RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

A de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise has been resched­uled for next week as the T&T Gov­ern­ment and of­fi­cials of the Venezue­lan Em­bassy are yet to fi­nalise pa­per­work.

Over 100 Venezue­lan mi­grants will re­main at the He­li­port, in Ch­aguara­mas, un­til then. They were to be de­port­ed on Thurs­day morn­ing be­tween 4 am and 5 am. How­ev­er, it was post­poned at the last minute.

The post­pone­ment brought a sigh of re­lief to rel­a­tives who are cur­rent­ly in T&T as they do not want their re­spec­tive loved ones to be de­port­ed and called for their im­me­di­ate re­lease.

One of the de­tainees, a 27-year-old woman, who was among those de­tained fol­low­ing a raid at a night­club in St James re­cent­ly, suf­fered a mis­car­riage and is said to be cur­rent­ly haem­or­rhag­ing and in pain.

“I am sad. I am an­gry. I want my rel­a­tive to be re­leased im­me­di­ate­ly,” Pe­dro Luis Ar­rio­ja, the woman’s rel­a­tive said.

Ar­rio­ja is just one of sev­er­al rel­a­tives crit­i­cis­ing the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of mi­grants, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of kid­nap­ping.

Ar­rio­ja said their rel­a­tives have the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) cards and Min­is­ter’s per­mits.

“She’s sick. She’s sad. She cries every day. She’s trau­ma­tised. She feels re­al wor­ried,” Ar­rio­ja said.

He said that he was wor­ried about his rel­a­tive’s health and plead­ed on her be­half for med­ical at­ten­tion fol­lowed by her re­lease so she can con­tin­ue to as­sist her fam­i­ly back in Venezuela. “She mum­my sick in Venezuela. She sends the mon­ey every week for the med­ica­tion for the mum­my and right now she is in jail. How she will help her mum­my?”

Cur­rent­ly, there are 143 mi­grants wait­ing to be de­port­ed– 72 males and 71 fe­males, most of whom were re­cent­ly de­tained while at a night­club in St James.

The group spoke out via a cell­phone video record­ing com­plain­ing that they are yet to meet with their re­spec­tive at­tor­neys, who they said are be­ing kept away from them al­leged­ly by of­fi­cials at the he­li­port.

Rel­a­tives said the con­di­tions there are de­plorable as they are faced with flood­ing and un­san­i­tary wash­rooms.

On Wednes­day, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at Quan­tum Le­gal with at­tor­ney Blaine So­bri­an, who is rep­re­sent­ing five male de­tainees at the he­li­port, made it clear that should they be de­port­ed it will be an il­le­gal move based on a de­ci­sion made by Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad in the High Court last year Sep­tem­ber.

So­bri­an said the de­ci­sion was held that peo­ple who make an ap­pli­ca­tion for UN­HCR sta­tus or a min­is­ter’s per­mit ought not to be de­port­ed pri­or to de­ter­mi­na­tion of said ap­pli­ca­tion that said rul­ing is cur­rent­ly the law.

He added that the State ap­pealed that de­ci­sion how­ev­er, it was with­drawn.

There­fore any ac­tion to re­move de­tainees from the ju­ris­dic­tion would be il­le­gal.

In the sub­stan­tive law­suit in 2021, eight mi­grants chal­lenged a de­lay by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in pro­cess­ing their re­quests to be re­leased on a per­mit while they await the pro­cess­ing of their ap­pli­ca­tions for refugee/asy­lum seek­er sta­tus by the UN­HCR.

On April 19, 2022, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad or­dered the con­di­tion­al re­lease of the group af­ter they filed an in­ter­im ap­pli­ca­tion seek­ing the same. He al­so or­dered that UN­HCR rep­re­sen­ta­tives be al­lowed to com­mu­ni­cate with the group in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate their ap­pli­ca­tions.

So­bri­an re­mind­ed that it is il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al to de­ny an at­tor­ney ac­cess un­der Sec­tion 4 and 5 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, as peo­ple de­tained must have prompt ac­cess to le­gal coun­sel.