Costa Rican authorities said they arrested 19 people accused of trafficking hundreds of predominantly Asian migrants to the United States.
The arrests Wednesday came during multi-city raids aimed at disrupting what Costa Rica’s immigration police call “a transnational organized crime structure” dedicated to human trafficking and money laundering.
“The operations were carried out in homes and hotels located in Corredores and Los Chiles — locations where the criminal network allegedly moved migrants of various nationalities, primarily Chinese and Vietnamese,” the Costa Rica Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
The Prosecutor’s Office claims that migrants trafficked by the criminals were hidden in “various hotels” in Costa Rica, adding that police found “high-caliber weapons and cash” when executing their warrants.
Police said they uncovered at least 437 people trafficked into Costa Rica via land, sea and air. Most were from China, but the victims included Vietnamese, Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Peruvians, as well.
“Once these migrants were illegally introduced into Costa Rica,” the statement continues, the traffickers “charged amounts ranging from $7,000, depending on their nationality, to $40,000 for these criminal services.”
“Once (migrants) were in the hands of this criminal group,” deputy attorney general Mauricio Boraschi told a press conference, “They were also illegally moved to the border with Nicaragua … so that they could continue to their final destination in the United States.”
A video posted by police on social media shows officers armed with battering rams, bolt cutters and rifles raiding two different buildings on residential streets, and appears to show at least one person being detained.
In the same video, Commissioner Enrique Arguedas of the Costa Rican Immigration Police said that the investigation began over a year ago in collaboration with Panamanian authorities.
The victims “were being recruited by different criminal organizations that operated between Panama and Costa Rica and facilitated the movement of migrants … toward the northern part of the continent, specifically the United States,” Arguedas said.