Fort Worth woman convicted of forced immigrant labor

A Fort Worth woman who ran a house-cleaning business has been convicted of labor trafficking. She forced two female Mexican undocumented immigrants to work for her for 14 years without pay and under threat of physical restraint and serious harm.

Northern District of Texas US Attorney, John Parker, announced the conviction, after an investigation of the case by the Homeland Security Investigations department of US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The jury convicted the 64-year-old Mexican woman, Olga Sandra Murres, also known as Olga Sandra Capon-Meneses, on four counts of a federal felony offense indictment, two counts of harboring illegal aliens and two counts of forced labor. Both the forced count labor convictions carry a maximum penalty of a $250,000 fine and 20 years in prison.

Murres was remanded into custody by US District Judge, Reed C. O’Connor, after the announcement of the verdict. Sentencing is due to take place on 28 November this year. At trial, the US government presented evidence that Murra lived in Mexico from her birth in 1952 until 1997. Then, she and several others, including her immediate family and a woman in her thirties known as ‘VR’, came to the US. In 1998, Murres arranged for a woman in her twenties, ‘IG’, to come to the US. Both VR and IG were undocumented immigrants.

One or both women were kept at Murres’ residences in Fort Worth and El Paso from 1997 to 2011. They were forced to work for nothing, and Murres also physically abused both women.