Assistant U.S. Attorney Chelsea Rice to be honored with Attorney General's Award for labor trafficking prosecution

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chelsea S. Rice has been selected to receive the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award, one of the highest honors the Justice Department bestows upon its employees.

Rice and Trial Attorney Dana Mulhauser are being honored for their work in United States v. Castillo-Serrano et. al., a case in which the defendants engaged in a human trafficking conspiracy, forcing undocumented minors to work at an Ohio chicken farm for little or no pay.

The award will be presented by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Oct. 25 in Washington, D.C.

“The work of Chelsea, and everyone involved in this case, was nothing short of heroic,” U.S. Attorney Justin E. Herdman said. “The leaders of the smuggling ring were sent to prison and the victims are on the road to recovery. This case demonstrates the horrors of human trafficking but also provides a blueprint for how law enforcement can combat the crime.”

Federal agents were alerted in late 2014 that adults and some children as young as 14 years old were being smuggled into the country and forced to work in deplorable conditions on an Ohio farm. 

With the promise that their children would receive an education, parents in Guatemala surrendered custody and control of their children to Aroldo Roberto Castillo-Serrano, who then assumed the deed to the parents’ Guatemalan property as collateral for their smuggling fee. 

These children, along with the adults with whom they were smuggled, were then routed through the United States to Ohio, where they were forced to live in trailers, some of which lacked water, electricity, heat and even windows, and work up to 12 hours a day on the egg farm. The work included cleaning chicken coops, loading and unloading crates of chickens, debeaking chickens and vaccinating chickens. 

With the coordination and cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor, the victims of this forced labor scheme were recovered, received necessary medication attention and were granted continued presence status so that they could cooperate in the prosecution of Castillo-Serrano and his accomplices, Angelica Pedro-Juan, Pablo Duran, Jr., Conrado Selgado Soto, Conrado Selgado Borbon and Bartolo Dominguez. 

Prosecutors and federal agents traveled to Guatemala. They worked with social service providers and non-government organizations to ensure the victims received the support and services they needed. They also, over time, gained the trust of the victims, some of whom eventually confronted the defendants in court.

All six defendants pleaded guilty. Ringleader Castillo-Serrano recruited the victims, smuggled them into the United States, oversaw money transfers and issued threats to ensure compliance. He received a prison sentenced of more than 15 years. Pedro-Juan falsely represented herself to government officials as a family friend of the minor victims in order to have them released to her custody.  She also oversaw the trailers where the victims were housed and arranged for their wages to be transferred to co-conspirators in Guatemala and elsewhere. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Rice joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2010. She is a graduate of Santa Clara University and the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.