A po­lice ex­er­cise in the Curepe area on Sun­day night in­to the ear­ly hours yes­ter­day, led to 28 il­le­gal Venezue­lans be­ing de­tained and a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion be­ing re­cov­ered.

Of­fi­cers from the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion, led by ACP Rishi Singh and ASP Sunil Bharath, car­ried out the an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive be­tween 10.30 pm on Sun­day and 1.30 am yes­ter­day at the cor­ner of Rapsey and Knowles Streets in Curepe.

Of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed 22 males and six fe­males dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, and re­cov­ered 100 rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion hid­den in­side a blue plas­tic crate in the vicin­i­ty of the recre­ation ground.

The of­fi­cers were alert­ed to the am­mu­ni­tion af­ter the po­lice K-9 dog be­gan bark­ing, sig­nalling law­men that some­thing was amiss.

No one was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the find.

The il­le­gal mi­grants were lat­er tak­en to the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion where three males were al­lowed to leave fol­low­ing a ver­i­fi­ca­tion process.

Five women and nine men were lat­er served de­ten­tion or­ders, while the re­main­der were tak­en in­to cus­tody pend­ing fur­ther in­struc­tions from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment.