Reporter Timothy O’Connor has this in today’s Journal News:

Federal prosecutors have filed charges against a Texas man accused of holding illegal immigrants hostage in the attic of a Port Chester house.

John Ernest Guerrero has been charged with kidnapping and unlawfully bringing in and harboring illegal immigrants, according to papers filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains.

Guerrero has agreed to the filing of a felony information document and waived his right to be indicted by a grand jury. Those two steps most often precede a guilty plea to the charges contained in the felony information.

Guerrero’s lawyer, Steven Davidson, said prosecutors have made no plea offer to his client.

“I don’t know yet,” he said when asked if Guerrero, 22, would plead guilty at his July 22 appearance in federal court. Davidson said he expected state charges against Guerrero to be withdrawn today in Port Chester Village Court.

Herbert Hadad, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, declined comment.

Guerrero, who lives in Pearland, Texas, was arrested March 29 by Port Chester police after two Brazilian immigrants escaped from a Haseco Avenue house and flagged down a police car. They said they had been held at the house for at least four days after paying $10,000 to be smuggled across the Mexican border into Texas.

The men, ages 30 and 50, told police that one of their two captors held a small wire cutter to one hostage’s pinky and demanded $2,000 more. They said there were five hostages, police said.

The federal information does not contain much additional detail about the alleged crime. The two-count information accuses Guerrero of traveling in a car to the Port Chester house with at least one of the illegal aliens on March 26. It also accuses Guerrero of standing watch over the illegal aliens at the house on March 28. By statute, Guerrero faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the federal kidnapping charge.

Police and Guerrero’s lawyer were looking for his alleged accomplice, a man identified only as Little Willie. But no additional arrests have been made.

Davidson hopes federal or state authorities make more arrests.

“John is such a fractional part of this whole incident,” he said. “If there are arrests made in Houston, it will allow me to demonstrate that.”

(Photo: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)