Po­lice be­lieve they have made a dent in a thriv­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing ring af­ter ar­rest­ing 11 il­le­gal im­mi­grants dur­ing a raid ear­ly yes­ter­day.

It is be­lieved a video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, which showed peo­ple jump­ing off a pirogue and run­ning on­to shore at a beach in Erin, trig­gered a po­lice op­er­a­tion around 2 am.

The op­er­a­tion took place at the Los Iros beach and was head­ed by Se­nior Supt Adams and in­clud­ed Supt Bas­deo, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. A par­ty of of­fi­cers led by Sgt Cor­rie, of the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion, con­duct­ed a search of a ho­tel where sev­en male and four fe­male for­eign na­tion­als were found. The men, rang­ing ages 31 to 55 years, in­clud­ed five Venezue­lans, one Guyanese and one Syr­i­an. The women, ages 18 to 49, were three Venezue­lans and one Syr­i­an. The for­eign na­tion­als were hand­ed over to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials. The group is be­lieved to have en­tered this coun­try il­le­gal­ly with the as­sis­tance of lo­cal fish­er­men. The 37-year-old fe­male pro­pri­etress of the es­tab­lish­ment was al­so tak­en in­to po­lice cus­tody.

Po­lice be­lieve those ar­rest­ed are some of the same set of peo­ple seen in the video com­ing in­to the coun­try at an unau­tho­rised port of en­try and with­out the rel­e­vant im­mi­gra­tion checks. The video, which was cir­cu­lat­ed via so­cial me­dia ear­li­er this week, is be­lieved to have been shot at the Los Iros beach, along the is­land’s south­ern coast. In the video, in­di­vid­u­als are seen with lug­gage and bags of items run­ning hasti­ly away once reach­ing the beach.

Los Iros beach is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 miles north of Venezuela.

In the video, a man and a woman who had seen what was tak­ing place and who ap­peared to be as­tound­ed by the ease with which the il­le­gal im­mi­grants had en­tered this coun­try, can be heard say­ing, “Watch, watch, watch. What de f... I see­ing here boy. Drugs and thing coul­da be com­ing in here. Watch how they mov­ing. Look them. Al­lyuh reach. Run, run.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who com­ment­ed on the is­sue via What­sApp yes­ter­day, said he had seen the video.

“I have seen the video and raised the con­tent, as well as the im­pli­ca­tions, with the ma­te­r­i­al arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” Young said.

He said he has al­so re­quest­ed that more re­sources and at­ten­tion be ded­i­cat­ed to bor­der pro­tec­tion.

“The video is a dis­turb­ing ex­am­ple of what is tak­ing place,” Young added.

He said he will al­so soon be tak­ing a num­ber of ini­tia­tives to Cab­i­net which are di­rect­ed at tack­ling “this sit­u­a­tion of our bor­ders be­ing too porous.”

“It is an area of con­cern which is be­ing ad­dressed. Fol­low­ing in from that video, au­thor­i­ties have de­tained a num­ber of per­sons in that Los Iros area in Erin who ap­pear to be il­le­gal im­mi­grants and they are cur­rent­ly de­tained and be­ing processed,” the Min­is­ter added.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros Shankar Teelucks­ingh said the in­ci­dent cap­tured in the video was “noth­ing new.”

The ex­o­dus of Venezue­lan cit­i­zens has been iden­ti­fied by the Unit­ed Na­tions as the biggest cri­sis in the West­ern hemi­sphere.

Mean­while, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith con­tin­ues to ap­peal to mem­bers of the pub­lic to come for­ward with in­for­ma­tion to as­sist in the fight against crime.

Grif­fith, who al­so said he had seen the video, said, “Any mat­ter that is present­ly a crim­i­nal mat­ter that may be un­der­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion, I can­not speak to the pub­lic on.

“If any­one has in­for­ma­tion...the same peo­ple who are in that video, if they can con­tact me and give me the name of the boat, the name of the per­son who brought in the per­sons so I can ac­tu­al­ly do a prop­er op­er­a­tion to have the rel­e­vant per­sons ar­rest­ed.

“I need names, I need sit­u­a­tions when it will hap­pen. If peo­ple are aware of some­thing that may take place pri­or the event, that is what I need. I con­tin­ue to hear per­sons say they know who the crim­i­nals are and if you do, please bring it to our at­ten­tion,” Grif­fith urged.

By the end of this year, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is ex­pect­ed to the new Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) unit. SORT will re­port­ed­ly func­tion along the same lines as the now de­funct Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SAUTT).