Special police units to break up human trafficking at asylum centers

The police are deploying four "Flexible Intervention Teams" from Friday to patrol the borders of the Netherlands and around asylum centers with the goal of catching human traffickers in the act, the Volkskrant reports. According to the newspaper, these teams are a response to reports of abuses in and around asylum centers, such as reports that women and girls are being recruited from the centers for prostitution. The police are hunting dozens of active trafficking gangs and have 47 open investigations into trafficking. The police also registered 430 licence plates of potential recruiters using automatic number plate identification. If a camera system recognizes a vehicle, one of the teams are immediately deployed. The about 100 officers in the teams are trained to recognizes signs of human trafficking, to ask specific questions and to examine cellphones. Arabic-speaking officers will be included in the teams to bridge the communication gap between the police and asylum seekers. "If a suspicious van drops of asylum seekers or we see suspicious movements near an asylum center, we can now immediately take action", Paul Musscher, responsible for asylum seekers and migration-related crimes at the National police, said to the newspaper.