Chilean police have arrested nine members of an alleged human smuggling ring in cooperation with Interpol.
The ring is suspected of having smuggled an estimated 1,000 Haitian migrants from Chile to Mexico or the United States, Interpol said in a statement on Monday.
The police in Chile tweeted that 267 girls and boys under the age of five had been among the victims of the criminal organization.
The organization also illegally brought foreigners to Chile, Chilean newspaper La Tercera reported.
At the time of the arrests in the city of Arica in the north of the country, the police found 57 migrants, most of them Venezuelans, who had only arrived the morning before from neighbouring Peru.
A Haitian national that was arrested is accused of masterminding the gang.
The investigation began in January 2020, according to Interpol, when the Chilean police received an unusually high number of children of Haitian migrants crossing the border into Peru.
Thousands of Haitians had come to Brazil or settled in Chile since the devastating earthquake in the Caribbean country in January 2010. Discrimination and the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic are now driving them north.
Their movement recently triggered crises at several bottlenecks on the route to the US border.
