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Guatemalan Girl Was Smuggled to Iowa and Repeatedly Raped, Feds Charge

Posted on | July 19, 2019 | Comments Off on Guatemalan Girl Was Smuggled to Iowa and Repeatedly Raped, Feds Charge

Last month — on June 5 — police in Sioux City, Iowa, found a girl wandering the streets, saying she had been raped. It turned out the girl and her father had been brought from Guatemala by a couple who had been helping smuggle illegal aliens into the United States, according to an arrest affidavit filed this month by Department of Homeland Security investigators. The girl, identified in the affidavit as “ABF,” told authorities she had been locked in a room and repeatedly raped by Cristobal Francisco-Nicolas, 37. She escaped after the door was left unlocked. The girl said her mother died when she was 3 or 4 and she had been raised in Guatemala by her aunt, but she was brought to the United States by her father, Fernando Francisco.

The affidavit portrays this as part of a smuggling scheme masterminded by Francisco-Nicolas and his wife, Amy, who had allegedly advised immigrants to bring a minor child to the U.S. with them:

The father and daughter reportedly traveled from Guatemala, through Mexico where they crossed the border into the U.S. on May 29 by walking across the Rio Grande 18 miles west of the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry in El Paso. Border Patrol agents arrested them and fingerprinted them. The agents released her and her father the following day due to processing center overcrowding, the complaint states. Officials released them on an Order of Recognizance and Supervision.
From their release in El Paso, the father and [the girl] ABF flew to Omaha, Nebraska where “Francisco” (later identified as Cristobal Francisco-Nicolas) and “Sofia” (later identified as Amy Francisco) picked them up and drove them to a house in Sioux City.
The father then reportedly “left her” with the couple in Sioux City. It is not clear where the father went or if he simply abandoned her after using her to exploit loopholes in U.S. immigration law to get past Border Patrol and immigration officials.
ABF reportedly told the investigators that Cristobal and Amy locked her in a room with a “metal bed and a bucket for bodily waste.” She stated that Cristobal began raping her and that Amy watched from the door to the locked room, the complaint continued.
After allegedly being raped five times, ABF managed to escape from the house after Amy left the door unlocked as she slept and Cristobal left for work. ABF said she fled from the house and found someone who could speak Spanish. . . .
During an interview with Amy’s father, he reportedly told investigators that Amy and Cristobal made arrangements for ABF and Fernando to travel from Guatemala to the U.S. They reportedly told Fernando that he must bring a child with him. He said they were to turn themselves in at the border and then, if released, contact Amy for flight arrangements to Iowa.
Once they arrived in Sioux City, they were expected to get a job with Amy’s assistance and help pay for rent and the food while they lived at the house. They were also to pay Amy and Cristobal and Amy back for the smuggling fees.
The other foreign nationals in the house also reportedly told investigators Amy and Cristobal helped smuggle them to the U.S. and they were also helping to pay household expenses and repaying smuggling fees, the complaint states.
All of the foreign nationals found in the house are reportedly under an Order of Supervision from immigration officials. . . .

Democrats in Congress refuse to pass any legislation that would close the loopholes in our immigration law that made this crime possible.



 

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