Two men were sentenced Wednesday by the local court of Saint-Martin for having participated in the smuggling of migrants; their role was to accompany foreigners from the Agrément roundabout to the beach at Anse des Pères and to help them board a boat that was to take them to the American Virgin Islands. They were "the little hands" of a well-organized international operation.
The migrants were eleven (six men, three women and two children) of different nationalities and arrived on the island through different channels; the Indians and Venezuelans had landed at Juliana airport and the Albanians at Grand Case. They did not know each other and had been grouped together in Sint Maarten with a view to winning the “American El Dorado”.
The border police investigation revealed that Indians and Venezuelans paid between $ 2 and $ 000 per person and Albanians US $ 3 per person. The latter succeeded in explaining to the police - none spoke French and only one spoke a little English - that they had been made aware of this possibility of going to the United States, on the internet. They traveled via Turkey, Malta, Paris, Guadeloupe where they stayed for several days, before arriving in Grand Case.
The island is indeed a hub for this type of operation; it is one of the stages of this traffic because of its proximity to the Virgin Islands and the regional and international service to Juliana. This is not the first that the PAF or the Sint Maarten police have conducted such investigations.
After the arrests of individuals involved locally in trafficking, the migrants are taken in charge by the PAF. They are returned to the border according to their situation in the territory. Some may be in a regular situation, as is the case of the Albanians involved in the case examined on Wednesday, they can indeed stay in France for 90 days without a visa and during this period file an application for a residence permit or renewal.
Some foreign nationals wait until the end of the 90-day period to go to the PAF on their own. They explain their irregular situation and are then subject to a return procedure to their country, known as voluntary return. (soualigapost.com)
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