Feds: Two LI salon operators charged with human smuggling

Two people who operated nail and hair salons in Long Island and New York City were in federal court in Central Islip Thursday to face charges of human smuggling and conspiring to defraud the government.

According to the United States Attorney for the Eastern District, Bronx resident Dat Tat Ho, also known as Chris, 33, and Manh Ngoc Nguyen, also known as Peter, 44, of Hicksville, conspired to smuggle people from Vietnam into the United States to live here illegally. They would keep them under their control and pay them illegally low wages to work in shops owned or managed by Ho and Nguyen in Queens, the Bronx and Long Island, prosecutors said.

According to the six-count indictment, Ho and Nguyen were helped by at least two other co-conspirators in the scheme including a travel agent and an attorney.

"As this case demonstrates, we take seriously our responsibility to maintain security at our borders and prosecute those who seek unlawful commercial advantage and financial profit through the exploitation of other human beings," Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Seth D. DuCharme said in a statement.

Ho and Nguyen were arrested Thursday morning and arraigned in the afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge Anne Y. Shields. The indictment charges the two with conspiracy to illegally bring aliens into the United States; conspiracy to defraud U.S. immigration courts and USCIS; illegally bringing an alien to the United States for financial gain and attempting to illegally bring aliens to the United States for financial gain.

Both defendants were ordered detained pending trial.

According to court filings, between January 2017 and September 2020, the defendants and others arranged for Vietnamese foreign nationals to enter the United States via illegal border crossings at the U.S. border with Mexico, as well as at other ports of entry.

After the victims crossed the border, the defendants facilitated their travel to New York to work in their salons at illegally low wages and encouraged them to overstay their transit visas.

In instances where U.S. immigration authorities apprehended the victims, the indictment said, Ho and Nguyen would instruct the victims in telephone calls from detention facilities not to mention to the authorities the help they received coming to the United States in an effort to conceal the scheme.

The defendants also caused the victims to make false statements and submit fraudulent asylum applications to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, prosecutors said. The victims lived in residences that the defendants owned or controlled.

If convicted, Nguyen and Ho face a minimum of 5 to 15 years imprisonment.