Minister of Justice of Sint Maarten, Mr. Dennis L. Richardson held a meeting with border control institutions. Present at this meeting were representatives of the Police, Coast Guard, Customs, Immigration and Border Protection Service, and the Attorney General.
The purpose of this meeting was to develop proposals on how to more effectively control the borders on St. Maarten and/or prevent human smuggling and human trafficking and the infiltration of the community by persons with “less than good intentions” and proposals therefore to curb crime. The Minister of Justice is in favor of a firm approach to combating criminal activities in the aforementioned way, whilst taking into consideration the economic/tourist interests of St. Maarten.
At the airport there is already collaboration between officers of the Royal Marechausee, the staff of the Police Force of St. Maarten, and the Immigration and Border Protection Service. Together these services combat not only migration criminality, but also the problem regarding false and/or forged documents and general offenses at the airport. To strengthen the first line control (control at the counter) and in the BackOffice (further verification of suspected irregularities) a recently launched program will be expanded and strengthened for certain risk flights. It will require a more intensive cooperation between the airport and the airlines taking their interests into account. Along with risk profiles working instructions will be established at the airport, to filter out the first line control passengers with bad intentions. These passengers will be further investigated at the BackOffice.
To jointly tackle this problem, the Immigration and Border Control Service and the Coast Guard were given instructions to draw up action plans for the airport, the seaports, and beaches. This includes a risk analysis of the ports and beaches, as well as an inventory study on the implementation of a radar system or other similar modern technologies for the monitoring of movements of ships. In this context, the minister wants to continue to look for other possibilities with international partners (including the United States of America and France).
In the coming period these border control institutes will submit a report to the Minister with recommendations for the improvement of the situation. As of July 11th, 2013, these institutions will finalize their plan of approach and within a month this plan, including the first results will be presented to the Minister.
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