Sunday, the Colombian authorities revealed that during the year 2016, they had expelled from their country nearly 34,000 illegal migrants including: 20,366 Haitians, 8,167 Cubans, 874 Indians, 570 Congolese and 553 Nepalese.

Foreign migrants were mainly arrested in the departments of Antioquia (North-West), Nariño, Valle del Cauca, Cauca (Southwest) and Risaralda (Center), said Christian Krüger, Director of Immigration of Colombia, who explained that in these departments, are located the main road corridors used by the networks of smugglers which indicated that "The number of irregular migrants assumed by the Colombian migration services in 2016, is almost 4 times more than in 2015."

Colombia, the official said, because of its geographical position is an obliged passage for all migrants seeking to reach Central America or North America "We are not the cause, nor the origin of this phenomenon, but to ensure the safety and integrity of these migrants we have had to increase our controls and work on regional strategies to combat this phenomenon and we have a zero tolerance policy against all individuals (smugglers) who benefit of these migrants to make a profit," adding that on average each irregular migrant pays between 2,000 and 2,500 dollars to these networks to cross the country.

In addition, Krüger said that in 2016 his services had identified new routes for migrant trafficking, using as entry points the Putumayo Departments, which border Ecuador and Amazon (Border with Peru and Brazil). Also it was discovered that the Caribbean island of San Andres, was used by networks of traffickers as transit. On the island the groups of foreigners arrive with false documents, pretending to be Colombians, in order to take boats at destination of Central America.

SL/ HaitiLibre