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Yesterday
, Canadian police informed that 43 Mexicans had been rescued from modern slavery; the victims were being forced to work as cleaners and scrubbers at hotels in Ontario .
The workers were mostly male and had been taken to Canada by human traffickers who had promised them access to education, work visas, and a permanent residence permit in exchange for a large sum of money.
Once in Canada, the victims were kept in precarious conditions in central and eastern Ontario, where they were forced to work at local hotels, the police said through a press release.
Rick Barnum
, the assistant commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) claimed that the victims are believed to “have paid traffickers a very large sum of money in order to leave their home country.”
“They were charged for accommodations, transport, and many other fees. The human traffickers were in full control of the victims’ wages. Once they paid their fees, the workers were allowed to keep only a minimal part of their wages. Some of the workers were paid less than CAD$50 a month ,” he added.
The Ontario Police assured that the hotel owners who hired the illegal immigrants were unaware of their working conditions.
Two suspects who own a cleaning company in Barrie, Ontario are being investigated by Canadian authorities, though no arrests have been made so far.
The police are currently looking for more suspects and will likely announce criminal charges in the next few days. Barnum added that “human trafficking is a form of modern slavery.”
The workers rescued are now staying at a hotel in Barrie. According to local police, some of them have been offered legitimate jobs.
The investigation began in 2015 , when police authorities received reports of a criminal network exploiting foreign workers.
The operation culminated this morning, when around 200 OPP agents , along with Barrie police, and members of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) rescued the Mexican workers.
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