46 human traffickers busted in Panama-Costa Rica raids

A joint operation targeting a human trafficking organization operating in Panama and Costa Rica led to the arrest on Tuesday, July 30  of 46 people dedicated to the trafficking of  Haitian, Cuban, African and Asian migrants.

The Costa Rican authorities reported that they carried out 36 simultaneous raids in communities near the border with Panama and the border with Nicaragua, in which 36 people were arrested, including the alleged leaders of the band.

Among the detainees are two women with surnames Ruiz Umaña and Bejarano Morales, who apparently led the operation on the border with Panama, as well as another woman with surnames López Martínez, known as “Mamá África”, who directed the smuggling of migrants on the border with Nicaragua.

Panama arrests
Panamanian authorities carried out 21 raids in the capital and in the province of Chiriquí, in which they arrested 10 suspected of working as a branch of the Costa Rican criminal group.

“In the operation ‘Adalid’  24 officials of the Public Ministry and more than 50 agents of the National Police participated said the First prosecutor against  Organized Crime, David Mendoza in a message posted on  Twitter.

The authorities in Panama revealed that traffickers charged migrants up to $1,500 for crossing Panamanian territory and granted them tourist visas.

Costa Rican authorities reported that the investigation began in January 2018 when the Professional Migration Police received information indicating that in the northern area (border with Nicaragua) a criminal network operated to traffic foreigners.

“The organization collected sums of money from $7000 to $20.000, depending on the country of origin, or the profile of the foreign person trafficked,” explained the Migration Directorate General 

The investigation determined that the group trafficked people from Haiti, Cuba, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Angola, Cameroon, Nepal, and  India, among others.

The organization took migrants from Panama and was responsible for mobilizing them through Costa Rica to facilitate their path to the United States.

According to the investigation, trafficked people arrived on the mainland by air, using some of the airports in Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia or Peru as their port of entry In the Americas, migrants were mobilized by the organization to mobilize them to travel overland to Costa Rica and on to the. border with Nicaragua, where they were lodged in  “safe houses.”

Subsequently, people traffickers moved them to Honduras or Guatemala by sea or land, where they were handed over to other people dedicated to migrant trafficking.

The detainees face a maximum of 10 years in prison for the crime of trafficking in persons.

In the operation on Tuesday in Costa Rica, the Professional Migration Police, the Deputy Prosecutor’s Office against Trafficking and Illicit Traffic in Migrants and the Ministry of Security participated.