7 Charged in N.Y. Ring Exploiting Deaf Immigrants

Authorities arrested seven people Sunday, charging them with holding captive scores of Mexican immigrants, most of them deaf-mutes, and forcing them to sell key chains with tiny bats and baseballs in a scheme that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani likened to slavery.

Giuliani said investigators in the United States and Mexico were trying to determine whether any of the people were recruited through a school for the deaf in Mexico. He said some, using sign language, told of being kidnapped. The Mexicans had been smuggled into the United States, then forced to beg to pay off the cost of being brought here, authorities said.

“This is a situation that is totally mind-boggling, that people would be taken in bondage and virtual slavery,” Giuliani said.

He spoke at the police station in Queens near two houses where the 64 people, including 12 children and three pregnant women, were discovered over the weekend.

“They were essentially being used as slaves,” the mayor said. “ . . . They were threatened if they didn’t work.”

Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, added that the seven who were arrested by police and federal agents could be part of a larger scheme. “The conspiracy has to be bigger,” he said.

Queens Dist. Atty. Richard Brown said it appeared that the ring used a recruiter, who made “frequent trips to Mexico, to homes for the deaf, luring two or three at a time,” to New York.

After more than a day of laborious questioning by Spanish-speaking sign-language interpreters, many of the immigrants remained frightened, authorities said. Police said some may have been physically and sexually abused.

Officials said the immigrants’ place of origin in Mexico was unknown, although some may be from the southern state of Puebla. In Mexico City, phones at government agencies and the National School for the Deaf were not answered Sunday.

The Rev. Martin Montoya Garcia, director of the Rosendo Olleta Institute, a Mexico City school for the deaf, said the news confirmed fears he has had for years.

“There are a lot more groups up there,” he said. “There are people who know the deaf community here, know the places they hang out and know how to communicate with them. They come and take them away.

“They tell them they make little money here and work hard, and that life is easier there. It’s easy for a deaf person to believe in them because of the situation here. Many families reject deaf children because they don’t understand them.”

In New York, authorities said some of the Mexicans may have come to the United States through proper channels, while others entered illegally through Texas and California and then were flown to two New York area airports by members of the ring.

Giuliani said the alleged captors also were found in the houses early Saturday. Some pretended to be mute, but their ruse was discovered by the sign-language experts.

The bizarre case began late Friday, when four of the immigrants entered the police station and, using notes and sign language, told startled detectives they were being held against their will and forced to peddle key chains for 18 hours a day on the streets and subways.

The trinkets, which sell for $1, have not only baseball items but also tiny tools and a replica of a $100 bill enclosed in plastic. The chains carry a label reading: “I am deaf. These items are for the support of my family. God bless you. Thank you very much.”

Prosecutors charged that the sales were for the support of ring members, who turned over only a penny of the profits from each sale to the immigrants and who held them in the houses, threatening in some cases to notify authorities that they were illegal immigrants.

In other cases, Giuliani said, the Mexicans may have held legitimate papers and passports, which their captors seized. Detectives discovered $30,000 in cash in one of the houses, where the immigrants were crammed into tight quarters, some crowded 10 to a room.

Federal charges of conspiracy, smuggling and harboring and transporting illegal immigrants were filed against Alfredo Paoletti Rustrian, 37; Jose Paoletti Lemus, 28; Refugio Gonzalez-Santa, 21; and Rosa Beltran-Sanchez, 25. Brown said it appeared that Rustrian was a local enforcer working for a more powerful ringleader.

State charges ranging from assault to grand larceny by extortion were filed against Adriana Paoletti Lemus, 29; Adelia Paoletti, 59; and Raul Alanis, 24.

The city asked the the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to halt federal deportation proceedings so the victims could serve as witnesses, and INS agents Sunday guarded one of the two homes involved in case.

The two-story structure, painted yellow with a tiled foyer and brown carpeted front stairs, is on a street of neat, small homes near a shopping neighborhood in Jackson Heights.

Some people on the street said they noticed nothing unusual about the residents. But Gustavo Coronel, a cook in a restaurant who lives next door, told a different story.

“Ladies cry every night,” he said.

Times wire services contributed to this story.