Seven foreign nationals held in Tunapuna

Sev­en for­eign na­tion­als, be­tween the ages of 23 and 32, have been ar­rest­ed af­ter they al­leged­ly failed to pro­duce valid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and im­mi­gra­tion doc­u­ments dur­ing a po­lice ex­er­cise at a bar in Tu­na­puna.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the ar­rests were made last night dur­ing a tar­get­ed an­ti-crime ex­er­cise dubbed Op­er­a­tion Watch Tow­er in the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

Of­fi­cers con­duct­ed com­pli­ance checks at the es­tab­lish­ment and de­tained the sev­en in­di­vid­u­als af­ter they were un­able to present valid pass­ports, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards or le­gal im­mi­gra­tion doc­u­ments.

The op­er­a­tion in­volved of­fi­cers from the Tu­na­puna Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID), sup­port­ed by the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force and per­son­nel from the Tu­na­puna and St Joseph po­lice sta­tions.

The ex­er­cise was co­or­di­nat­ed by se­nior of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Snr Supt Gift, Supt Ward, ASP Bharath, In­sp Ram­di­al and Sgt Beck­les. It was su­per­vised by Act­ing Cor­po­rals Per­sad and Lals­ingh.

Fol­low­ing their ar­rest, the sev­en in­di­vid­u­als were tak­en to the St Joseph Health Cen­tre for med­ical eval­u­a­tions and were is­sued med­ical cer­tifi­cates.

They were sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion, where they are await­ing fur­ther screen­ing by Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fi­cials.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.