Costa Rica on Thursday dismantled a human trafficking network that operated for the purpose of sexual exploitation, and authorities detained 10 people who led the operation, the Migration Directorate reported.

The United States included Nicaragua on its human trafficking blacklist; Costa Rica remained stable.

President Luis Guillermo Solís will meet Monday with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden in Washington D.C. to talk about security, migration and green energy.

Judicial and immigration officials in Costa Rica on Tuesday arrested two men suspected of forming part of a criminal group responsible for smuggling migrants across the Americas on their way to the U.S.

NATO dispatched warships to the Aegean Sea on Thursday to target people-smuggling operations, in an attempt to cope with the huge wave of migrants seeking to reach Europe's shores.

"If you are thinking about visiting Costa Rica with the purpose of paying for sex with underage people you could stay in this place for years or forever since this is a felony under Costa Rica’s law,” warns a fake listing on Airbnb, posted by an anti-trafficking group.

Twelve-year-old Noemi Álvarez, from Ecuador, took her life at a shelter in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico in March 2014, several days after she was raped, allegedly by traffickers.

A Costa Rican woman on Friday was sentenced in a Florida court to 30 months in prison for her role in a conspiracy to smuggle more than 25 undocumented Cuban migrants to that country, the U.S. Department of Justice reported.

There are more laws on the book than ever in Latin America criminalizing human trafficking, but these laws rarely lead to prosecutions or convictions, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Officers from the National Police Friday morning arrested nine undocumented men and the driver that transported them inside an SUV near the Central Pacific town of Jacó, the Public Security Ministry (MSP) reported.