Chile’s Foreign Affairs Minister announces an international offensive to curb illegal migrant smuggling
The Foreign Affairs Minister said that “illegal migrant smuggling is a criminal offence that deprives people of their human rights. Those involved in this process are permanently at risk and highly vulnerable.”
In a decisive step taken towards meeting the government’s objective of assuring orderly, safe and regulated immigration, Foreign Affairs Minister Andrés Allamand and Interior Undersecretary Juan Francisco Galli today announced an offensive to curb human trafficking.
“We are preparing to launch a real offensive to halt this type of international human trafficking and migrant smuggling,” said the Foreign Affairs Minister.
The Foreign Affairs Minister said that “international migrant smuggling is a criminal offence that deprives people of their human rights. Those involved in this process are permanently at risk and highly vulnerable.”
He added that “countries need to work together at the judicial, law enforcement and diplomatic levels, to control this phenomenon that to a large degree is being triggered by the complex humanitarian situation, human rights violation and political crisis in Venezuela.” He added that “international human trafficking and migrant smuggling must be stopped at the points of origin. When attempts are made to limit them at the destination, it’s usually too late.”
He referred specifically to the media reports this week about the Colombian company ViveOnline, smuggling migrants through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia to Chile.
According to these reports, the company has been operating since December 2017, offering travel agency services and guaranteeing assistance to migrants at each border crossing, so they can evade police and border checkpoints.
In this respect, the Foreign Affairs Minister outlined three courses of action that are part of this offensive.
A request has been made to the Attorney General, Jorge Abbott, for his office to contact the offices of the attorney generals in each of the other countries affected by the illegal migrant smuggling — Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia — so that they can investigate, prosecute and sentence the perpetrators of transnational criminal offences.
A request has also been made to the Director General of the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI), Héctor Espinosa, for his organization to instigate coordination and cooperation efforts with the police forces in those countries to bring individuals involved in trafficking rings to justice.
At the diplomatic level, the Minister has contacted his counterparts in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, to establish a foreign ministry task force that would allow for the adoption of urgent operational agreements to fight this type of organized crime, in accordance with the Convention of Palermo (United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime).
Finally, as part of advancing towards the establishment of orderly, safe and regulated immigration, Minister Allamand welcomed “the approval of the new landmark immigration bill, that is in its final stages, prior to its enactment into law”