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Juan Carlos Morales-Pedraza, a 35-year-old Mexican citizen who was born in Ecuador, had been deported in 2010, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig said.
He'd re-entered the United States when he approached the girl in Passaic County in April 2019, had sex with her, then took her with him on a planned trip to Chicago, Honig said.
They never made it that far, however.
An Ohio state trooper pulled Morales-Pedraza’s 2013 Nissan Sentra over on westbound Route 80 in Lucas County for failing to yield, authorities said at the time.
Detectives determined that the deportee “forced the girl to perform acts on him,” the Ohio Highway Patrol said in a statement.
Neither the girl – who’d been reported missing – nor Morales-Pedraza spoke any English, troopers said.
The girl was brought to a local hospital before eventually being reunited with her family, authorities in New Jersey said.
Morales-Pedraza was also brought back to New Jersey, where a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Newark indicted him on charges of kidnapping, illegal transportation of a minor and illegally re-entering the U.S. as -- what at the time was called -- a "removed alien."
Morales-Pedraza, who’s been held ever since, took a deal from the government rather than face trial.
As part of the agreement, federal authorities dropped the kidnapping and illegal transportation charges, allowing Morales-Pedraza to plead guilty to coercion, enticement of a minor and re-entering the country.
U.S. District Court Judge Stanley R. Chesler imposed the sentence Tuesday via videoconference from Newark.
Deportation proceedings will follow, although authorities haven’t yet said whether this would be before or after Morales-Pedraza serves a mandatory 7 years and nine months. There's no parole in the federal prison system.
Honig credited special agents with the FBI Newark’s Child Exploitation Human Trafficking Task Force, the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office’s Sexual Investigations Unit and investigators with the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Lake Township Police Department in Lake Township, Ohio, with the investigation leading to the plea and sentence, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Francesca Liquori of her Organized Crime and Gangs Unit.
New Jersey’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency also participated in the case, Honig said.
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