More raids on illegal immigrants
24 September 2002
AMSTERDAM -- On Monday night, Amsterdam police raided the western harbour area of the city, and arrested 80 illegal immigrants. The raid followed other police actions over the weekend in which about another 120 aliens were found.
The specific target of Monday night’s raid was the ‘Theemsweg’ in the western harbour area. Police were looking for illegal immigrants working as prostitutes, and found a large number of Bulgarian and Romanian women, many of whom, police say, had been forced to move to Amsterdam to work in the sex trade.
The arrested aliens are being held at a former asylum seekers centre in West Amsterdam.
Police also arrested the prostitutes’ alleged pimps in the zone, many of whom are accused also of illegal possession of firearms. Other illegal immigrants were arrested, accused of offering money exchanges to tourists at favourable rates, but actually providing the tourists with counterfeit money.
The illegal immigrants will be deported to their countries of origin with a charter flight later this week. Dutch authorities have made a regular practice of deporting groups of illegal aliens in the past six months.
The police allege that illegal aliens cause a lot of problems in Amsterdam and are often involved in pick-pocketing as well as other cons like the false money changing.
In particular, the police blame Bulgarian and Romanian nationals for a spate of recent robberies against tourists. In a number of cases illegal aliens dressed in bogus police uniforms used trickery or threats to get tourists to hand over their valuables.
A police spokesperson said that while many of the arrests were carried out on the streets, a number of illegal aliens were also detained during searches of so-called "robbers lairs" around the city. Over 500 officers were involved in the operation.
[Copyright Expatica 2002] |