Three Chinese citizens identified with the surnames Tong, Leung and Woo were arrested by immigration authorities at the Juan Santamaría airport because they were carrying fake passports.
The foreigners went to immigration control and handed in passports from Taiwan for processing. The officer, when reviewing each of the documents, realizes that the passports are not authentic, so he performed the secondary check of the people and the original Chinese passports,”
said the General Directorate of Migration in a press release.
Migration explained that Taiwanese nationals do not need a visa to enter Costa Rica. However, foreigners from China require a consular visa application to visit the country. It is presumed that they used these documents to evade immigration controls.
The Chinese were transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office for the crime of using a fraudulent document.
This type of action could be combined with crimes such as human trafficking or migrant smuggling, so the role of the immigration officer is vital in detecting these cases,”
said Stephen Madden, deputy director of the Migration Professional Police.