Cadena-Sosa Family -- Florida -- 1998

(Edit from admin: Picture above is of Patricio Sosa, only fugitive left in this case.)

In 2007, AMW first aired the story of the last three wanted Cadena-Sosa family members, who ran a sex-trafficking operation that forced Mexican women and girls into prostitution in Florida. Despite numerous airings, Carmela Cadena, Patricio Sosa and Rafael Alberto Cadena-Sosa have not been arrested.

The ring originated in Veracruz, Mexico, where Cadena-Sosa family members proposed the opportunity to women to work in agriculture, restaurants, house cleaning or prostitution in Florida for much better pay than their salaries in Mexico. Once they were smuggled into Florida, they were told that they were forced to work as prostitutes. The customers were mainly migrant farm workers who would be reluctant to inform Law Enforcement.

The victims would be forced to service as many as 25 to 30 men a day, in order to pay off their debt for being smuggled into the United States. Most of the money earned went to the Cadena-Sosa Family, or to pay for the victim's food, lingerie and forced abortions (in which a victim would have to resume servicing men the next day). This made paying off their debts nearly impossible.


Search warrants were issued in 1997 and federal indictments were issued for 16 family members. To date, only three members remain as fugitives. Sadly, it doesn't seem like the three aren't going to be captured anytime soon as they are believed to be in Mexico. Over the years on the old AMW forum and now this one, I've mentioned the sheer amount of problems of apprhending fugitives who flee to their birth nation in Latin America. Extradition requests have to be translated into Spanish, and sometimes the governments need a specific address to be bothered to arrest the fugitive. The Chicago Tribune's Fugitives From Justice series showcased how numerous fugitives wanted out of Chicagoland (majority of them Mexican) weren't being actively hunted by American Law Enforcement and how reporters actually interviewed these fugitives while the American and Mexican governments weren't doing anything to apprehend them.

It doesn't help that only recently, Mexico took some steps to combat human trafficking (Changing some parts of Mexico's constitution in 2011).

Admin Note #1: Carmela Cadena-Sosa and Rafael Cadena-Sosa have now been captured but Patricio Sosa is as far as we know still at large. If you have any information on his whereabouts, our advice based on the agencies who have handled the other alleged conspirators in this case, would be to contact your local FBI field office or embassy or submit a web tip at tips.fbi.gov

www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/mar/03/30gthuman-smuggling-ring-is-back-in-court/
thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/14/mexico-changes-constitution-to-combat-human-trafficking/

Admin Note #2 If you have any news-related updated information on this case, please contact us here: amwfans.com/thread/1662/website-contact-form