Venezuelan police rescue 14 bound for T&T

Raphael John Lall

Two weeks af­ter dis­man­tling a sus­pect­ed hu­man traf­fick­ing ring in Cara­cas, Venezue­lan po­lice have res­cued 14 peo­ple who were al­leged­ly be­ing pre­pared for trans­port to Trinidad and To­ba­go for forced labour.

The lat­est op­er­a­tion took place last Fri­day in Delta Amacuro, a Venezue­lan state close to Ce­dros, an area as­so­ci­at­ed with il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, hu­man traf­fick­ing and oth­er il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to a post on In­sta­gram by Dou­glas Ri­co, di­rec­tor of Venezuela’s Corps of Sci­en­tif­ic, Crim­i­nal and Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions (CI­CPC), the 14 peo­ple were res­cued be­fore they could be trans­port­ed to T&T.

Ri­co said pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions found that the vic­tims had been re­cruit­ed through false promis­es of em­ploy­ment and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Dr Garvin Heer­ah de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as “good news”, but cau­tioned against view­ing it as ev­i­dence that hu­man traf­fick­ing be­tween Venezuela and T&T is de­clin­ing.

“These are im­por­tant suc­cess­es. Every per­son res­cued rep­re­sents a life po­ten­tial­ly saved from ex­ploita­tion. How­ev­er, I would cau­tion against in­ter­pret­ing these op­er­a­tions as ev­i­dence that hu­man traf­fick­ing be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go is de­clin­ing. We sim­ply do not have enough ev­i­dence to make that con­clu­sion,” he said.

From a se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive, Heer­ah said the ar­rests in­stead showed that crim­i­nal net­works re­mained ac­tive and that the Venezuela–T&T cor­ri­dor con­tin­ued to at­tract or­gan­ised crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

He said sus­tained, in­tel­li­gence-led en­force­ment was there­fore nec­es­sary.

“Hu­man traf­fick­ing, hu­man smug­gling, nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, and the il­lic­it move­ment of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion are not crimes that sim­ply dis­ap­pear be­cause au­thor­i­ties dis­rupt one or two net­works,” he said.

Heer­ah said the lat­est op­er­a­tion should al­so be viewed with­in the wider con­text of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

“What we are deal­ing with is not sim­ply a col­lec­tion of iso­lat­ed traf­fick­ing cas­es. These net­works are com­po­nents of a much larg­er phe­nom­e­non, Transna­tion­al Or­ga­nized Crime,” he said.

He said the in­fra­struc­ture used to move peo­ple could al­so fa­cil­i­tate the move­ment of drugs, firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, il­lic­it cash and oth­er con­tra­band.

“Crim­i­nal net­works are en­tre­pre­neur­ial. They ex­ploit ge­og­ra­phy, tech­nol­o­gy, cor­rup­tion, vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties and weak­ness­es in bor­der-con­trol sys­tems,” he said.

Heer­ah al­so called for stronger in­tel­li­gence shar­ing be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela, sup­port­ed by ap­pro­pri­ate safe­guards and pro­fes­sion­al in­tel­li­gence pro­to­cols.

The op­er­a­tion comes days af­ter World Day Against Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons on Ju­ly 30, when the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty post­ed a video on In­sta­gram in which Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der urged the pub­lic to re­main vig­i­lant and warned about the dan­gers of hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Alexan­der by tele­phone and What­sApp about the lat­est Venezue­lan op­er­a­tion, but he did not re­spond up to press time.

The Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain was al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment but had not re­spond­ed up to press time.