Families embarking on cruise ship vacations may have more to worry about than infectious diseases. U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently raided five cruise ships, including one Disney cruise ship, as they identified predators viewing and distributing child sexual exploitation material.
The operation took place in San Diego between April 23 and 25, leading to 28 individuals being arrested, The California Post reported.
“After boarding the vessels and interviewing 26 suspected crew members from the Philippines, one suspected crew member from Portugal, and one from Indonesia, officers confirmed all subjects were involved in either the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing of CSEM or child pornography,” a CBP spokesperson told the outlet.
“CBP cancelled their visas and these criminals are being removed from our country,” the statement went on.
“We have a zero-tolerance policy for this type of behavior and fully cooperated with law enforcement. While the majority of these individuals were not from our cruise line, those who were are no longer with the company,” a Disney rep said in response to the news.
Some passengers reportedly witnessed the arrests on board the ship last month, but the reason for the raids were unknown at the time. Some Left-leaning online commenters incorrectly deduced that the employees were being targeted for their immigration status, which led to them criticizing ICE operations.
The news comes during a bad PR week for cruise ships. A luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned since Sunday off the coast of Cape Verde has been making headlines after three people, two of them seriously ill, were evacuated.
Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – have died in the outbreak.
A total of eight people are suspected to have contracted the virus, with three of them confirmed by laboratory testing, the World Health Organization said.
Disney employees have been accused in engaging in heinous sex crimes in the past. A Florida sheriff said that his department regularly caught Disney employees during undercover operations while revealing the results of a week-long investigation into human trafficking in 2022.
Guillermo Perez, a bellhop for Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, was arrested during the sting, as The Daily Wire previously reported.
