A 36-year-old Sub-Saharan female immigrant has been accused of infiltrating a Lanzarote juvenile center in Spain by posing as a minor.
According to police, the individual allegedly facilitated the escape of 13 young people from the state protection system to “integrate them into an international network linked to trafficking.”
The investigation was sparked by a series of disappearances at an Arrecife center. Investigators noticed a specific individual who seemed to hold a “prominent influence on the rest of the girls.” The woman was only 1.52 meters tall (5’0″) but held powerful sway over the other females in the center. Authorities confirmed she was an adult female serving a strategic role within the trafficking ring.
This case is a central component of “Operation Timanfaya,” a Spanish National Police initiative that dismantled a criminal organization with global branches dedicated to smuggling minors from the Canary Islands into mainland Europe, according to Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.
The suspect reportedly used emotional manipulation to convince the girls to leave their supervised housing for apartments, and then transferred from there, often by “obtaining falsified documentation to leave the country.” Evidence of the scale of the operation was found on the woman’s phone, where she reportedly bragged: “I have already emptied the girls’ center.”
The planned route involved moving the victims through Lanzarote airport using forged identities, and they were provided with wigs. Once they reached Madrid, local collaborators would meet them and direct them toward transport hubs for transit to France or other European destinations. This network relied on “logistical support has been identified in Morocco” for the initial boat crossings and “connections in Ivory Coast” to produce high-quality fake IDs.
The whereabouts of these young women and that of another boy who was not yet 18 years old from a center in San Bartolomé de Tirajana on Gran Canaria are still unknown. A man reportedly took them to the Lanzarote airport, gave them the documents, and some wigs.
Despite the police intervention, the “whereabouts of several of the young women remain unknown.” Authorities fear these victims may have fallen into “labor exploitation, forced marriages or prostitution,” a theory bolstered by sensitive digital evidence found during the arrests. While police intercepted the adult ringleader and two minors at the airport, the two children eventually attempted to flee the protection center again.
One detainee tied to the network was charged with the crime of child pornography after finding a video on his cell phone.
Law enforcement noted that the nature of these facilities — which are “open resources conceived as homes, not as detention centers” — makes preventing such escapes difficult. Furthermore, the system is under extreme pressure, holding nearly 6,000 minors in a space “designed for about 1,500.” This overcrowding often meant that a “disappearance was not detected until the next day,” providing the traffickers with a significant head start.
