Costa Rican authorities said they arrested 19 people accused of trafficking hundreds of predominantly Asian migrants to the United States. <\/p>\n
The arrests Wednesday came during multi-city raids aimed at disrupting what Costa Rica\u2019s immigration police call \u201ca transnational organized crime structure\u201d dedicated to human trafficking and money laundering. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe operations were carried out in homes and hotels located in Corredores and Los Chiles \u2014 locations where the criminal network allegedly moved migrants of various nationalities, primarily Chinese and Vietnamese,\u201d the Costa Rica Prosecutor\u2019s Office said in a statement. <\/p>\n
The Prosecutor\u2019s Office claims that migrants trafficked by the criminals were hidden in \u201cvarious hotels\u201d in Costa Rica, adding that police found \u201chigh-caliber weapons and cash\u201d when executing their warrants. <\/p>\n
Police said they uncovered at least 437 people trafficked into Costa Rica via land, sea and air. Most were from China, but the victims included Vietnamese, Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Peruvians, as well. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce these migrants were illegally introduced into Costa Rica,\u201d the statement continues, the traffickers \u201ccharged amounts ranging from $7,000, depending on their nationality, to $40,000 for these criminal services.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce (migrants) were in the hands of this criminal group,\u201d deputy attorney general Mauricio Boraschi told a press conference, \u201cThey were also illegally moved to the border with Nicaragua \u2026 so that they could continue to their final destination in the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n
A video posted by police on social media shows officers armed with battering rams, bolt cutters and rifles raiding two different buildings on residential streets, and appears to show at least one person being detained. <\/p>\n
In the same video, Commissioner Enrique Arguedas of the Costa Rican Immigration Police said that the investigation began over a year ago in collaboration with Panamanian authorities. <\/p>\n
The victims \u201cwere being recruited by different criminal organizations that operated between Panama and Costa Rica and facilitated the movement of migrants \u2026 toward the northern part of the continent, specifically the United States,\u201d Arguedas said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Costa Rican authorities said they arrested 19 people accused of trafficking hundreds of predominantly Asian migrants to the United States. The arrests Wednesday came during multi-city raids aimed at disrupting what Costa Rica\u2019s immigration police call \u201ca transnational organized crime structure\u201d dedicated to human trafficking and money laundering. \u201cThe operations were carried out in homes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}