SAN DIEGO — US immigration authorities have revoked the visas of more than two dozen people, including some who worked on a Disney Cruise Line ship, amid allegations that they possessed or viewed images of child sexual abuse.
US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement on Friday that authorities detained eight cruise ships in late April and determined that 27 people, most of them from the Philippines, were involved in the “receipt, possession, transmission, distribution or viewing” of images of child sexual abuse.
The statement stated that the agency canceled the visas of those involved and returned them to their countries of origin.
The agency did not say whether any passengers on the two ships were believed to be victims. It also did not mention which ships the agents boarded, why those ships were targeted, or the location of the operations. The statement said that no additional information was available.
At least some ships have docked in San Diego.
Disney Cruise Line said in a statement that the company has a “zero-tolerance policy for this type of behavior and is fully cooperating with law enforcement. While the majority of these individuals were not from our cruise line, those who were are no longer with the company.”
Immigrant and labor rights groups said they had tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain information about the workers’ situation and the reasoning behind the enforcement actions. Benjamin Prado, with one of the groups, Union del Barrio, said they held a news conference Tuesday in San Diego after previously receiving a public statement from Customs and Border Protection.
He added that the statement the agency subsequently issued to news organizations this week did not appear to be on the agency’s website. This information should be readily available, he said.
Prado said his group wants to better understand what kind of surveillance or surveillance may have been occurring before the workers were detained and whether due process rights were followed. He acknowledged that there were doubts about information released by agencies such as Customs and Border Protection.
“At this point, we are skeptical of their claims, so we want to follow up with some of these workers to find out exactly what happened,” Prado said.
Customs and Border Protection said a criminal charge is not necessary to revoke someone’s visa.