ABERDEEN - Two Oacoma motel owners convicted of forcing several Filipino immigrants into servitude and peonage were sentenced in federal court Friday and ordered to turn themselves in by March 18.

U.S. District Judge Charles Kornmann gave Robert John Farrell a term of 4 years and 2 months in federal prison and his wife, Angelita Magat Farrell, a 3-year sentence.

Kornmann called the Farrells' actions "reprehensible" but chose to impose terms below the federal guideline range to stay in line with sentences in similar cases throughout the country.

A federal jury in November convicted the couple on 18 charges of conspiracy to commit peonage, four counts of peonage, document servitude, visa fraud and two counts of false statements.

Kevin Koliner, an assistant U.S. attorney, said the Farrells brought extended family over from the Philippines under the promise that they would work 40 hours a week or be paid overtime at the Oacoma Comfort Inn and Suites.

But Koliner said the couple took advantage of the immigrants, making them work 12- to 16-hour workdays but paying them virtually nothing. Koliner said the couple confiscated the employees' visas and passports, subjected them to inflated debt contracts and berated them during late-night meetings about their lack of gratitude.

"It's about greed," Koliner said. "It's about treating human beings like animals."

Pal Lengyel-Leahu, the Farrells' attorney, said the couple brought over the workers to help them make better lives for themselves.

Lengyel-Leahu said the Farrells' mistakes were technical violations of the law because of their serving multiple roles of helping them secure visas, employer and lender.

He said the workers were all college-educated adults who knew what they were doing, and all wanted to work more than 40 hours a week so they could send more money home to the Philippines.

Lengyel-Leahu said the evidence does not support peonage and that the government is after retribution.

"What we're looking for with peonage is human trafficking and slavery, which is not a part of this case," he said.

Both Robert and Angelita Farrell apologized for any harm they caused and asked the court for leniency.

The peonage law, which dates back to 1867, "criminalizes debt servitude, slavery in service of a debt whether the debt is real or imagined," Koliner said.

Congress passed the law just after the Civil War to abolish a New Mexico system in which out-of-work, unskilled laborers were essentially selling themselves into slavery.

"The notion in enacting the statute was that liberty is so valued in this country to Americans that one can't sell oneself to slavery," Koliner said.

Federal officials say investigations and prosecutions of trafficking cases have increased significantly since passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000.

The U.S. Department of Justice during the 2006 fiscal year initiated 168 human-trafficking investigations, charged 111 individuals and obtained 98 convictions, including cases from previous years, according to the U.S. Department of State's Trafficking in Persons Report.

Joy Zarembka, director of the Washington-based Break the Chain Campaign, which fights human trafficking and modern-day slavery, said it is hard to pinpoint how many cases exist because it involves an invisible work force.

"Unfortunately, I think they are occurring far more frequently than we as Americans would like to think," Zarembka said. "We want to believe, to think that we ended slavery many centuries ago, but in fact, it's occurring in our back yards."

Zarembka said common traits in domestic-servitude cases are insufficient pay, poor living conditions, psychological coercion and long workdays.

She said people coming from abroad often don't know the language, don't know the system and don't have a support network.

"They are particularly vulnerable," Zarembka said.

"They oftentimes do not have control of their passport, which is of course the best way to limit someone's freedom of movement."