Shock as Police Arrest 25 Foreign Nationals in Kisumu in Human Trafficking Crackdown

Police in Kasagam have arrested 25 foreign nationals in a targeted security operation aimed at dismantling human trafficking networks in Kisumu East.

The Kenya Police Service said officers from Kasagam Police Station conducted the operation in Nyamasaria, Kassawino and Mowlem areas. All 25 suspects were found in the country without valid permits.

According to police, the group includes 12 Ugandans, 4 Burundians, 3 Congolese, 3 Rwandans, 2 Tanzanians and 1 Egyptian.

The suspects are set to be arraigned in court as investigations continue.

The arrest was announced by the Kenya Police Service on X under the campaign #FightAgainstHumanTrafficking.

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Anti-trafficking Efforts in Kenya

According to research conducted by the Crime Research Centre, human trafficking victims are defined as children, men, and women, and their socio-economic background presents with low income, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, aspiration for a high-income country, domestic abuse, and social exclusion.

The government continued to pursue law enforcement efforts against trafficking.

The COUNTER-TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS ACT, 2010 established that a person who subjects another to sex trafficking or labor trafficking shall be guilty of an offence and be punished with25 years to life imprisonment and a fine of not less than 30 million shillings.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations-National Police Service had two special units that had the mandate of looking into trafficking crimes.

The Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Protection Unit could also investigate, upon the request of the Attorney General or in cases where a request is submitted by a prosecutor in a foreign court, a crime of child trafficking, and the Transnational Organized Crimes Unit could investigate a transnational trafficking crime.

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Human Trafficking in Kenya, including its Forms, Recruitment Methods, and Cross-border Operations

As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Kenya, and traffickers exploit victims from Kenya abroad.

Traffickers exploit women and children in sex trafficking, often facilitated by family members in informal settings and increasingly using online recruitment, throughout Kenya, including in extraterritorial sexual exploitation and abuse in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu.

Authorities report cross-border trafficking rings exploit porous borders to ferry women and underage girls from the Karamoja region of Uganda to Nairobi, where traffickers exploit these individuals in domestic servitude or force them into commercial sex exploitation.

OCS Kasagam affirmed that the crackdown will continue as police sustain operations aimed at combating human trafficking and safeguarding public security.

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25 Foreign Nationals Nabbed as Police Intensify Human Trafficking Crackdown. The suspects are set to be arraigned in court as investigations continue. Credits PCS