Five cruise ships docked in San Diego were unexpectedly boarded by US Customs and Border Protection between Apr. 23 and 25 in a crackdown on individuals allegedly trading illegal child sexual exploitation material.
According to the New York Post, one of the cruises included a Disney Cruise Line ship that’s favored by families, many of whom were startled by the idea that they were surrounded by alleged child predators. A CBP spokesperson said, “After boarding the vessels and interviewing 26 suspected crew members from the Philippines, one suspected crew member from Portugal, and one from Indonesia, officers confirmed all subjects were involved in either the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing of CSEM (child sexual exploitation material) or child pornography.”
The spokesperson told the media that the next step is revoking the suspects’ visas and deporting them from the US. Disney also had to issue a response, clarifying that the company has “zero tolerance” for these types of crimes and is fully complying with law enforcement.
The families who were vacationing on Disney’s Magic Ship were reportedly documenting the entire commotion on their phones as several employees were being cuffed by immigration officials. One passenger even posted a video of her server getting arrested.
The current administration is definitely getting back to the original promise of the immigration stings. During the campaigns, the stated goal was to first go after criminals on US soil and then deal with other undocumented immigrants on a case-by-case basis more corresponding to the nonviolent offense of living in the US without documentation.
Reportedly, before the details of these latest arrests became public, several immigrant rights groups were up in arms about the arrests of Disney cruise ship employees. It’s also worth noting that the Port of San Diego Harbor Police Department was not involved in the arrests. Which in itself is a departure from how local police are approaching cases that involve immigration.
The details of the accusations are still slim right now. However, most people can get behind the clamping down on child exploitation suspects — especially now as the other equally outrageous scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s ring of child sex abusers is going cold.
Epstein’s case is slowly progressing through several closed-door Congressional hearings involving top members of current and previous administrations. The fear among people who were initially invested in the resolution of those crimes is that not another single person will get arrested again.
Child exploitation will always be one of the most disturbing crimes of this day and age. It’s perhaps even more alarming that law enforcement in the US and beyond has not always been particularly aggressive in dealing with such crimes. This new update is, at the very least, a notable change.
According to reports, 14 crew members were arrested from the Disney cruise ships, but for some immigrant rights groups the concern remains whether these individuals are still being treated as suspects with rights and not people already assumed guilty. One passenger said, “He was fully in uniform, which was a blazer and tie. Some of the other employees were still in their chef’s uniforms with their name tags on. So that was just my big concern — how is he gonna reach out to his family? Does the family even know that he’s not getting back on the ship today?”
