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.