Madrid (EFE).- The National Police and the Civil Guard released 1,180 victims of trafficking and sexual or labor exploitation networks in 2022, including 26 minors, while they arrested 693 people and dismantled 78 criminal groups.
These are some of the main data from the 2018-2022 Statistical Balance on Human Trafficking and Exploitation in Spain, prepared by the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO), attached to the Secretary of State for Security of the Ministry of Interior that this Wednesday publishes the report.
The 2022 balance is the result of 304 police operations by both bodies, which led to the arrest of 693 people and the dismantling of 78 criminal organizations and groups. There were also more than 7,600 administrative inspections of premises dedicated to prostitution and workplaces.
Of the 1,180 victims released, 229 had been captured by criminal networks of human trafficking and another 951 more are victims also subjected to processes of sexual exploitation in prostitution or work environments, with conditions of restriction or violation of their rights, although in their case it has not been possible to demonstrate that they had reached that situation due to the intervention of an organized network.
564 victims of sexual exploitation, mostly from Colombia
According to the balance sheet, there were a total of 129 victims released from human trafficking networks for sexual exploitation, four of them minors.
The majority profile is that of women between the ages of 23 and 27 from Colombia, Paraguay and Venezuela.
In the case of victims rescued from situations of sexual exploitation, without the concurrence of human trafficking networks, the number rises to 435 (ten minors), mostly women between the ages of 23 and 27, originally from Colombia, Spain and Romania.
The police operations carried out in the field of trafficking and sexual exploitation culminated in the dismantling of 53 criminal groups and organizations and the arrest of 402 people, the majority of Spanish nationality.
In addition, the National Police and Civil Guard carried out 1,810 administrative inspections in places where prostitution is practiced, a task that made it possible to identify 6,655 people at risk for practicing prostitution in these establishments, with a majority profile of women, out of 33 and 37 years old, of Colombian, Spanish and Romanian nationality.
Moroccans and Ukrainians, victims of labor exploitation networks
Regarding the actions taken against the human trafficking networks for the purpose of labor exploitation, the victims released were 89, four of them minors.
In this case, the majority profile of the victim is a man, between 28 and 32 years of age, from Morocco, Ukraine or Romania.
The victims rescued from situations of labor exploitation, but without the concurrence of human trafficking networks, were 516, one of them a minor, and with a similar profile: a man between 23 and 27 years old, from Morocco, Colombia or Senegal.
The action of the State Security Forces and Corps allowed the dismantling of 24 criminal organizations in the field of labor trafficking and exploitation, which culminated in the arrest of 260 people.
As in the previous case, the two police forces carried out 5,793 administrative inspections in workplaces, which allowed the identification of 15,711 workers.
In addition, during 2022, police officers intervened in two cases of trafficking for the purpose of forced marriages, with two victims, one of them a minor, of Spanish and Pakistani nationality. The operations ended with the arrest of five people.
Action has also been taken on two reports of trafficking directed at forced crime, which have made possible the release of nine victims, six of them minors, from Morocco and Vietnam. The operations culminated in the arrest of 26 people.
The entry Released more than a thousand victims of trafficking and sexual or labor exploitation in Spain in the year 2022 was first published in EFE Noticias.