Three peo­ple, in­clud­ing a mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, have been de­tained un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) as the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) dis­man­tled an al­leged hu­man traf­fick­ing net­work dur­ing a mul­ti-agency op­er­a­tion span­ning Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty said Op­er­a­tion Ice­berg, con­duct­ed be­tween Ju­ly 22 and 25, was one of the CTU's largest in­tel­li­gence-led ex­er­cis­es to date. It re­sult­ed in the ex­e­cu­tion of three PDOs un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2026, the pro­tec­tion of vul­ner­a­ble vic­tims and the CTU's first ma­jor en­force­ment op­er­a­tion in To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the op­er­a­tion fol­lowed sev­er­al months of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, sur­veil­lance and op­er­a­tional plan­ning by the CTU and part­ner agen­cies. In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­lege the net­work was re­spon­si­ble for re­cruit­ing, har­bour­ing, trans­port­ing and ex­ploit­ing vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple for com­mer­cial sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion.