JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Less than two months af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised to de­port 200 il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has is­sued an or­der to place all il­le­gal mi­grants at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre for de­por­ta­tion.

This move comes even as she had pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that while her mi­grant pol­i­cy was not yet com­plet­ed, it would not be one of mass de­por­ta­tions of mi­grants.

In a memo yes­ter­day signed by Videsh Ma­haraj, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, the min­istry said all il­le­gal mi­grants would be housed to­geth­er be­fore be­ing de­port­ed.

“The Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has in­struct­ed that all il­le­gal im­mi­grants de­tained are to be held at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre un­til repa­tri­a­tion. They are not to be placed on Or­ders of Su­per­vi­sion, as con­sid­er­a­tion is cur­rent­ly be­ing giv­en to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a mass de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise for il­le­gal im­mi­grants. This pol­i­cy takes im­me­di­ate ef­fect and shall re­main in force un­til fur­ther in­struc­tions are is­sued by the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter,” the memo stat­ed.

On Au­gust 15, when asked about her mi­grant pol­i­cy, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Soon! Not mass de­por­ta­tion, but we are still work­ing on that pol­i­cy and you will hear about it, maybe by next week. I have peo­ple work­ing on it. Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­ers.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had blamed the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for fail­ing to prop­er­ly ad­dress the il­le­gal mi­grant is­sue, which she said was linked to crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“That is what they al­lowed for the last ten years. There was lit­tle, there was no at­tempt, lit­tle or no at­tempt by our pre­de­ces­sors to sift through im­mi­grants who were le­git­i­mate­ly flee­ing con­di­tions in Venezuela from those who came here with crim­i­nal in­tent,” she told sup­port­ers at a UNC ral­ly in Au­gust.

​In May, dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter said her pol­i­cy would be a fair one when it was an­nounced.

​“I said it on the cam­paign trail, we are look­ing at it. With re­spect to the Venezue­lans who are here, I made the state­ment, and we are stick­ing to that. If they are crim­i­nals, they will be de­port­ed. With re­spect to oth­ers, as­sess­ment is tak­ing place with re­gards to them. It is not like we are go­ing to pick up every one of them and send them back, but crim­i­nals will be sent back,” she said then.