A po­lice raid, which in­volved the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU), has re­sult­ed in the dis­cov­ery of 12 adult Venezue­lan women and one 16-year-old at a lo­ca­tion in Tu­na­puna.

The raid was at a res­i­dence on St Vin­cent Street, Tu­na­puna where a to­tal of 17 peo­ple were found - 12 adult fe­males be­tween the ages of 18 and 26, two adult males aged 21 and 28, one mi­nor fe­male aged 16, and two ba­bies un­der the age of three.

A state­ment by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said that all were Venezue­lan na­tion­als, ex­cept for one of the ba­bies, who is a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al.

"Rapid hu­man traf­fick­ing screen­ing was con­duct­ed on-site, re­sult­ing in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of three adult fe­males as Vic­tims of Traf­fick­ing (VoTs). These in­di­vid­u­als are now un­der the care of the CTU’s Pro­tec­tion Team. The re­main­ing per­sons were hand­ed over to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion for fur­ther pro­cess­ing. One Venezue­lan na­tion­al was ar­rest­ed at the scene," the state­ment said.

It added that the sus­pect’s ba­by, who is a Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al, and the 16-year-old po­ten­tial VoT were both trans­ferred to the care of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly, of­fi­cers re­cov­ered one il­le­gal firearm and seized TT$150,000 in cash sus­pect­ed to be linked to il­lic­it traf­fick­ing pro­ceeds. This suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion fol­lowed in­tel­li­gence re­lat­ed to the sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion of Latin Amer­i­can fe­males in bars along the East-West Cor­ri­dor and rep­re­sents a de­ci­sive dis­rup­tion of an ac­tive traf­fick­ing ring, mark­ing the first of sev­er­al such op­er­a­tions planned for 2025," the state­ment added.