The attorney general’s office reported that on Sunday, Peruvian authorities freed 23 Afghans from migrant traffickers along the Brazilian border.
Prosecutors claimed that the migrants, who were seeking to reach Ecuador, paid people smugglers for transportation throughout the country and to the northern border.
However, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office, they were defrauded of their money and crammed into a house without food in the community of Inapari in the Madre de Dios department near the Peru-Brazil border.
“Four children, including a two-month-old baby,” were among the victims, it said.
The amount that the migrants paid the smugglers was not disclosed by the prosecution.
The Afghans were misled into thinking they would be moved to a regional city, then relocated to Lima, Peru’s capital, and finally moved to Tumbes, a city close to Ecuador’s northern border.
