By Valerie Gonzalez
Two owners of a bakery in southern Texas were declared guilty of hiding and housing employees who were illegally in the United States, determined a jury on Wednesday afternoon after a trial that lasted only three days.
Leonardo Báez and Nora Ávila-Guel, a Mexican couple with permanent legal residence in the United States, were accused after being arrested in their bakery along with eight employees in February. It is a rare case in which business owners are accused of criminal crimes instead of just receiving a fine.
Six of the employees had tourist visas and two were in the country illegally. None had permission to work in the United States. Employees lived in a room with six beds and shared two bathrooms in the same bakery building, according to the federal Affavit.
Báez and Ávila-Guel were tried this week in Brownsville, a border city about 20 minutes by car southeast of their bakery in Los Fresnos. The jury listened to five witnesses of the government, including an agent who was present during the raid, before the federal district judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr. The defense did not present witnesses.
During the trial, videos of the interviews with the two employees who were in the country without visa or work authorization were reproduced. Both said they were not retained against their will and that they were compensated for their work, according to local reports.
Báez’s lawyer, Sergio Luis Villarreal, described the “heartbreaking” verdict.
“We were arguing the lack of concealment, the lack of cover -up in all this,” Villarreal said. “I mean, there was no exploitation, there was no abuse. No one was there against their will.”
César de León, a lawyer from Ávila-Guel, said he believed in the application of the law, but did not agree with the way he was defined in this case.
“We simply feel that, in this case, there really was no shelter,” he said. “And I think the law was not created to go after people like Nora.”
Báez and Ávila-Guel were able to return to work while waiting for the trial. When they reopened their bakery in April, the business had a constant flow of customers who returned to provide their support. They will continue on bail until their sentence hearing, which is scheduled for November.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
Originally Published:
date: 2025-08-13 22:45:00