4 Carnival Cruises Employees Removed for Allegedly Possessing ‘Child Sexual Exploitation Material’

Four crew members on board a Carnival Cruise Line ship were removed by immigration authorities earlier this month, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials. 

CBP personnel boarded the Carnival Pride ship while it was docked in Baltimore on Sept. 7 “based off intelligence that crew members were in possession of child sexual exploitation material,” a spokesperson for the agency shared in a statement with PEOPLE.  

They added: “After boarding the vessel and interviewing four suspected crew members, officers confirmed they had received and viewed the exploitation material. CBP revoked their shore passes and these criminals are being removed from our country.”

A Carnival spokesperson reached by PEOPLE deferred to authorities for more information and said, “This is a law enforcement matter of which we always cooperate.”

No further information was provided about any charges filed against the crew members.

According to CruiseMapper, the ship began a seven day, round-trip cruise to the Bahamas on Sept. 7 and returned to Baltimore on Sept. 14. 

In response to the removal, four organizations held a press conference and rally at the disembarkation point on the day the ship was set to return.

“A powerful press conference was held this morning outside the entrance of the Carnival Cruise terminal in Baltimore to demand justice for Filipino Carnival [Pride] crew members who were detained and deported without due process last week while docked in the city,” a joint Sept. 14 Instagram post between Migrante USA, the Tanggol Migrante Movement, Malaya Movement in Baltimore and Baltimore Rapid Response Network wrote in the caption. 

In an earlier statement, the organizations claimed the workers — allegedly three Filipino and one Indonesian — “were detained and deported without due process.” They allege one of the seafarers was questioned for drug possession in their cabin before all of them were “being subject to questioning and coercing into a false confession under duress about a charge of ‘child pornography.’”

The Malaya Movement in Baltimore did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. 

In a separate incident in August, four Filipino cruise line workers on the Carnival Sunrise were deported after facing accusations of child sex abuse. 

The employees — three male and one female — were taken into custody on Aug. 17 while the boat was docked in Norfolk, Va, per The Virginian-Pilot. 

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The four were accused of being in a group chat “that had some links to child pornography, but they weren’t shown any evidence of it,” Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, said, per The Virginian-Pilot. “All of the workers absolutely denied having anything to do with child pornography.”

The workers were detained at the Decker Half Moone Cruise Center by CBP personnel. The next day, they were taken to the nearby airport and deported out of the country, according to members of local advocacy groups, per the local outlet. 

The Virginia-Pilot reported the incident brought the number of Carnival Cruise Line workers who’ve been detained while docked at the cruise center in Norfolk to 28.