Sint Maarten: Suspected human smuggler detained for further 60 days
A suspected human smuggler in Sint Maarten has extended his pre-trial detention by sixty days as of March 14, 2022.
The accused with initials E.B.L. is suspected of smuggling a group of migrants by boat from Sint Maarten, with destination the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) under cover of night in a Sint Maarten-registered boat.
This is not the suspected human smuggler’s first incident. He has already been convicted twice for human smuggling.
On the French side of the island, E.B.L. was convicted of three years’ imprisonment for human smuggling in 2019. This sentence pertained to an incident in 2013 in which many people died by drowning en route from the French side of the island to USVI/BVI.
Human smuggling provides people with assistance and transport to smuggle them over a border. Human smugglers exploit migrants’ desperation, charging them huge sums of money to smuggle them out of or into Sint Maarten or other Caribbean islands. Migrants’ lives and health are often put at risk in the process.
Human smuggling is not only transporting people across the border but also assisting them with staying in a country without the proper resident papers and includes housing them, giving them a job etc., while knowing they are not documented to be in the country.
Human smuggling is not the same as human trafficking, though they occur in combination.
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