2 Held for Exploiting Deaf Immigrants in Chicago

Two deaf illegal immigrants from Mexico were arrested and charged with conspiring to smuggle deaf Mexicans into the United States and force them to sell $1 key chains and other trinkets in Chicago.

The defendants, arrested Friday and Saturday, are linked to a similar operation in New York, Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Russ Bergeron said Saturday.

He refused to be more specific because of the continuing investigation.

Investigators said the deaf were selling more than $1 million a year in trinkets in New York and Illinois. A similar operation was uncovered Friday in Sanford, N.C.

In Chicago, nine deaf illegal immigrants from Mexico and two of their deaf children born in the United States “were controlled by members of an organization requiring them to go out and sell trinkets . . . and turn over proceeds to the organization,” Bergeron said. “They were exploited and controlled.”

Unlike deaf Mexicans forced into virtual slavery in New York, the Mexicans in Chicago were living in humane conditions, according to federal investigators. Ten were taken into protective custody, and one, accused in an administrative complaint with being an illegal immigrant, was detained.

Those arrested were Norma Alcantera and Francisco Duemas, both charged with conspiring to smuggle, harbor and conceal illegal immigrants. They were arrested on a federal warrant from New York, where they will be sent for prosecution.

On Friday, an eighth person was arrested in the New York case.

Frank Coenen, a deaf American, was charged with conspiracy for allegedly helping to bring the illegal immigrants to New York. He is the former husband of Adrianna Paoletti Lemus, one of the seven people originally charged in the scheme, prosecutors said.