Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Venezue­lan mi­grants who were de­tained over the week­end from a bar in St James staged a protest at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port yes­ter­day.

One hun­dred and nine­ty-six Venezue­lan mi­grants were ap­pre­hend­ed by the po­lice, im­mi­gra­tion, and cus­toms of­fi­cials at Apex Sports Bar in St James on Sun­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, 40 of the mi­grants have been re­leased by law en­force­ment so far.

The de­tainees are claim­ing that they do not have ac­cess to wa­ter and oth­er es­sen­tial ameni­ties. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the mi­grants were at­tend­ing a birth­day event at the bar when they were ar­rest­ed.

Venezue­lan ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­les yes­ter­day said that since the in­ci­dent, fam­i­ly mem­bers of the mi­grants have been at­tempt­ing to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion.

“There is a treaty that the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is not ful­fill­ing in terms of hu­man rights. They are not com­ply­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al law.

“My phone is con­stant­ly ring­ing, and many fam­i­lies in Venezuela and Trinidad are deeply wor­ried. These mi­grants have fam­i­ly mem­bers who are con­cerned about their chil­dren, in­clud­ing their broth­ers and sis­ters. They are un­aware be­cause as soon as they ar­rive at the fa­cil­i­ty their phones are tak­en away, leav­ing them with no means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Some of their fam­i­ly mem­bers want to bring them food. You know Venezue­lans are very close-knit fam­i­lies?” Gon­za­les ex­plained.

Gon­za­les wants Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds to meet with them to ad­dress the mat­ter.

“Let’s treat these peo­ple as hu­mans. It is dis­heart­en­ing to see them locked up like crim­i­nals. I un­der­stand there are laws, or maybe this is a con­se­quence of the re­cent court rul­ing. Okay, I re­spect that, as it is a lo­cal law. But when it comes to hu­man­i­ty, how can we treat these peo­ple as crim­i­nals?”

An­dreina Brown of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion La Ca­sita His­pan­ic and Cul­tur­al Cen­tre said they were un­cer­tain about the rea­son for the mi­grants be­ing ar­rest­ed.

“But what is un­for­tu­nate is that we have no way of ob­tain­ing ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion for the fam­i­ly mem­bers,” she said.

“Im­mi­gra­tion does not re­spond and there is no prop­er chan­nel to know the where­abouts of these in­di­vid­u­als and how we can ac­cess them and pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port.”

La Ca­sita has been pro­vid­ing re­lief to mi­grants at the he­li­port.

“We re­ceived a call this morn­ing when one of them had an asth­ma at­tack. We de­liv­ered an in­haler to the per­son. We brought some break­fast for a few of them, and cur­rent­ly, I’m work­ing on ar­rang­ing more wa­ter be­cause I un­der­stand they do not have ac­cess to clean drink­ing wa­ter. As we en­gage in this ef­fort, we need to es­tab­lish lo­gis­tics to en­sure that they are not suf­fer­ing in­side,” she ex­plained.

Bar own­er con­sid­er­ing le­gal op­tion

Brent Fer­nan­dez, the own­er of Apex Sports Bar, says that he is con­sid­er­ing his le­gal op­tion.

He said, “There was al­so a busi­ness part­ner who is a Chi­nese na­tion­al and holds a Liv­ing Wa­ter UN­HCR card. He was not ar­rest­ed, so I am un­sure if this is vic­tim­i­sa­tion specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing Span­ish-speak­ing in­di­vid­u­als. It’s con­fus­ing to me. I will seek ad­vice on whether I should pro­ceed or not.

Fer­nan­dez was con­cerned about the con­di­tions un­der which the ar­rest­ed mi­grants are be­ing held. “If it is as sim­ple as pro­vid­ing re­fresh­ments and ne­ces­si­ties be­cause we do not know if they are re­ceiv­ing food or any­thing to drink. We are un­aware if they are be­ing held in hu­mane or in­hu­mane con­di­tions.”

Since the de­ten­tion of the Venezue­lan mi­grants, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has not re­leased a state­ment. At­tempts to reach the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter were un­suc­cess­ful.

In a state­ment, the UN­HCR ex­pressed its ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the com­ments made by High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad re­gard­ing the ur­gent need for a leg­isla­tive re­sponse and the in­cor­po­ra­tion and in­te­gra­tion of mi­grants in­to so­ci­ety and the work­force. The UN­HCR is pre­pared to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment in de­vel­op­ing such a sys­tem, as it does in oth­er coun­tries.