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Federal investigators said Jesse Moraes, 64, and Hugo Moraes, 42, who own and operate the Main Street restaurants Tudo No Brasa and The Dog House Bar and Grill, were part of a global smuggling operation that illegally secreted people from Brazil into the US and provided them with fake documents to live and work here. Oftentimes, investigators said, those migrants would be forced to work at the restaurants to pay off the thousands of dollars the smugglers charged.
Federal prosecutors argued that the men have money and strong ties to Brazil, which makes them considerable flight risks, and asked a judge to keep them in custody through their trials, MassLive reported.
But the court-appointed lawyer for Jesse Moraes, a naturalized US citizen, said he has no intentions of leaving the country.
“We have plenty of evidence from his last 22 years in the United States that he has significant ties to this community, to the Woburn area,” Alyssa Thrasher Hackett told federal Judge Jennifer Boal, per the news report. “He has worked long hours for 22 years. He has given everything to his children … he has lived his life for other people.”
Boals agreed with the defenses and said “strict conditions of release" would mitigate potential flight risks, MassLive reported from court records.
The judge offered similar reasoning for her decision on Hugo Moraes.
“[Hugo] Moraes has family whom he visits in Brazil, but he also has significant ties to Massachusetts,” Boals wrote in her ruling, per the report. “He has lived in the state for the last twenty-two years, and he has a wife and children here. [Hugo] Moraes has no criminal convictions.”
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