Cruise ship staff from several ships, including Disney Cruise Line, were arrested in San Diego as part of a federal investigation into child sexual abuse material.
The arrests occurred from April 23 to April 27, TMZ reported.
Initial reports were that they were under arrest for immigration issues, but the U.S. Customs and Border Protection told KGTV in a statement that the agency boarded the ships as “part of ongoing Child Sexual Exploitation Material enforcement operations.”
“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 that 27 of the 28 subjects were involved in either the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing of CSEM or child pornography,” CBP said in the statement.
Homeland Security Investigations said it was part of Operation Tidal Wave and that the individuals were targeted “based on information received from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”
The crew members were returned to their home countries after their visas were revoked, the agencies said, according to KGTV.
About 10 Disney Cruise Line workers were taken from the ship at the B Street Pier in San Diego on April 23, KFMB reported. They were still wearing their cruise line uniforms at the time, with one passenger recording the situation on her phone.
Dharmi Mehta said she had sailed on the Disney Magic for four days and recognized some of those who were led away in handcuffs.
“Two of the employees had been serving my family the whole like, the duration of our stay on the trip,” she told KFMB. “One of them was our personal host at dining. So we saw him every evening, and actually we had breakfast with him that morning. And, he was a little off that morning, like you could tell he was a little distraught and rushed, but we just figured it’s, you know, they were good trying to get us off the boat and trying to get a new group on.”
Holland America, which had several employees removed from its ship the MV Zandaam, according to Union Del Barrio. The company released a statement saying it was a law enforcement matter and that it cooperates with investigations in the jurisdictions where it operates.
Disney Cruise Line released a statement, according to International Business Times UK, which said, “We have a zero‑tolerance policy for this type of behavior and fully cooperated with law enforcement. These individuals are no longer with the company.“
The company made a similar statement to TMZ about the incident: “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.”
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