Police in a special operation discovered a vessel transporting suspected illegal immigrants docked off East Bay Street.
Speaking with The Tribune yesterday, press liaison officer Inspector Walter Evans said police found a group of eight Guyanese – four men, four women – and one Jamaican man “stowed away” on the ship Liberty at Bay Shore Marina.
“Police during the special ‘Quiet Storm’ operation found this group of stowaways shortly after 5am on Sunday. We know that this was part of a human smuggling operation,” he said.
At press time last night, police had not yet arrested anyone in connection with the incident.
This latest crackdown on a human trafficking scheme comes just five months after the Joint Anti-Smuggling Unit (JASU) – an initiative of US and Bahamian law enforcement officers – conducted a pulse operation at four New Providence airports to stop human smuggling activities.
Led by the investigative unit of the Bahamas Immigration Department, the operation included a multi-agency team of Royal Bahamas Defence and Police Forces, Customs, and US Departrment of Homeland Security personnel.
During that weekend operation, the team questioned 50 suspected illegal migrants and developed several leads into identifying those involved with facilitation of the criminal activity. The team was expected to extend the operations to other parts of the island and other locations throughout the Bahamas. Inspector Evans said yesterday that human smuggling continues to be a challenge for Bahamian authorities.
He said that these kind of operations are not easily uncovered, so police were very pleased to have uncovered the Liberty scheme on the weekend.
In the US 2006 ‘Trafficking In Persons Report’, the Bahamas was included in the “special case” section at the end of document as a country where “although the presence and scope of trafficking has not been documented, some factors indicate that a significant number of trafficking victims may exist.”
“The problem of trafficking in persons in the Bahamas is unmonitored and undocumented. The lack of reliable data at the present time makes it unclear whether a significant number of trafficking victims enter, transit, or depart from the Bahamas,” the report read.
Minister of Immigration Shane Gibson has since vowed to introduce stricter and more efficient methods of identifying and tracking immigrants into the country.
Source: The Tribune
