Fif­teen Venezue­lan na­tion­als, in­clud­ing a 16-year-old girl, were de­tained in To­ba­go for il­le­gal en­try dur­ing a tar­get­ed op­er­a­tion on Fri­day. One woman was al­so held af­ter au­thor­i­ties found a small quan­ti­ty of a sub­stance re­sem­bling the par­ty drug MD­MA.

Po­lice said the woman was dis­cov­ered with 0.26 grammes of the sub­stance dur­ing the op­er­a­tion at apart­ment build­ings in the Ba­co­let and Sig­nal Hill ar­eas. MD­MA, com­mon­ly known as ec­sta­sy, is treat­ed by au­thor­i­ties as a dan­ger­ous drug. Pos­ses­sion of tablets con­tain­ing MD­MA can lead to crim­i­nal ac­tion un­der the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this mat­ter are on­go­ing.

The op­er­a­tion, con­duct­ed be­tween 5 am and 11 am, tar­get­ed the Scar­bor­ough and Crown Point dis­tricts. It was car­ried out by of­fi­cers from mul­ti­ple units, in­clud­ing the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion­al Task Force, In­ter-Agency Task Force, Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit, Im­mi­gra­tion En­force­ment, Po­lice K9 Unit, and Reg­i­ment. Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, 30 peo­ple were in­ter­viewed and searched, and 15 were de­tained.

Among those de­tained were eight men and six women, with a sin­gle fe­male mi­nor, aged 16, al­so tak­en in­to cus­tody. Eight of the adults were found at a res­i­dence along Ba­co­let Street, Scar­bor­ough, while the re­main­ing adults and the mi­nor were dis­cov­ered at Lam­beau/Sig­nal Hill Road near the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School.

The 16-year-old girl was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and is ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed over to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty. Au­thor­i­ties said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing to de­ter­mine how the group en­tered To­ba­go and whether oth­ers were in­volved in fa­cil­i­tat­ing their ar­rival.

—Kevon Felmine