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Immigration officials have started removal proceedings for a Chinese citizen who was recently charged with sex trafficking in the midcoast.
Tian Tao, 54, was arrested on the sex trafficking charges on Feb. 20 by Rockland police and officers from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, according to ICE.
On March 6, ICE announced that Tao faces removal to China. He first entered the U.S. legally in 2016, but violated the terms of his admission, ICE said.
Tao was charged with operating illicit massage parlors in and around the midcoast, after local police in Lincoln County first received information about the operations in 2023, according to ICE. The Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office and Rockland Police Department assisted with the investigation.
In February, Tao was accused of operating Asian Massage, a Rockland business that police raided in December over alleged sex trafficking and prostitution, according to WMTW.
In January, 11 men were summonsed for allegedly engaging a person for prostitution out of the Rockland parlor. One of them was Mark Strong Sr., the man convicted of helping to run a prostitution business out of a southern Maine Zumba studio more than a decade ago.
