Two brothers who own three popular Mexican restaurants in Maine were sentenced to federal prison Monday for illegally hiring at least 10 undocumented workers at their restaurant in Westbrook.

Guillermo Fuentes, 38, of Westbrook was sentenced by U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby to 37 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release.

Hector Fuentes, 40, of Waterville was sentenced to 30 months in prison followed by one year of supervised release.

The brothers were convicted in March 2013 but were granted a new trial because one of the jurors referred to them with a racial slur.

Rather than face a new trial, each brother pleaded guilty on June 16 to knowingly hiring undocumented aliens and making false statements to the government.

Hornby ordered the new trial in the summer of 2013 after learning that the juror had made the slur to a man at the Eagles Club in Portland on March 9, 2013, after the second of seven days of testimony in the trial, according to documents in U.S. District Court in Portland.

The man who heard the slur was on probation and reported the conversation to his probation officer. He said the juror told him that he wasn’t supposed to be talking about the case but the defendants were guilty anyway, and referred to them with a racial slur, according to the judge’s order.

The probation officer did not learn the juror’s name until a month after the trial.

The judge said in his order that he interviewed the juror and the man who was on probation. He said the juror ultimately admitted to making the slur. Hornby said in his order that the juror’s comment raised two important concerns – “that at that early stage of the trial this juror had already made up his mind that the defendants were guilty, and that ethnic stereotyping affected his judgment.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the charges to which the brothers pleaded guilty relate only to illegally hiring undocumented workers at the Fajita Grill in Westbrook, not at their Cancun Mexican Restaurant in Waterville or their Cancun Mexican Restaurant II in Biddeford.

The false statements related to statements they made to law enforcement officers in September 2011, that they had completed federally required documentation regarding the immigration status of their employees.

 

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