A 55-year-old Monroe man has been indicted on federal forced labor and human trafficking charges after having a woman smuggled into the U.S., then forcing her to work for his landscaping business.
Rangel Ramirez-Manzano faces up to 20 years in federal prison on the charges, which allege he paid smugglers $17,000 to have the woman brought into the U.S., physically and sexually abused her, and threatened to have her children in Mexico killed unless she worked to pay off her "debt."
"Mr. Ramirez-Manzano allegedly stripped all human dignity from the victim in this case, forcing her to work long hours while he isolated and abused her," U.S. Attorney Nick Brown said in a statement.
Ramirez-Manzano faces a forced labor charge, as well as three other charges of transporting, harboring and bringing to the U.S. a noncitizen for financial gain.
Ramirez-Manzano was originally charged by federal complaint in September and has been in custody since. According to court documents, he forced the woman to work up to 14 hours a day for his business, R&R Landscaping. She was not allowed to take a break, documents allege, and was fed scraps from his lunch.
The charges and a detention memorandum filed by federal prosecutors say Ramirez-Manzano routinely sexually, physically and verbally abused the woman for months before someone found her weeping and suffering from a hand injury on the side of the road last September. The woman didn't speak English but gave the resident a scrap of paper with "911" scrawled on it, according to the documents.
The woman told Monroe police that she was required to cook for Ramirez-Manzano after the long workdays but was not allowed to eat the food herself.
"[The woman] typically ate bread, or she ate nothing at all," prosecutors alleged in the detention memorandum.
The charges say the woman had met Ramirez-Manzano while both were living in Mexico. Years later, now living in the U.S., he contacted her and urged her to become his fiancée — bragging that he was wealthy and, once they married, she would want for nothing, the charges allege.
The woman was drugged and smuggled by "coyotes" across the U.S. border in the trunk of a car at a cost of $17,000, according to court documents. Ramirez-Manzano traveled to San Diego to pick her up and returned to Monroe, where he put her to work the next day, the documents say.
The complaint says the woman was often required to undertake the most strenuous jobs, including hauling large landscaping stones, pressure washing and building a fence. Ramirez-Manzano also did not allow her to access a bathroom, according to the complaint.
Court documents indicate Ramirez-Manzano bragged to the woman that he was a member of a drug cartel and had been involved in kidnapping and murder in Mexico before coming to the U.S. The FBI reported he had been charged with kidnapping and rape in Oregon roughly three decades ago. However, those charges were dismissed as part of a plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to felony custodial interference in 1993, according to the detention memorandum.
The memo also says Ramirez-Manzano's name came up during a 2005 drug investigation by the FBI.
Forced labor is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, while the other three charges are each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
