SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar warned of a surge in hu­man and drug traf­fick­ing—fu­elled by Venezue­lan na­tion­als and in­volv­ing lo­cal gang mem­bers—po­lice un­cov­ered a traf­fick­ing ring in Tu­na­puna, res­cu­ing 12 women, in­clud­ing three vic­tims.

It was con­fir­ma­tion of what the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) has been track­ing for years: a grow­ing, or­gan­ised web of ex­ploita­tion stretch­ing from Trinidad to Colom­bia, fed by des­per­a­tion, cor­rup­tion, and porous bor­ders.

The CTU res­cued 102 hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims in T&T be­tween 2013 and 2022. In 2019, the high­est num­ber of vic­tims res­cued was 40. The low­est was two in 2022.

These fig­ures were con­tained in the CTU’s 2022 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons re­port, which was laid in Par­lia­ment last No­vem­ber.

Of the 102 cas­es, 63 peo­ple were charged with var­i­ous of­fences aris­ing from in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the ex­ploita­tion of vic­tims over these ten years. At least 30 of the vic­tims were mi­nors, with six be­ing un­der the age of 15.

Since 2013, nine of the ac­cused have been com­mit­ted to stand tri­al at the High Court. Sev­en mat­ters were dis­missed, two ac­cused were killed, and one per­son plead­ed guilty to im­mi­gra­tion-re­lat­ed of­fences in aid­ing and abet­ting a vic­tim to en­ter the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

PM high­lights traf­fick­ing surge in the South

On Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed con­cerns over a spike in drugs and hu­man traf­fick­ing, main­ly in the South-West and South­ern ar­eas of Trinidad.

“There’s an in­crease in fe­male traf­fick­ers, drug and hu­man traf­fick­ing. Let me make it clear, some Venezue­lan women are (the) main per­sons who run the hu­man traf­fick­ing rings,” she told re­porters dur­ing a press con­fer­ence.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar gave no da­ta on the in­crease.

She al­so dis­closed that mem­bers of the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty were es­cort­ing Trinida­di­an gang mem­bers from Trinidad to Venezuela and then Colom­bia to do di­rect il­le­gal busi­ness with co­caine pro­duc­ers.

The Prime Min­is­ter point­ed out, “Some Trinida­di­an gangs are now cut­ting out the mid­dle­men. They are go­ing straight to Colom­bian pro­duc­ers fa­cil­i­tat­ed by those in Venezuela who have been wel­comed in­to this coun­try. A lot of Venezue­lans iden­ti­fied in drug traf­fick­ing and hu­man traf­fick­ing have reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments.”

She said they have been re­sid­ing on our shores legal­ly and dup­ing the sys­tem.

Last week, the Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo al­leged on his pro­gramme Con El Ma­zo Dan­do that a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al, who he named “Guis Kendell Jarome”, had been cap­tured while trav­el­ling to Venezuela with a group la­belled “ter­ror­ists” in an at­tempt to desta­bilise their gov­ern­ment.

This trig­gered Per­sad-Bisses­sar to warn Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro a day lat­er to stay out of T&T’s wa­ters or they would be met with dead­ly force.

On Fri­day, the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment called on Per­sad-Biss­esar to tone down her dead­ly force rhetoric against their coun­try.

A day af­ter the PM’s rev­e­la­tion, the po­lice un­cov­ered a ma­jor hu­man traf­fick­ing ring at St Vin­cent Street, Tu­na­puna.

A re­lease from the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty on Fri­day stat­ed that the CTU and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice con­duct­ed an ex­er­cise dubbed “Op­er­a­tion G-Ride”—a six-month op­er­a­tion that cul­mi­nat­ed in the dis­cov­ery of 12 fe­males be­tween the ages of 18 and 26. A to­tal of 17 peo­ple were found, 16 of whom are Venezue­lans. Three of the fe­males were vic­tims of traf­fick­ing.

In­side the hi­er­ar­chy: The role of ‘moth­er har­lots’

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said for years, Venezue­lan women have been key play­ers be­hind T&T’s hu­man traf­fick­ing ring. These women, he said, are re­ferred to as “moth­er har­lots”, fe­male en­forcers or over­seers with­in the traf­fick­ing ring.

The Venezue­lan women, it has been re­port­ed, over­see younger girls, han­dle move­ment lo­gis­tics, and man­age cap­tiv­i­ty sites. At the top of the traf­fick­ing ring, Figueira said, would be the head hon­cho.

He, in turn, would give di­rec­tives to his sec­ond-in-com­mand, who would in­struct the moth­er har­lots on where to keep the girls cap­tive and when to trans­port them to their clients.

Hu­man traf­fick­ing, he said, is a boom­ing bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try, fu­elled by a de­mand for cheap labour, ser­vices, and com­mer­cial sex. “So, from the be­gin­ning of the trade in Trinidad, these Venezue­lan women have al­ways been key and cen­tral to the busi­ness. So the Prime Min­is­ter is cor­rect.”

The drug route:

Di­rect to Colom­bia

On the PM’s claim that Venezue­lans have es­cort­ed Trinida­di­an gang mem­bers to Colom­bia to do busi­ness with co­caine pro­duc­ers, Figueira said the prac­tice isn’t new—but it’s grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly with the in­flux of un­doc­u­ment­ed Venezue­lans. Over time, he said, gang mem­bers learnt Span­ish, part­nered with mi­grants, and in­vest­ed in boats to sup­port traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions.

“They are called cash mules. They de­liv­er US dol­lars to the Don or Capo (drug lord) for items they want.” Once the pay­ments are made, the mer­chan­dise pass­es through porous bor­ders and is de­liv­ered.

Figueira crit­i­cised the state’s weak en­force­ment, say­ing the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem is “not fit for pur­pose” and fo­cused on the wrong tar­gets.

Ac­tivists want more trans­paren­cy, faster jus­tice

Venezue­lan ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon as­sumed the PM raised the is­sue based on in­tel­li­gence re­ceived. How­ev­er, she said cit­i­zens de­serve full trans­paren­cy about how many vic­tims have been res­cued and how many per­pe­tra­tors have been charged.

“For the pub­lic to know, she (PM) needs to re­lease the facts be­cause it will look very bad on her and her ad­min­is­tra­tion if they re­peat the same er­rors the past ad­min­is­tra­tion did.”

She said even sta­tis­tics on Venezue­lans be­ing charged, con­vict­ed, jailed, and de­port­ed have been lack­ing.

So­cial ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­les said some Venezue­lan women in­volved in the ring were vic­tims them­selves, forced in­to il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty by crim­i­nal net­works with links to of­fi­cials.

“They are forced to come in il­le­gal­ly by Venezue­lan crim­i­nals who have con­nec­tions with peo­ple in high au­thor­i­ty. This is some­thing I am not mak­ing up. This was told by vic­tims who es­caped from the crimes com­mit­ted against them.”

Gon­za­les de­scribed how some women pro­mote girls as sex slaves in bars and night­clubs, with pri­vate boats used to trans­port vic­tims. Vic­tims who re­sist are raped, beat­en, and tor­tured.

“The sad part about it is that the crim­i­nals who are charged with these crimes get bail, and the mat­ter takes so long in court. So the vic­tims get fed up and leave Trinidad.”

Co­or­di­na­tor of the La Ro­main Mi­grant Sup­port Group, Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, said she re­cent­ly dealt with an al­leged traf­fick­ing case in­volv­ing “young gullible girls” ex­ploit­ed af­ter seek­ing work to sup­port fam­i­lies back home.

Ram­nar­ine said she had no rea­son to doubt that Venezue­lans have es­cort­ed Trinida­di­an gang mem­bers to Colom­bia for il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

Dur­ing the 2019 Venezue­lan reg­is­tra­tion process, she said, gang mem­bers from Tu­cu­pi­ta were seen fill­ing out forms for young girls. These crim­i­nals are known as “ma­lan­dros”.

She crit­i­cised the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment’s lack of a struc­tured mi­grant pol­i­cy, say­ing it led to con­fu­sion and ex­ploita­tion.

Call for clar­i­ty from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty

At­tor­ney Criston Williams, who has rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al traf­fick­ing vic­tims, said the Prime Min­is­ter’s claims point to se­ri­ous re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty risks.

“As the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, there must be some doc­u­ment­ed ba­sis for the PM to come to that con­clu­sion.”

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to ta­ble in Par­lia­ment the most re­cent Counter Traf­fick­ing and Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency re­ports, which would of­fer a clear­er pic­ture of the cur­rent land­scape of hu­man, gun, and drug traf­fick­ing.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, but he did not re­spond up to late yes­ter­day.