Four rescued in human trafficking raid in Rio Claro

Four Venezue­lan na­tion­als, in­clud­ing two mi­nors, were res­cued from a sus­pect­ed hu­man traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tion in Rio Claro on Sat­ur­day, while a busi­ness­man was ar­rest­ed and de­tained un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der is­sued un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2026.

The Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) said the op­er­a­tion, dubbed Op­er­a­tion Pur­ple Rain, was con­duct­ed fol­low­ing weeks of sur­veil­lance at a Fras­er Street premis­es, act­ing on in­tel­li­gence from In­ter­pol.

Dur­ing the raid, 42-year-old Ryan Mark was ar­rest­ed and lat­er de­tained un­der the or­der. Po­lice re­port­ed that 11 in­di­vid­u­als were present at the lo­ca­tion. Four were iden­ti­fied as traf­fick­ing vic­tims: a 15-year-old Venezue­lan girl, a 17-year-old Venezue­lan girl, a 27-year-old Venezue­lan woman, and a 30-year-old Venezue­lan woman, the moth­er of the 15-year-old.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors found signs of pro­longed abuse, in­clud­ing vis­i­ble in­juries and brand­ing. Ini­tial re­ports sug­gest some vic­tims may have been con­fined and ex­ploit­ed at the premis­es for more than two years.

Two Venezue­lan women re­main at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre as per­sons of in­ter­est, while four oth­ers, in­clud­ing one Venezue­lan man and three Venezue­lan women, were hand­ed over to Im­mi­gra­tion En­force­ment.

The vic­tims are now re­ceiv­ing med­ical and psy­choso­cial sup­port un­der the CTU’s vic­tim care frame­work.

The op­er­a­tion in­volved sup­port from the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force and the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing, with charges un­der the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Act ex­pect­ed.

This de­vel­op­ment comes a day af­ter 54 peo­ple were de­tained in Cunu­pia dur­ing a sep­a­rate CTU and Crime Sup­pres­sion Unit raid at a prop­er­ty on Mar­shall Trace, Munroe Road, linked to sus­pect­ed pros­ti­tu­tion ac­tiv­i­ties. Many of the de­tainees were for­eign na­tion­als.

Res­i­dents have ex­pressed con­cerns that parts of Cunu­pia and sur­round­ing ar­eas have be­come havens for un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants en­gaged in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing pros­ti­tu­tion.

“Hu­man traf­fick­ing is or­gan­ised crime. End the ex­ploita­tion,” the CTU re­mind­ed the pub­lic.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic can re­port sus­pect­ed cas­es to the CTU via its hot­line at 800-4CTU (4288) or the What­sApp line at +868-702-0467.