Police arrested 35 more Ethiopians in northern Kenya

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Feb 28,2014
MOYALE, Kenya, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) — Kenyan police are on Friday holding 35 Ethiopian aliens after at the border region of northern Kenya for being in the country illegally.

Marsabit County Commissioner Isaiah Nakoru said the aliens in their mid 20s were ferried to the border areas between Ethiopia and Kenya by a private vehicle before they boarded another vehicle on transit to Isiolo before heading to South Africa.

He said the alins are believed to have been heading to South Africa since they neither speak English or Kiswahili.

“We are investigating the mass exodus of youthful Ethiopians to South Africa because almost 90 percent of those arrested in the areas have no travel documents and were same age set between 20 and 25,” Nakoru told Xinhua on Friday.

Nakoru said the youths were illegally in the country because they did not have any valid documents. He said the police intercepted the youths some kilometers from the border points after a tip off from the members of the public.

He said the Ethiopians will be arraigned in court for being in the country illegally later on Friday.

Nakoru said the security agents have up-scaled patrols along the Isiolo-Moyale border to ensure that brokers don’t sneak aliens into the country.

The commissioner regretted that some of the senior businessmen in the region were behind the cartels where they aid aliens and criminals to sneak into the country.

He said hundreds of Ethiopian aliens cross through the vast and remote region in the North of Kenya weekly through Isiolo-Nairobi to South Africa in search of employment and other opportunities.

“Its horrible some of these youths sell out all their belongings including land to secure their ticket and pay brokers to facilitate their movement to South Africa,” the government administrator said.

He said half of the aliens find their hands in the police where they were arraigned in court and charged.

Nakoru wondered how the aliens risk to travel while half of them were repatriated back after selling all their belongings.

According to the International Organization of Migration (IOM), up to 20,000 Somali and Ethiopian immigrants are smuggled into Kenya annually with the South Africa as their final destination.

The aliens who always sneak from the refugee camps located 100 km from Garissa town have on several occasions been blamed for the killings that rocked the town a few months ago.

They have also been blamed for the attacks that have occurred in other towns in the country.

The Kenyan authorities have blamed the vastness of the region for the runaway influx of foreigners in to Kenya through Moyale on Kenya-Ethiopia borders.

Refugee rights organizations and aid agencies have blamed poverty in Africa for the rising cases of human trafficking.

They said that the huge supply of labor both skilled and unskilled makes them vulnerable to criminal syndicates.