HOUSTON — A third gang member has received a lengthy prison sentence for his role in a sex trafficking conspiracy involving 13 minor victims and one adult victim following an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Houston, the Department of Homeland Security Center for Countering Human Trafficking, the Houston Police Department, the Harris Couty District Attorney’s Office and the Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance (HTRA).
Michael Anthony Gonzalez, a 27-year-old Houston resident and documented Crips gang member, was sentenced Sept. 27 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to 20 years in federal prison to be immediately followed by 10 years of supervised release for sex trafficking. Gonzalez, who pleaded guilty to the charges June 27, will also be required to register as a sex offender.
Co-conspirators and fellow gang members Jerreck Michael Hilliard, 35, and Javon Yaw Opoku, 23, were previously sentenced to 292 and 365 months in prison, respectively, for their roles in the sex trafficking conspiracy. To date, nine U.S. citizens have been federally indicted for their roles in the human trafficking conspiracy.
“For nearly a year, the gang members involved in this conspiracy forced their victims — who were primarily minors — to engage in commercial sex to fulfill their greed and maniacal thirst for power and control while treating these young girls in the most depraved and dehumanizing manner possible,” said HSI Houston acting Special Agent in Charge Robert Kurtz. “HSI Houston works tirelessly alongside our HTRA partners to root out this kind of evil from our local communities and will not rest until we’ve completely eradicated this modern-day form of slavery from society.”
From April 2019 to February 2020, Gonzalez and his co-conspirators worked to recruit young teenage girls and force them to engage in commercial sex acts with “clients” for money in cars and hotels around the Bissonnet “Blade.” The Blade or “Track” is an area near the I-59 Southwest Freeway and Bissonnet Street in Houston where pimps and traffickers commonly place their victims to engage in commercial sex.
The co-conspirators passed around or reassigned victims amongst one another, taught each other “the pimp game” and forced young girls to walk the blade while they kept the proceeds.
To switch between pimps, the young girls had to pay an exit fee or get “beat out.” Some traffickers required daily quotas each night from their victims. If the victims failed to meet their daily quotas, they were severely punished through beatings and humiliation.
Gonzalez is also pending prosecution for capital murder in Harris County.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kate Suh and Anthony Franklyn prosecuted the case.
For more news and information on HSI’s efforts to aggressively investigate human trafficking and transnational gang activity in Southeast Texas follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @HSIHouston.