Interior Minister proposes expulsion of foreigners who commit crimes in Uruguay

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Uruguayan government announced yesterday, August 23, a parliamentary initiative to expel foreigners who commit crimes. “We don’t want these people, not even in prison,” said Interior Minister Luis Alberto Heber.

“Uruguay opens its doors to people who come to work, with the best traditions, and they commit crimes… We want a much more effective law so that those who commit crimes are expelled from the country with a sentence by the court. We need a legal means to expel these people,” Heber said.

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At the inauguration of a police station in Parque del Plata, the minister announced that he would submit a bill to Congress after several foreigners were charged with being part of a human trafficking network for labor exploitation.

“We opened the door to them, we welcomed them well, and they almost enslaved minors, and now we are going to pay for them in our penal system,” Heber asked about the gang, which operated in the Chuy region on the border with Brazil.

On Saturday, the Chuy prosecutor’s office filed charges against three people – a Colombian, an Ecuadorian, and a Venezuelan – for conspiracy to commit crimes and human trafficking for labor exploitation.

The organization apparently recruited foreigners through the Internet. It made them work all day for an animal welfare organization in exchange for living and eating in a hostel in precarious conditions.

The interior minister stressed that Uruguay “generously” opens its doors to foreigners but that it is “completely inadmissible” for them to intervene in crime, according to the Sputnik news agency and the MontevideoPortal website.