Charles Kong Soo

The smug­gling of hu­man car­go has high­er prof­its and low­er risks than smug­gling drugs.

That is the view of crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira. He said hu­man smug­glers and traf­fick­ers can make as much as US$100,000 on one il­le­gal mi­grant to trans­port him to the US.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view on Thurs­day, Figueira said, "Just as the Mex­i­can car­tels are now dom­i­nat­ing the drug trade in the Caribbean, they have now in­tro­duced a new di­men­sion to hu­man smug­gling in the Caribbean by 'coy­otes' or hu­man smug­glers. T&T is a ma­jor trans­ship­ment point.

"The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple en­ter­ing the Caribbean are mov­ing to en­ter US ter­ri­to­ry.

"They are more valu­able than car­ry­ing drugs, you make more mon­ey per head.

"It de­pends on what pack­age they buy rang­ing from US$35,000, $50,000 to the US$100,000 'pre­mi­um.'

"If you go for any­thing cheap­er than that it means you will end up get­ting abused."

He said if the smug­gled per­son had the where­with­al, cou­pled with the com­plic­i­ty of im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials, for the US$100,000 pre­mi­um pack­age he could get a new iden­ti­ty, T&T pass­port, le­git­i­mate doc­u­ments and a plane tick­et to the US.

Figueira said for US35,000 to $50,000, a coy­ote would fa­cil­i­tate the trans­port of an il­le­gal mi­grant who want­ed to go to the US from T&T to Be­lize, to Mex­i­co and over land to the US bor­der.

He said an­oth­er pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion was Cana­da–the coy­ote would move his hu­man car­go across the US bor­der, in­to Chica­go, along the Great Lakes area and across in­to Cana­da.

Figueira said Haitians were the largest group of il­le­gal im­mi­grants head­ing to the US via the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic/Puer­to Ri­co route, fol­lowed by In­di­an na­tion­als.

He said Syr­i­an refugees es­cap­ing the war in their coun­try flew to An­tigua, the US Vir­gin Is­lands, then to the US.

Figueira said the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple be­ing smug­gled were com­ing from Asia and was big busi­ness: Chi­nese, In­di­an na­tion­als, Nepalese, Fil­ipinos and there was a code of si­lence. No one spoke if they were caught by au­thor­i­ties.

He said agen­cies such as the US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment made the dis­tinc­tion be­tween hu­man smug­gling and hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Hu­man smug­gling in­volves a per­son vol­un­tar­i­ly want­i­ng to get smug­gled across in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders and pay­ing a smug­gler or coy­ote to fa­cil­i­tate this.

Hu­man traf­fick­ing was the trans­porta­tion of peo­ple with the in­tent of sell­ing or ex­ploit­ing them in pros­ti­tu­tion and forced labour.

Figueira said the two forms of smug­gling were in­ter­mixed as coy­otes of­ten ex­ploit­ed the peo­ple they trans­port­ed, reneg­ing on their orig­i­nal agree­ment and ex­tort­ing more mon­ey from them.

He said that it was un­known which coun­try had the most peo­ple com­ing to T&T. Of­fi­cial fig­ures in the pos­ses­sion of the au­thor­i­ties were on­ly of peo­ple who passed through im­mi­gra­tion and over­stayed.

Figueira said il­le­gal im­mi­grants didn't nec­es­sar­i­ly clear im­mi­gra­tion, since T&T's coast line was porous.

He said the ma­jor­i­ty of them were eco­nom­ic mi­grants and some peo­ple fled their home­land be­cause of war, like the Syr­i­ans.

Figueira said many of the mi­grants didn't want to live in the Caribbean or Latin Amer­i­ca, and their fi­nal des­ti­na­tion was the US and Cana­da.

He said when they land­ed in T&T trans­port was wait­ing to whisk them away to non­de­script safe hous­es pri­or to ship­ping them out.

Figueira said im­mi­gra­tion was the agency is­su­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion. He, how­ev­er, said, the il­le­gal mi­grants didn't want work per­mits. Figueira said they placed no strain on the econ­o­my to main­tain them, they paid an ad­vanced fee to the coy­otes for trans­port and food and doc­tors were even pro­vid­ed for them when they got sick.

Figueira said one of the most lu­cra­tive types of hu­man traf­fick­ing was the smug­gling of chil­dren for the sex trade where they were bought and sold over to pae­dophiles.

Figueira said smug­gled chil­dren were con­sid­ered ex­treme­ly valu­able and were usu­al­ly ac­com­pa­nied by an adult, ei­ther a fam­i­ly mem­ber or guardian and trav­elled by air.

US State De­part­ment re­port on hu­man traf­fick­ing

In the US State De­part­ment's Ju­ly 27, 2015, 15th an­nu­al re­port on hu­man traf­fick­ing, T&T along with nine oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bo­livia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Cu­ba, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Suri­name, were on the Tier 2 Watch List.

Un­less those coun­tries make progress, they could re­ceive a Tier 3 rank­ing in 2016.

A Tier 3 rank­ing is for coun­tries that do not co­op­er­ate in the fight against hu­man traf­fick­ing and be­come li­able to US for­eign as­sis­tance sanc­tions.

Grif­fith on il­le­gal im­mi­grants in 2014

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said there were 110,012 il­le­gal im­mi­grants in T&T in 2014.

The high­est num­ber of il­le­gal im­mi­grants came from Guyana–25,884, fol­lowed by Ja­maica–19,500, Venezuela–10,574, St Vin­cent–9,606, Bar­ba­dos–7,169, Grena­da–6,947, Colom­bia–6,388, Chi­na–4,593, Philip­pines–4,437, St Lu­cia–4,391, In­dia–3,651, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic–2,256, Suri­name–1,944, Cu­ba–1,434 Nige­ria–1,071 and Bangladesh–167.