The Colombian Attorney General’s Office warned on Tuesday about the “serious humanitarian crisis” due to the increase in migrants arriving on the Colombian islands of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, through what traffickers promote as a “VIP route”, with the objective of crossing by boat to Nicaragua to continue his journey to North America.
The Attorney General’s Office indicated in a statement that more than 804 citizens from different countries of origin such as China, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic who used this route in recent months were rescued in open waters after their boats capsized at high altitude. sea.
“The traffickers leave the migrants here, lying around, they tell them that this is Nicaragua, they take their money and abandon them. We help them to survive while they have a way to return to San Andrés on a tourist boat,” said Dilan Wiell Pomare, a Colombian fisherman from Cayo Pescador, a small island between Colombia and Nicaragua, where smugglers sometimes drop off migrants.
For its part, the Attorney General’s Office highlighted that “migrants are victims of illegal traffickers and human trafficking who are offering a ‘VIP route’ for irregular migration, traveling by plane from Cali, Medellín, Cartagena and Bogotá to the San Andrés airport. ”, warned the entity. “After spending a night on the island, the nets embark on a dangerous journey across the open sea, transferring at Albuquerque and Pescador keys, to the south of the archipelago to reach Nicaragua on their way to the United States,” they added.
Given this, the Attorney General’s Office asked Colombia Migration, the Office of Control, Circulation and Residence of the Colombian islands in the Caribbean (OCCRE) and commercial airlines to redouble controls and surveillance to prevent traffickers from taking migrants offshore. migrants.
“The National Navy carries out territorial control and exercises the sovereignty of the country in these waters, however, due to the disproportionate increase in irregular migration, its operational capacity is not sufficient to control the phenomenon,” said that entity.
The massive arrival of migrants in their attempt to reach Central America has generated four shipwrecks in which 59 people disappeared, including children and pregnant mothers.
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