A joint ex­er­cise be­tween the Po­lice and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) re­sult­ed in the cap­ture of 32 Venezue­lan na­tion­als (who had en­tered the coun­try il­le­gal­ly) and one Trinida­di­an in Care­nage, on Sat­ur­day.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­ports that at 4:36 pm on Sat­ur­day 25th Ju­ly 2020, of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) spot­ted a pirogue in the vicin­i­ty of the Third Bo­ca, Ch­aguara­mas.

A chase en­sued and short­ly af­ter, the ves­sel was in­ter­cept­ed near Cha­cachacare Is­lands.

The TTPS state­ment notes that up­on bring­ing the ves­sel to a halt, TTCG of­fi­cers ob­served two per­sons swim­ming to the shore.

Po­lice of­fi­cers al­so re­spond­ed and mount­ed a search for the sus­pects; how­ev­er, it proved fu­tile.

The 32 im­mi­grants were con­veyed to Staubles Bay where they were med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and trans­port­ed to the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port where they will un­der­go 14 days’ quar­an­tine.

The TTPS is ask­ing cit­i­zens with in­for­ma­tion on sus­pect­ed il­le­gal im­mi­grants to call the po­lice hot­line at 555.