GUTTENBERG AND UNION CITY — Luisa Medrano, a bar owner in Guttenberg and Union City, was arrested in 2005 for allegedly harboring women in her bars and restaurants who were forced to work there in order to pay debts for having been smuggled into the country. According to the United Nations’ human trafficking database, she employed women who were allegedly involved in “a smuggling ring that brought more than 20 young women and teenagers from small villages in Honduras with promises of employment as waitresses and then forced them to work at bars in Union City, New Jersey … After rescue, the women stated that they were [allegedly] beaten, their families had been [allegedly] threatened in Honduras, and they were subjected to forced abortions. Investigative efforts resulted in the rescue of nineteen Honduran females, six of whom were juveniles as young as 14 years of age.”
Medrano pleaded guilty. However, she got off with house arrest, apparently in exchange for testimony against small-time Democratic Guttenberg Mayor David Delle Donna (annual salary: $7,000 per year), who was convicted of accepting cash gifts from Medrano and items like a dog for his wife. The couple said she was a family friend. He ended up serving prison time.
Now, the Daily Beast asks a question that the Reporter looked at in its own 2009 article. The Daily Beast asks it this way: “Did Christie go easy on a human trafficker just to bust a small-time pol?”
In the Reporter story, the Delle Donnas’ son says, ““[Former U.S. District Attorney Christopher Christie] said he was going to use the weight of his office to see that she was punished, and she got three years [probation] in order for her to go work. She pleaded guilty to harboring illegal aliens … and my parents are sitting in jail for receiving a dog and bottles of Grand Marnier from a friend.”
Read the Daily Beast story here and comment below.
To read other Reporter coverage of the issue, use the search engine here at hudsonreporter.com.
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