The Government has in the last two weeks deported forty foreigners suspected to be engaged in organized crime in the region in a major international operation involving security agents from the suspects countries.
So far, more than forty foreign nationals, including nine Nigerians, six Guineans, three Ethiopians, three Germans, two Chinese and a Ukrainian have been deported from the country.
Those targeted include foreigners profiled for their involvement in drug trafficking, human trafficking, ivory trade, pornography, credit card fraud and arms trafficking.
Several officials from the suspects’ countries of origin are also involved in the high tech operation that has been hushed up by the government.
A countrywide manhunt for two suspected drug traffickers of Nigerian and Tanzanian origin identified as Emmanuel Inobemhe and Said Ally Juma who are on the run has been launched.
Inobemhe was previously deported in June, 2013 but he sneaked back to the country and was soon after arrested in possession of heroin. His accomplice Juma is a Tanzanian national who was arrested in 2014 for trafficking one kilogram of heroin. The two foreigners are still being sought for drug trafficking.
Investigators have confirmed that some of the deported foreigners had been expelled from the country but sneaked back and purportedly got married to Kenya women allowing them to process documents that allow them to stay in the country.
“Some of those deported had been earlier expelled in an operation aimed at ridding the country of foreign nationals involved in various forms of organized crime", a statement from government said.
The deportation will boost the war against terrorism since proceeds accrued from most of these organized crimes are used to finance terrorism, the statement added.
The government has also put on notice all foreigners found to be engaging in any form of organized crime, citing the clear links between organized crime and terror financing.
The two Chinese nationals deported were identified as Gongjian Gao and Wang Tao said to be financiers of the illegal ivory trade and source for processed ivory and trafficked
through Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to China and other Far East Asian countries. Both have on-going court cases.
Others are two Guinean nationals Nfely Doukoure and Cherif Amana who have have been arrested before in connection with the illegal ivory trade. They are said to run a network of Kenyan poachers who source for ivory and rhino horns for them.
Two Ethiopian women, Sara Hassan Ali and Askale Lebendo Lobedo were also expelled for being key players in the illegal trafficking of Ethiopian nationals through Kenya to South Africa.
Both are fugitives who were being sought by the Ethiopian government following a human trafficking expedition that led to the suffocation to death of more than fifty Ethiopian illegal immigrants who were being trafficked within a container. The two were last week deported back to Ethiopia through Moyale .
A Nigerian identified as Joe Oladimeji and a Guinean Mohamed Fofana said to be drug trafficking kingpins with a base in Kenya were also among those deported.
Oladimeji and Fofana have been king-pins in the international narcotic trade and had come to the country to fill the vacuum left behind by the deportation of previous suspects including Antony Chinedu.
Oladimeji was until last week the self-proclaimed chairman of the Nigerian Association in Kenya, Fofana has returned from two previous deportations and he remains in the Prohibited Immigrant list.
Also in the list is Sebastain Kryvskky from Ukraine and a German, Peter Petrausch. Kryvskky is reported to have been engaging in ATM fraud, arms and drug trafficking and has been living in Kenya for the last thirteen years. Petrausch, on the other hand has been actively involved in pornography, extortion, illegal land dealings and drug trafficking within Mombasa and Kilifi.
The forty foreigners were arrested in separate operations countrywide and detained at a detention centre at the Inland Container Deport Centre along Mombasa road.
One of the suspects who was informed by his guard that detectives had visited his residence fled to Machakos and switched off his mobile only to be arrested as he drove back to the city.