The Colombian prosecutor’s office reported on Thursday the capture of 31 people who were allegedly part of a migrant smuggling network in charge of processing and supplying false documents to citizens of the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, who with alleged Colombian identities began their journey to Mexico or Guatemala and then crossed by land to the United States.
Among those detained are alleged ringleaders, recruiters of potential clients and public servants of the Registry, the state entity in charge of identifying Colombians, and the chancellery, where passports are issued.
The network would have processed at least 344 false identification cards for migrants and 304 passports that were canceled after the investigation. Obtaining the false documents would have cost each migrant between $2,000 and $4,500, said Colonel Edwin Masleider Urrego, director of Criminal Investigation and Interpol of the Police, in a statement.
According to the prosecutor’s office, three employees and six former employees of the Registry Office would have located civil records of people who had not issued their IDs to impersonate them, while three officials and five former employees of the Chancellery would have formalized the false passports.
The investigation began in 2021 and culminated in the capture of the alleged members in Bogotá and the departments of Atlántico, Córdoba, Cesar, Sucre and La Guajira, in the north of the country, and Amazonas and Caquetá, in the south.
The prosecution identified at least two irregular routes used by migrants who obtained false documents. Some traveled to Mexico or Guatemala to then arrive by land to the United States and others went to European countries to stay permanently or look for a new way to enter the United States.
A Dominican and a Colombian would be the ringleaders of the network. The man is wanted with a blue Interpol notification in 196 countries and the woman was captured in the operation and accused of directing her collaborators, including six of her relatives.
The prosecutor’s office will charge those captured, according to their role, with the crimes of migrant smuggling, ideological falsification in public documents, conspiracy to commit a crime and illicit enrichment, for which they are exposed to sentences of between 9 and 15 years in prison.
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