Woman allegedly forced Mexican immigrants into prostitution and kept them against their will at Anaheim motel.

By Claire Luna and Mai Tran
Times Staff Writers

A Los Angeles County woman faces charges of running a brothel in a budget motel across the street from Disneyland after three immigrants told police they were
smuggled into the country and forced into prostitution.

The women, police said Thursday, were lured from Mexico with promises of house cleaning jobs in fancy neighborhoods and then threatened with retaliation if they didn't become prostitutes.

Maria De La Luz Menjivar, 43, of Wilmington was arrested Feb. 4 after the women, all in their 20s, reported the alleged sex slave ring to Anaheim police and
officers conducted a sting operation at the Econo Lodge. Police said they were uncertain how many women might have worked at the makeshift brothel.

Menjivar, who may also face federal smuggling charges, remains in Orange County Jail on $100,000 bail and is set to be arraigned Thursday at North Justice Center
in Fullerton.

The owner of the motel, Nareshkumar Patel, 44, of Anaheim was arrested with Menjivar on suspicion of running a brothel and released two hours later on $500
bail.

On Thursday, Patel stood behind the motel's front desk and fought tears as he denied any wrongdoing. He said he would cooperate with police.

"I have nothing to do with this unfortunate situation," said Patel, who said he bought the motel seven years ago. "Those women stayed here for three days, and I
never knew they were doing anything illegal.

"This is a family place," he added.

From the motel entrance, guests can see the Disneyland Hotel and a giant set of Mickey Mouse ears silhouetted on a roller coaster at California Adventure,
Disneyland's sister attraction. Room 127, the two-bedroom suite rented to Menjivar, is at ground level next to a swimming pool and street.

The owner said he had seen Menjivar only three times during her stay, once when he brought a phone card to her suite.

"The curtain was open, so everybody could see inside," he said. "Nothing was going on."

Anaheim police said they thought they had dismantled the same prostitution ring a year ago after a vice bust at the Anaheim Maingate Inn, another Disneyland-area
motel. Authorities at the time arrested three women as prostitution suspects, along with a customer and a man who allegedly ran the operation, said Sgt. Rick
Martinez, a department spokesman.

"We thought it was the end of that," he said. "But Maria started it up again. She'd move from motel to motel."

Menjivar is accused of finding young women who wanted to come to the United States from Mexico and offering to front smuggling fees of $1,200 to $1,500 to get
them across the border, baiting them with assurances of legitimate jobs so they could repay her.

But after they crossed the border, Menjivar forced them into prostitution at Anaheim tourist-area motels, Martinez said. Most of the customers who visited the motel
operation were Latino day laborers, he said.

The women, who are being treated as witnesses rather than suspects, reported Menjivar to police, Martinez said. He said they were "fed up with threats from her
that if they stopped, she would expose to their families that they came to the United States to do prostitution."

Despite the glaring exception of the women coming forward to police, human rights advocates say, the scenario is all too typical. There are tens of thousands of
women from other countries working as sex slaves in the United States, said Marisa B. Ugarte, executive director of the San Diego-based Bilateral Safety Corridor
Coalition, which coordinates rescue efforts for victims of sex trafficking on both sides of the border.

Poverty drives them to leave their homelands, she said, but once they realize the lure of good jobs has been a lie they remain quiet for fear of retribution toward their
families.

"They're told that if they try to leave, first they'll be deported, then their family will be hurt," Ugarte said. "Family relationships are so important in Mexico that those
women will do anything to protect their families."

Sex slave rings target areas with many migrant workers and day laborers and generally sell sessions with the women for $20 to $30, she added.

The women who went to Anaheim police should be applauded for their courage, Ugarte said.

"It's very rare that a Latina will go and denounce a crime [despite] fear of being deported and fear of retaliation," she said.

U.S. policy toward victims of international prostitution rings has changed in the past few years, with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 being the first
U.S. law to recognize that people trafficked against their will are victims of a crime, not illegal immigrants. The U.S. now offers 5,000 visas a year to trafficking
victims to allow them to apply for residency.

Police have given information on the case to immigration officials to pursue possible federal prosecution against Menjivar, who also faces a felony charge of
pandering and a misdemeanor charge of running a prostitution ring. Officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could not be reached for comment
Thursday.