25 suspected illegal immigrants detained off western peninsula

Twen­ty-five peo­ple sus­pect­ed of be­ing il­le­gal im­mi­grants have been de­tained af­ter po­lice in­ter­cept­ed a ves­sel along Trinidad’s west­ern penin­su­la dur­ing a late-night op­er­a­tion on Tues­day.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said of­fi­cers of the Coastal and Air Sup­port Unit, as­sist­ed by of­fi­cers of the West­ern Di­vi­sion, con­duct­ed the op­er­a­tion at about 11.30 pm on Oc­to­ber 20.

The ex­er­cise, con­duct­ed un­der Op­er­a­tion BLAST (Bring­ing Land, Air and Sea To­geth­er), in­volved the use of drone tech­nol­o­gy to car­ry out ex­ten­sive search­es of coastal and forest­ed ar­eas.

Dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, of­fi­cers stopped and searched a ves­sel and found the 25 in­di­vid­u­als on board. They were de­tained, while the ves­sel was seized and se­cured.

The op­er­a­tion was con­duct­ed un­der the di­rec­tion of As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Tac­ti­cal Sup­port and was sanc­tioned by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Op­er­a­tions Suzette Mar­tin.

It was co­or­di­nat­ed by ACP Col­lis Hazel and su­per­vised by As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice Ron­ny Ram­pal­lard and In­spec­tor Fabi­an Bris­bane.

The TTPS said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing, with sup­port from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard and the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.