U.S. Customs and Border Protection canceled the visas of 27 cruise ship workers and returned them to their home countries after boarding eight ships in late April and determining the workers were involved with child sexual abuse images, the agency said in a statement Friday.
The workers, mostly from the Philippines, were found to have engaged in “the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing” of the illegal material, according to the statement. CBP did not identify which ships were boarded, why those vessels were targeted, where the operations took place, or whether any passengers aboard were believed to be victims. The statement said no additional information was available. At least some of the ships had docked in San Diego.
Disney Cruise Line acknowledged that some of the affected workers were its employees but said the majority were not. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for this type of behavior and fully cooperated with law enforcement,” the company said in a statement. “Those who were are no longer with the company.”
Immigrant and workers’ rights groups have pressed for more transparency, holding a news conference in San Diego on Tuesday after receiving only a generic response from CBP. Benjamin Prado, with the advocacy group Unión del Barrio, said the statement the agency subsequently released to news organizations did not appear on its website. “That information should be readily accessible,” he said.
Prado said his group wants to understand what kind of monitoring or surveillance may have preceded the workers’ detention and whether due process rights were observed. He acknowledged skepticism about information provided by agencies like CBP. “At this point, we doubt, we question their claims and so we do want to follow up with some of these workers to find out exactly what took place,” Prado said.
CBP has said that a criminal charge is not required for a visa to be revoked.