Richard Ra­moutar

Be very cau­tious of tak­ing the US light­ly. Be­fore I delve in­to the im­por­tant and in­creas­ing­ly con­tentious is­sue of im­mi­gra­tion in re­la­tion to na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, I se­ri­ous­ly urge the T&T gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er our mu­tu­al le­gal as­sis­tance (MLAT) and ex­tra­di­tion treaties with the Unit­ed States. This has be­come nec­es­sary as the US con­tin­ues to be our most im­por­tant eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty al­ly in the re­gion, with eco­nom­ic and oth­er strate­gic in­ter­ests.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, as per Messieurs Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son, the US has al­ready twice out­lined their se­ri­ous con­cerns on this na­tion­al­ly-de­bat­ed mat­ter, no doubt recog­nis­ing the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion. As is well known, the US al­so prefers the bi­lat­er­al ap­proach for ex­tra­di­tion, as this is based on reci­procity, comi­ty and re­spect for dif­fer­ences in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

It is im­por­tant to un­der­score that the ob­jec­tive be­hind this ex­tra­di­tion process is to fa­cil­i­tate and strength­en in­ter­na­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion in the fight against transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crimes, and strength­en­ing of do­mes­tic law en­force­ment. In the ab­sence of ef­fec­tive ex­tra­di­tion arrange­ments, the US and its al­lied for­eign law en­force­ment and in­tel­li­gence agen­cies could use ex­tra­ju­di­cial and ir­reg­u­lar forms of ex­tra­di­tion.

The cas­es of for­mer Iraq leader Sad­dam Hus­sein and Pana­man­ian strong­man Manuel Nor­ie­ga should be lessons to con­sid­er.

Dur­ing the course of my first Mas­ter's de­gree in In­tel­li­gence and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stud­ies from Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, San Bernadi­no, our pro­fes­sors, for­mer US am­bas­sadors, in a course cap­tioned In­ter­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and De­fense Strat­e­gy, showed how US In­tel­li­gence was so ad­vanced, the pre­cise lo­ca­tion of the stock­pil­ing of for­mer So­vi­et Union nu­clear war­heads plants and op­er­a­tions could be pin­point­ed.

As a mat­ter of fact, the US if it want­ed to, could have un­leashed a mas­sive re­tal­ia­to­ry re­sponse with max­i­mum ac­cu­ra­cy, in­clud­ing a tri­ad of air-launched cruise mis­siles, in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­siles and sea launched or sub­ma­rine based cruise mis­siles, on the for­mer So­vi­et Union.

To­day, while threats to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty are dif­fer­ent from the Cold War era, US in­tel­li­gence and tech­nol­o­gy is far su­pe­ri­or and that coun­try may be at the pin­na­cle of in­tel­li­gence in the in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment. There­fore, let us crit­i­cal­ly con­sid­er the ad­verse and un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences of this un­set­tled mat­ter of ex­tra­di­tion and crim­i­nal jus­tice be­tween T&T and the US.

Look at how quick­ly jus­tice was dis­pensed in the cas­es of Allen Stan­ford, Martha Stew­art and Bernie Mad­off, as well as our own, Ka­reem Ibrahim.

The law of ex­tra­di­tion, a branch of in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal law, is based on the as­sump­tion that the re­quest­ing State is act­ing in good faith and that Messrs Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son will re­ceive a fair tri­al in the Mi­a­mi courts. The charges are well-known and there may al­so ex­ist, ac­cord­ing to re­li­able ev­i­dence, af­fil­i­a­tion with the Var­gas Colom­bian drug car­tel.

Once our lo­cal courts were sat­is­fied that there was a le­gal ba­sis for ex­tra­di­tion, Messrs Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son should be com­mit­ted to the ex­tra­di­tion process to the US. The ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion to ex­tra­dite may be with­in the purview of ex­ec­u­tive dis­cre­tion.

To fa­cil­i­tate in­ter­na­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion in the fight against transna­tion­al crimes, mu­nic­i­pal courts in sev­er­al ju­ris­dic­tions have gen­er­al­ly adopt­ed a lib­er­al in­ter­pre­ta­tion of ex­tra­di­tion treaties. A good ex­am­ple can be found in the case of R v Gov­er­nor of Ash­ford, ex parte Postleth­waite, "where for ex­am­ple the House of Lords con­sid­ered that ex­tra­di­tion leg­is­la­tion ought to be in­ter­pret­ed gen­er­ous­ly in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate ex­tra­di­tion."

The US must have been able to pro­duce suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to es­tab­lish a pri­ma fa­cie case. Im­por­tant­ly, on the is­sue of dou­ble crim­i­nal­i­ty, the al­leged con­duct of Messrs Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son must have the in­gre­di­ents of a crime in the re­quest­ed and re­quest­ing states to ef­fect the ex­tra­di­tion process. What is our un­der­stand­ing of jus­tice?

As one of the vi­tal cogs in the ma­chin­ery of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment car­ries out sev­er­al func­tions with re­spect to lo­cals and for­eign­ers, as well as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pre­rog­a­tives. Such func­tions in­clude is­suance of pass­ports, is­suance of visas, de­ter­min­ing the ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of vis­i­tors, tourists, stu­dents, tem­po­rary work­ers, pro­cess­ing of per­ma­nent res­i­dence, cit­i­zen­ship, is­su­ing of min­is­ters' per­mit, at­tract­ing in­vestors and busi­ness en­tre­pre­neurs to our shores, as well as deal­ing with ex­ten­sions and is­sues of re­moval and de­por­ta­tion.

These spe­cialised func­tions, done in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, re­quire an over­haul in man­age­ment, think­ing, pol­i­cy plan­ning, re­cruit­ment, train­ing and pro­grammes, a trans­par­ent pro­mo­tions process, se­cu­ri­ty vet­ting and poly­graph ex­am­i­na­tion.

The ques­tion is, to what ex­tent has the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment made se­ri­ous and mean­ing­ful ad­just­ments to ful­fill its ob­jec­tives in line with the de­vel­op­ment of our econ­o­my, as well as com­ple­ment­ing our na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty man­date?