6 Charged With Operating Sex Ring

Federal authorities have charged six men with smuggling women and girls from Mexico and forcing them to work as prostitutes among the thick reeds of a riverbank in northern San Diego County.

The men, arraigned Thursday, were named in a federal complaint in U.S. District Court alleging that they recruited customers at an Oceanside swap meet and took them to a brush-choked area along the San Luis Rey River for sexual encounters with the young women, some of whom were minors.

Clients paid $20 to $25, according to the federal complaint, filed Wednesday.

The suspects were taken into custody Sunday during a sweep of 47 people that included lookouts and drivers, male customers and at least 10 female immigrants who said they were working as prostitutes. The action came after federal and local investigators spent several weeks watching the area, known as “the reeds.”

The alleged prostitution ring came to light last summer, when a girl from Puebla state, in central Mexico, told authorities she had been smuggled into the country in February with the help of a Vista man, who has not been charged.

Once in the United States, she said, the man, his brother and sister-in-law took her to various locations and forced her to work as a prostitute, according to the complaint. The girl said one of the brothers beat her and threatened her infant, who stayed in Mexico in the care of the man’s relatives.

Authorities have said more arrests are likely. Ten women and girls and five men were held as material witnesses.

On Sundays over two months, agents secretly watched the reeds and made videotapes of men arriving on foot, on bicycles and by car.

In a six-hour period on Oct. 28, an undercover agent saw about 150 men enter and leave the bushes there, according to the complaint.

The operators of the makeshift brothel appeared to shuttle their clients by van and posted lookouts at a community center nearby, officials said. Among the items found was a ledger listing which customers had paid.

Authorities described a squalid scene among the reeds, where small clearings, or “hooches,” were used for the liaisons. The areas were littered with trash, discarded condoms and pamphlets, in English and Spanish, about sexually transmitted diseases.