Operation Border: MP requests preventive detention and complex case against 15 of those arrested

The Public Ministry deposited with the Permanent Attention Office of the Monte Cristi judicial district the request for 18 months of preventive detention and the declaration of the complexity of the process, against 15 accused belonging to an organized crime network dedicated to the trafficking of Haitian immigrants. The network was dismantled last Sunday morning in Operation Border. The request for the measure of coercion was deposited this Monday by the interim prosecutor of Monte Cristi, Dinorah Liberato Rojas, against the 15 defendants for the violation of the criminal offense of Illicit Smuggling of Migrants, provided for and sanctioned in articles 2 and 7 (literal b, c, d, and e) of Law 137-03, on Smuggling of Migrants and Human Trafficking; Articles 265 and 266 of the Penal Code, which classify Human Trafficking and Smuggling as a crime.

In the coordinated operation, Eddy Rafael Cordero Villanueva and Osiris Rafael Estévez Fortuna, who have been identified as leaders of this network that traffics migrants from Haiti, were arrested. Elbio José Castillo Martínez, Hilario Antonio Gómez Paul, Santo Valerio Contreras, Anelby Susaña Guzmán, Jesús María Cerda Acosta, Anelsy Escarlex Cordero Núñez and María Rafaela Batista de Cordero. As well as members of the Dominican Army, Second Lieutenant José Dolores Hernández Merejildo and Julio César Pujols Montero; Sergeants Major Rafael Contreras and Rafael Zabala Peña and Corporal Sandro Liranzo Javier.

According to the investigation carried out by the Public Ministry, the leaders, and members of the network were dedicated to financing, facilitating, and transporting migrants through motorcycles and buses, in complicity with the military assigned to surveillance and control functions in that border area. from the country. In the 16 raids carried out, 24 immigrants were found, among them men, pregnant women, children, and adolescents, who remained in the clandestine collection centers used by the criminal structure and were later transported by the different routes established to different provinces of the country.