permanently, and threatened their families in Mexico if the girls tried to get away.

One of the victims told Channel 2, “He told me if I left the place, he would go take it out on my mother.â€