The former location of the Colt Grill at 804 N. Main St. in Cottonwood, Arizona, on Jan. 21, 2026.
Mark Henle/The Republic
USA TODAY Network, Reuters
The husband and wife owners of a chain of Colt Grill BBQ & Spirits restaurants in northern Arizona are facing stiff penalties after they both pleaded guilty to federal charges of knowingly hiring unauthorized immigrants to work in their restaurants.
Brenda and Robert Clouston are scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 6, court records show.
Robert Clouston pleaded guilty on Sept. 29 to a misdemeanor charge of a pattern and practice of knowingly employing unauthorized immigrants, a felony charge of conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants, according to the plea agreement filed in federal court in Phoenix.
He faced up to 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine for the misdemeanor charge of knowingly hiring undocumented workers and a maximum fine of up to $3,000 for each unauthorized immigrant for the felony charge, according to the plea agreement.
Brenda Clouston pleaded guilty on the same day to a misdemeanor charge of knowingly hiring unauthorized immigrants, according to the plea agreement. She faced a maximum fine of up to $3,000 for each unauthorized immigrant for the charge, according to the plea agreement.
As part of the plea agreement, Robert Clouston also will be required to pay overtime pay to the unauthorized workers they employed, the plea agreement states.
The Cloustons were arrested on July 15, 2025, after federal immigration enforcement agents simultaneously raided four Colt Grill restaurants the couple owned in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Cottonwood, and the Village of Oak Creek in Sedona, in Yavapai County; and a fifth restaurant they owned in Foley, Alabama. Federal agents also searched 12 residences as part of the investigation.
The raids rocked the rural communities, where immigrants play a strong role staffing restaurants, hotels, resorts and golf courses as part of the area’s important tourism industry.
While executing search warrants at the restaurants, federal agents detained 32 Colt Grill workers and 30 of them were placed in immigration proceedings for deportation, according to the plea agreement for Brenda Clouston.
The undocumented Colt Grill workers included a busser, Ingrid Ayon, 23, who had lived in the United States since she was four months old and was later deported, and a dishwasher, Maria Cristina Tapia Cornejo, a 71-year-old great-grandmother detained more than 10 months in a federal immigration detention center in Eloy before she was released in June.
Where the raids stemmed from
The raids stemmed from a May 27, 2015, grand jury indictment accusing the Cloustons, along with two undocumented immigrants from Mexico, identified as Luis Pedro Rogel-Jaimes and Iris Romero-Molina, of conspiring to smuggle undocumented immigrants from Mexico to work at the restaurant, and providing housing for them.
The indictment also accused the four of creating a cleaning company, R&R AZ Cleaning, to pay the workers with funds from Colt Grill.
The indictment also accused the Cloustons of paying undocumented workers below minimum wage and not compensating them for overtime.
The couple have been free on their own recognizance.
Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina each pleaded guilty in April to a misdemeanor charge of a pattern and practice of hiring undocumented workers and a felony charge of conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants, court filings show.
Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina were each sentenced on June 23 to six months of time served, court filings show.
Robert Clouston’s Flagstaff attorney, Ryan Stevens, declined to comment. The Arizona Republic reached out to Brenda Clouston’s attorneys but did not immediately receive a response.
As part of his plea agreement, Robert Clouston admitted that Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina supplied uauthorized immigrants to work in their restaurants beginning in 2022, court filings show.
On April 22, 2022, for example, Robert Clouston sent a text message to Rogel-Jaimes asking, “If you have any connections people that want to work I’ll get a house over in Preskett (sic) I can use up to 10 people.”
Rogel-Jaimes wrote back that he had “a person at the border trying to cross.”
What Clouston said
On Sept. 16, 2022, Rogel-Jaimes texted Clouston that “one of the people I have at the border has passed today” and asked if Clouston wanted that person to train as a smoker.
“Yes,” Clouston texted back, according to the plea agreement.
“From these and other communications, I knew that the workers Rogel-Jaimes was bringing from Mexico were unauthorized aliens, that is, aliens who had not been lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence and who were not authorized to be employed in the U.S.,” a statement attributed to Clouston in the plea agreement says.
On Sept. 27, 2022, Rogel-Jaimes and Romero Molina formed R&R AZ Cleaning, according to the plea agreement. In addition to providing cleaning services at the restaurants, the company supplied undocumented immigrants to work as cooks, bussers, kitchen staff and pitmasters, according to the plea agreement.
Colt Grill paid the workers by issuing checks to R&R AZ Cleaning and then in turn Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molino paid the workers. The undocumented workers were treated as “contractors” to avoid running them through the Form I-9 employment eligibility process that Colt Grill used to hire other workers directly, according to the plea agreement.
Clouston knew the workers Rogel-Jaimes told him he was bringing from Mexico were undocumented workers, according to the plea agreement. He also knew there was a “high probability” that other workers supplied by Rogel-James and Romero-Molina whose status he did not know were undocumented immigrants, according to the plea agreement.
“I did not actually believe that those workers were authorized to be employed in the United States, and my failure to learn the truth was not simply negligent, careless, or foolish. I hired these workers, and continued to employ them, after I knew or came to know that they were unauthorized aliens,” Clouston’s statement said, according to the plea agreement.
From 2022 to May 26, 2025, Clouston worked with Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina to providing housing to undocumented immigrants so they could “live in Arizona and work at the Colt Grill restaurants,” according to the plea agreement.
In July and September 2022 Clouston rented a house in Prescott and a second house in Prescott Valley to house undocumented immigrants supplied by Rogel-Jaimes, according to the plea agreement.
Clouston said he was aware the people living in the two houses had come to the United States illegally and remained in this country in violation of the law, according to the plea agreement.
“By providing shelter to these aliens in those houses, I harbored them in reckless disregard of the fact that they had come to, entered, or remained in the United States in violation of the law, and I did so with intent to violate the law,” said the statement Clouston provided in the plea agreement.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Colt Grill owners plead guilty to federal illegal hiring charges
Reporting by Daniel Gonzalez, Arizona Republic / Arizona Republic
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Copyright Reuters or USA Today via Reuters Connect
This story was originally published October 23, 2026 at 5:04 AM.
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