Richard Ra­moutar

Re­cent on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the po­lice con­tin­ue to re­veal that there ap­pears to be a sus­pect­ed "small clan­des­tine net­work of im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers." They are ap­par­ent­ly earn­ing five or six times their month­ly salaries by skill­ful­ly us­ing the Gov­ern­ment's stamps to fa­cil­i­tate il­le­gal for­eign­ers with ex­ten­sions, per­ma­nent res­i­dence, per­haps the sale of our pass­ports as well as sex­u­al favours as re­count­ed by many of these clien­tele now re­sid­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go and abroad.

Have these grave mat­ters oc­curred be­fore? The an­swer is yes. But over the past years and with a new ad­min­is­tra­tion that promised so much change, what vi­tal mech­a­nisms have been tak­en to avert, mon­i­tor and ac­count for such grave threats to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty? Or is the almighty dol­lar the car­di­nal fac­tor in all of these op­er­a­tions? Will these of­fi­cers' as­sets base be frozen and sus­pend­ed from the job 'till a com­plete hear­ing takes place or will they be per­mit­ted to re­main on the job? Why are there gaps in the sys­tem?

From news­pa­per ac­count of po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions and ar­rests, it would ap­pear that there is a tri­ad of ju­nior, mid­dle and se­nior im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers in­volved in these shady and covert op­er­a­tions. Ad­mit­ted­ly, this state of af­fairs pro­vokes many es­sen­tial and rel­e­vant ques­tions. Do these of­fi­cers re­al­ly un­der­stand na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty?

What are the ad­verse im­pli­ca­tions for na­tion­al and bor­der se­cu­ri­ty as well as transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime? Are they so­phis­ti­cat­ed enough to un­der­stand the im­pli­ca­tions of the ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions in these en­deav­ours? What type of train­ing and dis­ci­pline do these of­fi­cers pos­sess?

What in­ter­nal ini­tia­tives have been brought forth by the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer to stem the tide of these cor­ro­sive ac­tiv­i­ties? What poli­cies have been de­vel­oped by the ju­nior Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Collin Par­tap to elim­i­nate this grow­ing trend since this de­part­ment falls with­in his port­fo­lio?

The flesh and hu­man traf­fick­ing trade

A short while ago, very re­li­able sources from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­di­cat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 24 na­tion­als from Colom­bia, Venezuela, Suri­name, San­to Domin­go and Guyana were held dur­ing a raid at a well-known broth­el in Mara­bel­la, with 20 be­ing re­leased for hav­ing valid ex­ten­sions, and four be­ing de­tained for be­ing il­le­gal­ly in the coun­try.

Clear­ly, it is im­por­tant to ex­am­ine the sit­u­a­tion of the re­leased women in or­der to un­der­stand the sub­tle role of al­leged of­fi­cial com­plic­i­ty, con­do­na­tion, col­lu­sion and cor­rup­tion, whilst pay­ing scant re­gard to Gov­ern­ment at­tempts to gen­er­ate good faith in ad­dress­ing the scourges of hu­man traf­fick­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

As I have writ­ten ex­ten­sive­ly in the past on all as­pects of the op­er­a­tions of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment, very few in the pub­lic do­main, even among law en­force­ment of­fi­cers re­al­ly un­der­stand how "things are done and get done" in the hu­man traf­fick­ing world. Sign­ing in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols and agree­ments is one thing to at­tempt to elim­i­nate this grave abuse and hu­man slav­ery, but the lega­cy of this trade con­tin­ues to flour­ish.

Im­por­tant­ly, how, when and where did these for­eign na­tion­als en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go? How did all 20 of them find them­selves at the same broth­el? If they did en­ter legal­ly as vis­i­tors, were they giv­en spe­cial work per­mits by the Work Per­mit Com­mit­tee to "ser­vice" na­tion­als of this coun­try at the Sea­man's Bar?

Were their ini­tial en­tries so well or­gan­ised so as to cater to spe­cial of­fi­cers on du­ty? Since ap­par­ent­ly not one of these for­eign na­tion­als was in­ter­viewed and ex­am­ined in To­ba­go, who was re­spon­si­ble for grant­i­ng all these ex­ten­sions via a "spe­cial flesh emis­sary" to To­ba­go?

Why is it that these ex­ten­sions were not re­quest­ed in Trinidad at the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fices in San Fer­nan­do or Port-of-Spain? Are these ex­ten­sion records stored in a com­put­er data­base? Does the pos­si­bil­i­ty ex­ist that we are so lais­sez faire in our se­cu­ri­ty ap­proach that we can ex­pe­ri­ence a back­lash as a re­sult of com­pro­mis­ing our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty? How do we know that our doc­u­ments may not be used in the fu­ture for an­ti ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty?

The fraud, ter­ror nexus

Ac­cord­ing to iden­ti­ty fraud ex­pert Ju­dith Collins of the Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty Iden­ti­ty Theft Crime and Re­search Lab, "All acts of ter­ror­ism en­act­ed against the Unit­ed States have been fa­cil­i­tat­ed with the use of a fake or stolen iden­ti­ty."

Collins said that 5 per cent of all iden­ti­ty thieves are con­nect­ed to 10 per cent, specif­i­cal­ly to al-Qai­da. In fact, one of the al-Qai­da ter­ror­ists in­volved in the 9/11 at­tacks had opened 14 bank ac­counts. The 9/11 Com­mis­sion Re­port es­tab­lished that the ter­ror­ists in­volved with the bomb­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter com­mit­ted iden­ti­ty fraud, not­ing that "trav­el doc­u­ments are as im­por­tant as weapons."

Im­mi­gra­tion Fraud

Sev­er­al kinds of doc­u­ment fraud can oc­cur dur­ing the im­mi­gra­tion process through forgery, ly­ing, false state­ments, or the mis­use of visas. For many ter­ror­ists, im­mi­gra­tion fraud is one of the first acts tak­en in a long line of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. Michael Cut­ler, a fel­low at the Cen­ter for Im­mi­gra­tion Stud­ies, has writ­ten that when an alien ac­quires im­mi­gra­tion ben­e­fits through fraud and de­cep­tion, the se­cu­ri­ty of the sys­tem is breached and it leaves the door open to crim­i­nal and ter­ror­ists to game the sys­tem.

Jan­ice Kephart, for­mer coun­sel to the 9/11 Com­mis­sion, au­thored a re­port ti­tled "Im­mi­gra­tion and Ter­ror­ism" that ex­am­ines the his­to­ries of 94 for­eign-born ter­ror­ists who op­er­at­ed in the Unit­ed States be­tween the ear­ly 1990s and 2004. She con­clud­ed that "about two-thirds (59) com­mit­ted im­mi­gra­tion fraud pri­or to or in con­junc­tion with tak­ing part in ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty." The Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment must form a core com­po­nent of co-or­di­na­tion with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.