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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Police search for Los Iros sex camp draws blank

by

Kevon Felmine
2255 days ago
20190521
The hilly terrain in Los Iros where Venezuelans pass to enter the country.

The hilly terrain in Los Iros where Venezuelans pass to enter the country.

RISHI RAGOONATH

A team of South West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and Erin CID searched 22 camps in the Los Iros dis­trict look­ing for a makeshift broth­el with Venezue­lan women on Mon­day night but came out emp­ty-hand­ed.

Di­vi­sion­al Com­man­der, Snr Supt De­onar­ine Bas­deo told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day that he be­lieves the claim by vil­lagers was fake news be­ing ped­dled that has sparked con­cerns of hu­man traf­fick­ing hap­pen­ing in the qui­et farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, Bas­deo promised that if any­one comes to him with in­for­ma­tion on il­le­gal sex trade, the po­lice will take ac­tion.

On Mon­day, a Los Iros vil­lager re­port­ed that five fe­male Venezue­lan im­mi­grants were be­ing pros­ti­tut­ed for $400 and $500 an hour at camps in the com­mu­ni­ty. A source said that men would al­so go in­to the camp and rape the women. The res­i­dents said that when two peo­ple tipped off Erin po­lice about what was tak­ing place, they were se­vere­ly beat­en, rais­ing fears that po­lice were al­so in­volved.

Bas­deo said that there have been no re­ports of peo­ple be­ing beat­en record­ed in the di­ary at the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion. He said the last time there was a re­port of an as­sault was on April 26, which turned out to be a case of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

He ques­tioned that if the Erin po­lice did not take the res­i­dents’ re­port, why didn’t the wit­ness­es go to an­oth­er po­lice sta­tion or even to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty.

“I be­lieve it is fake news. We have sev­er­al camps in the Erin dis­trict, along the Re­source En­gi­neer­ing Road. There are farm­ers us­ing this area. These camps are most­ly va­cant dur­ing the night. They are used dur­ing the course of the day to store chem­i­cals and tools. I am not say­ing that if im­mi­grants land at the Los Iros Beach they would not go there, but we have noth­ing to sug­gest that there are broth­els,” Bas­deo said. 

He said that the camps were an un­like­ly lo­ca­tion for hu­man traf­fick­ers and sex work­ers be­cause the area was too ex­posed to pry­ing eyes. He said that hav­ing such an op­er­a­tion would re­quire guards and oth­er work­ers in the area which would be easy to spot.

“If Guardian Me­dia is will­ing to sup­ply the name of the peo­ple who made the al­le­ga­tions, we will go to them and in­ves­ti­gate. Let them come for­ward. You don’t have to go to the Erin sta­tion, you can come di­rect­ly to me,” Bas­deo said.


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