Did Christie Go Easy on a 
Human Trafficker Just to 
Bust a Small-Time Pol?

Chris Christie built his reputation as a crime-fighter.

So why did he cut a deal with an accused sex slave ringleader—and send to jail a Democratic mayor, instead?

Beginning in 2003, members of a smuggling ring in Honduras approached girls, some just 14 years of age, and talked them into illegally entering the United States with the promise of waitress jobs.

After making it over the border, during which time the smugglers allegedly raped some of the girls, they landed in Houston, Texas.

They were temporarily held there before making the rest of their journey north to Hudson County, New Jersey.

That’s when the girls learned the truth.

They were never going to be waitresses.

The girls worked in one of several bars, Puerto de la Union in Guttenberg or Puerto de la Union II and El Paisano in Union City, owned by Luisa Medrano.

They were on the job for 48 hours per week, making just $240--money that would have to go to pay off their smuggling debts, which ranged from $10,000 to $20,000.

For that tiny salary, the girls were required to dance and drink with male patrons, and they were encouraged to prostitute themselves.

"If you wanted a beer, it was $4.

If you wanted a 'special beer' it was $14," Francisco Arroyo, a truck driver and customer at Puerto de la Union, told the Hudson Reporter.

"These girls would do everything to the guys. I couldn't believe it was happening."

While they worked, the girls were kept in apartment buildings owned by Medrano.

Court documents allege that they were not allowed to move or stop working until their debts were completely paid off.

If they didn't cooperate, “enforcers” stepped in.

According to the documents, one enforcer “instructed a co-conspirator, in the presence of [one of the girls], that ‘if  any of these bitches get out of line, you should beat them.’”

The enforcer then “struck [a girl] in the head and pushed her into the front door, after he observed [her] talking with a man on the street to whom she had not been given permission to speak.”

What went on inside Medrano’s bars and apartments was not a well-kept secret.

In January 2005, the Immigrant and Customs Enforcement received a complaint that “indicated that girls from Honduras who presently worked in the [bars] had been purchased by the owner of the [bars], Luisa Medrano, for $20,000 each.”

Not long after, investigators raided two of Medrano's Union City apartment buildings, where they discovered nearly two dozen illegal immigrants, including the Honduran girls.

Some were later deported.

The girls who told investigators of their ordeal were declared victims of human trafficking, their story one of indentured servitude, and Medrano the ringleader.

On July 20, 2005, Medrano was arrested.

In the police car, Medrano, who speaks only Spanish, was alleged to have told an officer “all I did was employ them and rent them my apartment.

They were just dancers, what they did afterwards is not my concern.”

Medrano was officially charged with a conspiracy to commit forced labor; eight counts of forced labor; one count of alien smuggling; and eight counts of harboring illegal aliens.

For these crimes, reports say she could have faced up to 250 years in prison.

Christie ‘made it a mission to go after, for the most part, small-time crooks, which in New Jersey municipal politics is not a big challenge.’

United States Attorney Chris Christie made a public statement.

"This was inhumane and sadistic treatment of young women who were kept as virtual slaves," he said.

"These are among the most vile crimes I've seen in my time as U.S. Attorney, and we'll bring the full weight of Federal prosecution against these Defendants."

In January 2009, Luisa Medrano pleaded guilty to a far lesser charges than the ones the state had initially levied against her.

She was convicted of merely harboring illegal immigrants, not exploiting them.

For her crimes, Medrano was sentenced to a mere six months house arrest--during which time she was permitted to work in a restaurant she owned--and three years probation.

What happened?

The U.S. Attorney's office cut a deal with Medrano.

She got a light sentence, and in return gave up information--some of which was about a local politician that Christie would use to burnish his image as an enemy of corruption.

The upshot was that a human trafficker got off easy, in part, so that Christie could jail a small-town mayor.

The deal, critics charge, was at best a bad one and at worst, a callous political move.

Christie's defenders respond that it was a necessary move to help catch other criminals--just another one of the unpleasant compromises that prosecutors are routinely forced to make in the name of justice.

At the time of Medrano’s sentencing, Christie’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said Medrano assisted with the convictions of eight other people who part of the smuggling ring. 

However, Medrano’s attorney, Gerald Shargel, told me that she “never testified about human smuggling” and court documents clearly state that “Luisa Medrano did not testify before the grand jury” regarding the human trafficking ring. 

The U.S. Attorney’s office would not provide information about what convictions Medrano allegedly assisted on, or how many.

Reached for comment for this story, a spokesman for Governor Christie referred me to Drewniak’s 2009 statements.

Absent any concrete evidence to the contrary, it appears that Christie’s office all-but-excused a human trafficker that he considered to be “vile” in order to convict someone for comparatively petty crimes.

A source who worked with Christie in the U.S. Attorney's office and spoke with me on the condition of anonymity said, "People can disagree whether or not a human trafficking crime is worse [than political corruption]...

But as a matter of U.S. policy, there are people who would say that U.S. policy says public corruption cases are given greater weight."

***
On September 10, 2001, after months of speculation, Christie learned that President George W. Bush—for whom he had spent the previous few years fundraising, offering free legal advice and drumming up support among Garden State Republicans--had chosen him to be the United States Attorney.

Christie was not a selection that immediately inspired confidence. He was a securities and appellate lawyer with no experience in criminal law.

But the wounds of 9/11 were still fresh when his appointment was announced publicly two months later, and good Americans supported the president rather than questioning him.

Even U.S. Senator Jon Corzine—future New Jersey governor and a Christie foe—issued a statement supporting Bush's decision to nominate Christie.

Jeffrey Chiesa, who worked in Christie’s law firm before being brought into the U.S. Attorney’s office in the summer of 2002, told me he never doubted Christie:

"I had tremendous confidence in his ability to do that job."

And indeed, Christie was considered by many to be a highly effective U.S. Attorney.

By the time he left the office in 2008, he had convicted more than 100 politicians--more than one per month over the course of his six-year tenure.

Chiesa--who went on to serve as the Attorney General of New Jersey from 2012 until June 2013, when Christie appointed him to fill the U.S. Senate seat left open by Frank Lautenberg's death--was impressed by Christie's leadership as the U.S. Attorney.

"He went where the evidence took us in our cases. We brought great cases and got great results,” Chiesa said.

“I thought he did a terrific job."

Judged by the numbers, Christie's tenure as U.S. Attorney was impressive: five state legislators, 18 mayors, 15 municipal office-holders, and various other public servants and county executives—all off the streets and stripped of their power, thanks to him.

But Christie's conviction rate did not impress everyone.

According to Richard Merkt, a former New Jersey assemblyman and a one-time running mate of Christie’s, Christie “made it a mission to go after, for the most part, small-time crooks, which in New Jersey municipal politics is not a big challenge.

I mean, they're all over the place."

"If you get everybody you go after, maybe you're not aiming so high,” Merkt said.

“There are worse characters left in the New Jersey legislature, and he never touched 'em…

Most of his victories—his pelts on the belt, if you will—were really," he reiterated, "small-time crooks who were taking advantage of their position to pocket a few bucks.

It's just typical political graft…

It was a lot more about quantity than quality.

But he was able to parlay that into this image of being the shining knight who was cleaning up New Jersey politics."

The press, like local political blog PolitickerNJ.com (run by future Christie appointee David Wildstein) lapped up Christie's many triumphs. "Will today be historic?" the clearly tipped off publication asked one morning in 2008.

"If the buzz is accurate, U.S. Attorney Chris Christie could change the course of North Jersey politics today."

Moreover, Democrats charge that Christie disproportionately went after members of their party, something Chiesa dismissed:

"My first corruption case there was against a Republican. The party affiliation had absolutely nothing to do with anything in those cases…

I understand why [Democrats] might say it [was the case]…

There is simply no way for anybody to manufacture cases."

Deborah Howlett--a former spokesperson for Gov. Jon Corzine, who Christie defeated in 2009, told me--took a very different view.

"I think there was a long-term plan during his time as U.S. Attorney to do the sorts of things that would set him up to run for governor, and would make the Corzine administration look bad, because that's who he was going to have to run against," she said.

"The intention all along [was to] make Corzine look bad," Howlett reiterated. "Dirty him up as much as you can, at any opportunity, even if you have to let child traffickers off."