The implementation and use of advanced biometric reading devices and database platforms, intertwined with international security agencies, has allowed Panama’s security forces to detect foreigners with terrorist links, identity theft and drug-related crimes .
It is a system of identification of people and alerts that allow the crossing of information with international security agencies such as Interpol and the FBI, granting reference and data of people of passengers who try to enter the country as travelers, without being perceived. for multiple reasons and that, on many occasions, they present themselves with fraudulent documentation or pretending to be migrants.
The Ministry of Public Security (Minseg), through its institutions that guarantee the maintenance of national and border security, carries out permanent and uninterrupted verifications, 24 hours a day, of each and every one of the people who they enter Panamanian territory through the airports, ports and by land through the borders, in order to maintain the security and peaceful coexistence of nationals and foreigners who are in the country.
Through biometric capture, 72 alerts were detected in 2021, of which 38 people with terrorist links from Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Siri Lanka were identified.
Likewise, 22 people were identified for identity theft from Africa, specifically from Somalia, Mali, Egypt, Togo and Sierra Leone.
Regarding drug-related crimes, three cases were detected from the European continent and they arrived in Panama from Great Britain, Albania and Romania.
Similarly to the 9 alerts received about people from the Americas, the records indicate that they were from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico, all linked to drug trafficking.
So far this year 2022, four cases have already been identified of people who had a red alert for homicide, links with a terrorist group, money laundering and drug trafficking.
The first case was a man held in Darien, at the San Vicente Migrant Reception Station, an Egyptian, with a record in his country for homicide and who maintains ties as a member of a terrorist group, as well as a Nigerian, captured in Los Planes de Gualaca, investigated by intelligence agencies for having links with terrorist organizations and for being linked to companies related to money laundering.
The other two alerts were given by a man of Colombian nationality, captured at the Tocumen airport with an arrest warrant in the United States for a homicide case and the other, a Mexican, detained in Darién, in the ERM of San Vicente, who In 2020, he was captured in Colombian waters transporting a ton of drugs.
