The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell defended the country’s efforts to counter human smuggling after an American newspaper highlighted the problem.

In an article published last week, The Washington Post depicted human smuggling as the latest illicit activity gaining prominence in The Bahamas, following periods of drug and alcohol smuggling and piracy.

The Post’s journalists spoke of alleged smugglers who claimed that getting involved in human smuggling in the Bahamas is easy.

In a voice note yesterday, Mr Mitchell said the portrait that emerged from the reporting is exaggerated.

“There are facts involved like the fact of our geography, the fact that people use the country to smuggle people to the United States,” he said. “Pieces of this nature, in my view, always come off as exaggerated to the point of the absurd.

“The piece is simply not balanced enough in that it does not give credit or sufficient credit to a small country with limited resources. There is no way, shape or form, countenance is the smuggling of people to the United States of America.”

 Mr Mitchell said human smuggling in The Bahamas is a structural issue given the country’s location between the United States and Haiti.

 “We have a tourist economy which must balance ease of entry as against immigration controls and there’s every indication that The Bahamas is fully cognisant of the public policy on smuggling and on trafficking of persons and we adhere to all the international agreements,” he said.

 Meanwhile, Royal Bahamas Defence Force Commodore Raymond King acknowledged that human smuggling remains a vexing issue in the country.

 He said while interception of migrant vessels has been successful sometimes, it remains challenging to locate human smugglers.

“The challenge exists with Haitian migrants identifying the actual captain of the vessels despite the interrogation methods and profiling techniques,” he said. “Similar circumstances with the Cubans; much easier with the mixed migration in the Northern Bahamas because it’s usually a sole Bahamian onboard the vessels.”

 He said efforts are made to “interrogate cell phones found in migrant possessions,” but migrants throw most phones away at sea when authorities discover them.