Costa Rican police say they busted crime ring trafficking Asian migrants to US
CNN
Costa Rican authorities said they arrested 19 people accused of trafficking hundreds of predominantly Asian migrants to the United States.
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’s immigration police call “a transnational organized crime structure” dedicated to human trafficking and money laundering. “The operations were carried out in homes and hotels located in Corredores and Los Chiles — locations where the criminal network allegedly moved migrants of various nationalities, primarily Chinese and Vietnamese,” the Costa Rica Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. The Prosecutor’s Office claims that migrants trafficked by the criminals were hidden in “various hotels” in Costa Rica, adding that police found “high-caliber weapons and cash” when executing their warrants. 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. “Once these migrants were illegally introduced into Costa Rica,” the statement continues, the traffickers “charged amounts ranging from $7,000, depending on their nationality, to $40,000 for these criminal services.”
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