(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Three migrants from Guatemala have pleaded guilty to essentially enslaving two children and a third person in their Champaign homes over a six-year period.
The three are siblings and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois said they convinced the mothers in Guatemala to let them bring their daughters to the U.S. to give them a better life.
Once here, federal prosecutors said “the defendants isolated the victims in their homes, restricted their communications with family in Guatemala and subjected them to physical, verbal and psychological abuse.”
“The defendants compelled the victims to provide domestic services," they added. The children and the third person were made to work outside the homes at local hotels and factories, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office/
The abuse and forced labor went on from 2015 to 2021.
The three people accused are in their mid-thirties and early forties and pleaded guilty to charges that include kidnapping, forced labor, and conspiracy.
The sentencing range is 20 years to life.
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