## Facts

- Four minor girls, including AHS and GCL, were smuggled from Mexico into the United States and taken to a brothel in Plainfield, New Jersey, where they were kept captive and compelled to engage in prostitution.
- The brothel’s owner recruited Antonia Jimenez-Calderon and her sister to help run the brothel, and Jimenez-Calderon worked with family members in a scheme to bring minors from Mexico to the brothel.
- Jimenez-Calderon’s brothers traveled to Mexico and selected poor, naive girls with very limited education who worked in cafés and lived away from their families.
- The brothers courted targeted girls with gifts, dates, and promises of marriage; after gaining their trust, a brother would take a girl to a house or hotel and rape her or have sex with her.
- The brothers then introduced the girl to their mother as a fiancée and smuggled the girl into the United States.
- Once in New Jersey, the girls were taken to the brothel and forced to work under strict rules: they could not talk to one another, befriend customers, or call home.
- If the girls broke rules, they were verbally abused and physically punished, including slapping and beatings.
- To keep the girls compliant, a brother continued sending jewelry and clothes and repeated that he still intended to marry the girl.
- The girls were told their earnings were going to their “future husbands,” but in reality the brothel owner and the operators (including Jimenez-Calderon and her siblings) split the proceeds.
- Police raided the brothel on February 22, 2002, discovered four young Mexican girls, and arrested Jimenez-Calderon and her sister; the girls were placed in a juvenile-detention facility.
- After the raid, Jimenez-Calderon tried to secure the girls’ release by obtaining fraudulent birth certificates and asking Sergia Farfan, a local social worker and a brothel customer, to present the documents to the detention facility.
- Jimenez-Calderon pleaded guilty to (1) conspiracy, 18 U.S.C. § 371, and (2) sex trafficking by force, 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(1); she appealed only her sentence.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court failed to sufficiently consider the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and imposed an unreasonable sentence.
2. Whether the district court failed to adequately state its reasons for the sentence as required by 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c).
3. Whether the district court incorrectly calculated the advisory Sentencing Guidelines range, including contested offense-level increases and adjustments tied to the exploitation of minors and post-raid conduct.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit affirmed the judgment of sentence.
- The court held the district court treated the Guidelines as advisory, considered the relevant § 3553(a) factors, and imposed a reasonable sentence.
- The court held the district court’s on-the-record explanation satisfied § 3553(c) and allowed meaningful appellate review.
- The court rejected the claim of Guidelines miscalculation and upheld the district court’s application of the Guidelines to the offense conduct, including adjustments supported by the record.

## Legal Principles

- After Booker, appellate review asks whether a sentence is reasonable; the record must show the district court considered the advisory Guidelines range and the § 3553(a) factors.
- A sentencing judge need not discuss every § 3553(a) factor in checklist fashion; it is enough that the record shows meaningful consideration of the factors relevant to the case.
- Section 3553(c) requires the sentencing court to state reasons in open court sufficient to permit appellate review; it does not require an exhaustive explanation when the basis for the sentence is clear from the record.
- A Guidelines adjustment tied to exploiting minors may be supported when offenders use deception and manipulation—such as promises of marriage, gifts, isolation, and control over communication—to obtain minors’ participation in commercial sex acts.
- A vulnerable-victim adjustment may apply when victims are unusually susceptible (for example, impoverished, uneducated foreign minors away from family support) and were selected because of that susceptibility.
- An obstruction-of-justice adjustment may apply when a defendant attempts to interfere with authorities through false documents or similar acts intended to mislead investigators or custodians of victims.

## Conclusion

United States v. Jimenez-Calderon affirms a sentence imposed after a guilty plea to conspiracy and sex trafficking by force arising from a family-run scheme that smuggled Mexican minors to a New Jersey brothel, controlled them through deception and violence, and later attempted to use fraudulent birth certificates to regain custody of the victims; the Third Circuit held the district court’s § 3553 analysis and explanation were sufficient and the Guidelines range was correctly calculated.


United States v. Jimenez-Calderon, 183 F. App’x 274, 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 14313 (2006)