Three of the five Venezue­lan na­tion­als who es­caped from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo on Tues­day were re­cap­tured that same night in the Ari­ma dis­trict.

Po­lice said co­or­di­nat­ed overnight search­es re­sult­ed in the three de­tainees be­ing held with­in hours of their es­cape.

In a re­lease, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said Chris­t­ian Jose Rivero Pa­rades, 28; Jhonatan Je­sus Car­reno, 38; and Samuel Ed­uar­do Gon­za­les Ro­driguez, 24, had been tak­en back in­to cus­tody.

The two miss­ing de­tainees were iden­ti­fied as Miguel Sanchez, 28; and Leirz­er Omar Meza Font, 21.

Al­though two de­tainees re­mained un­ac­count­ed for up to 3 pm yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro promised law en­force­ment would be un­re­lent­ing in their ef­forts to ap­pre­hend them.

The five were re­port­ed miss­ing around 3.15 pm on Tues­day, af­ter they were seen es­cap­ing from the IDC.

IDC of­fi­cials no­ticed that a hole was cut in the gal­vanise sheet­ing on the north­ern side of the gen­er­al recre­ation area. They sus­pect the five de­tainees head­ed north along the se­cu­ri­ty fence which they lat­er climbed over.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise be­tween 9 pm on Tues­day and 2.30 am yes­ter­day, of­fi­cers from the Ari­ma Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment; the North­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force – North; the Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice; the TTPS Air Sup­port Unit; and of­fi­cers of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre cor­doned off sev­er­al farms be­tween Aripo Road and Smith Field.

Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, of­fi­cers care­ful­ly searched through aban­doned build­ings and bushy ar­eas, fol­low­ing which they came up­on the men hun­kered down un­der the cov­er of dark­ness.

In ex­press­ing his grat­i­tude to the pub­lic who re­spond­ed to the call for in­for­ma­tion, and which led to the re­cap­ture of the three de­tainees, Gue­var­ro said, “I want to ex­tend heart­felt thanks to the pub­lic for their co­op­er­a­tion and vig­i­lance. Your time­ly in­for­ma­tion and sup­port were in­stru­men­tal in our swift re­cap­ture of the es­capees.

“This is a clear ex­am­ple of how strong com­mu­ni­ty-po­lice col­lab­o­ra­tion leads to mean­ing­ful out­comes in pub­lic safe­ty.”

The CoP al­so praised all the of­fi­cers in­volved in the speedy re­cap­ture, as he ac­knowl­edged their un­wa­ver­ing ef­forts and ded­i­ca­tion to the task at hand.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion is urged to con­tact the po­lice im­me­di­ate­ly via 999, 555, or re­port anony­mous­ly through CrimeStop­pers at 800-TIPS.