The government has been alarmed by skyrocketing influx of illegal aliens into the country sneaking through the porous northern Kenya borders from the strife-stricken neighbouring Ethiopia and Eritrea.
This comes at a time the country has intensified crackdown on suspected terrorist sympathisers following a spate of renewed attacks targeting vital infrastructural installations in the northern Kenya.
Over the weekend, police manning a roadblock at Turbi trading center along the Moyale-Marsabit highway intercepted twenty two Eritreans without proper documentation of being in the country at 0600 hours.
They alleged to have been abandoned by a motor vehicle they were plying in and headed to “unknown destination.”
On the same day, during a security operation in the volatile Merti region in Isiolo County arrested six Ethiopians all male adults for being in the country illegally.
They had no valid documents for being in the country.
And in Buna area within Wajir County, Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) detectives seized a 22 years old Ethiopian national identified as Abuka Abdi for being in the country without proper documentation.
Members of the public alerted the police after the suspect was spotted moving around the market in a suspicious manner “as if spying for something”. Our source intimated.
He Moyale, Marsabit and Merti routes have been profiled as easy escape transit routes for organised transnational crimes notably human trafficking, terrorism and drug trafficking into the country.
In 2019, detectives attached to Pangani Police Station arrested an Administration Police Officer for abetting human trafficking racket after he was intercepted ferrying five illegal aliens of Somali origin and a Kenyan using a police official vehicle.
The officer first declined to stop after the vehicle was flagged down along General Waruinge Road speeding from Thika Road direction.
In a dramatic incident, detectives attached to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations deflated the front tyre of the Subaru Outback registration number KCJ 710M in question when the seven occupants on board were arrested.
Police also recovered a pair of motor vehicle registration number GKB 422J.
During the same period, twenty illegal immigrants were arrested in three different botched attempts to sneak into the country involving nine Ethiopia, seven Congolese nationals and four Eritreans.
In the past, Kenya has been cited as a key source, point of transit and destination of domestic and international human trafficking web targeting women and children.
A report released by the Ministry of Youth, the most prevalent forms of trafficking are labour at 58.7 per cent, child trafficking 24.1 per cent and prostitution at 17.1 percent.
This is in sharp contrast from the data presented by the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK) where sex trade is ranked as the most prevalent cause of the illicit trade at 54 per cent.
Trafficking for labour purposes equated as modern day slavery follows at 44 per cent.
The survey also revealed sex tourism is rampant in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu where at times sex slavery is facilitated by family members.
Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan all of which borders Kenya have been cited as high scales sources of victims.
