Sascha Wil­son and

Akash Sama­roo

For the past three years, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been home to a Venezue­lan cou­ple and their two chil­dren, who have sought safe­ty and sta­bil­i­ty.

But fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment of a mass de­por­ta­tion or­der on Mon­day, which came through Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, the cou­ple was gripped with un­cer­tain­ty and fear of be­ing sent back to the dan­gers they once es­caped.

Like many oth­ers who fled Venezuela’s harsh eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal con­di­tions un­der the Maduro regime, 37-year-old re­frig­er­a­tor me­chan­ic Julio and 35-year-old do­mes­tic work­er Maria (not their re­al names) came to Trinidad in search of sur­vival.

Their chil­dren, ages 10 and 13, are stu­dents at the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group (LARMS) child-friend­ly space, which has been based at the St Bene­dict’s Ro­man Catholic Church since 2019, but was tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to San Fer­nan­do while the church un­der­goes ren­o­va­tions.

LARMS co­or­di­na­tor Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, who is in a What­sApp chat group with the mi­grants, said they all saw the state­ment about the de­por­ta­tion or­der si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

She said it trig­gered fear and pan­ic among the mi­grants, some of whom did not send their chil­dren to the LARMS learn­ing cen­tre or go to work yes­ter­day.

Most con­cern­ing, she said, were the words “mass de­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal mi­grants,” as they were un­cer­tain whether T&T was adopt­ing the method­ol­o­gy be­ing used by the Unit­ed States Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment un­der the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has since clar­i­fied that on­ly in­car­cer­at­ed mi­grants would be de­port­ed.

“This is on­ly for il­le­gal im­mi­grants who have com­mit­ted crim­i­nal of­fences. Of any na­tion­al­i­ty,” she told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

She added, “This is for peo­ple de­tained in the jails or de­ten­tion cen­tres who have been ar­rest­ed for crimes. Noth­ing to do with kids.”

But mi­grants re­mained con­cerned.

With Ram­nar­ine as­sist­ing with trans­la­tion, Julio and his wife said they were ea­ger to re­turn to their home­land but could not, due to what they called po­lit­i­cal and so­cial hard­ships un­der the Maduro regime.

Re­call­ing that he pre­vi­ous­ly worked with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, Julio said they had to flee their home­land be­cause any­one per­ceived to op­pose the Maduro regime was be­ing hunt­ed down and per­se­cut­ed.

In­sist­ing that 90 per cent of mi­grants were in T&T to work and pro­vide for them­selves and their fam­i­lies, he said it is not their in­ten­tion to cause any prob­lems.
By work­ing, rent­ing, and buy­ing food and oth­er sup­plies, he added that they were ac­tu­al­ly sup­port­ing the econ­o­my.

Julio said they do not want any eco­nom­ic as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment, on­ly to be able to stay in T&T un­til the dic­ta­tor­ship ends in their coun­try.

While Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is fac­ing crit­i­cism lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly for her stance on the Unit­ed States’ use of dead­ly force in the Caribbean wa­ters against nar­co-traf­fick­ing, she has the sup­port of Julio and Maria.
For them, Per­sad-Bisses­sar “is the on­ly hope we have.”

Maria said she wants Maduro “to go” be­cause that is the on­ly way they could re­turn to their coun­try.
She said she was not con­cerned about the ten­sions be­tween T&T and Venezuela, as she be­lieves it’s on­ly threats.

Mean­while, the memo from the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter came less than two months af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised to de­port 200 il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants.

Last month, the Prime Min­is­ter ac­cused the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment of stalling the repa­tri­a­tion of around 200 Venezue­lans de­tained for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T.
She said yes­ter­day, “They are still un­co­op­er­a­tive. So, their peo­ple re­main de­tained.”

The Prime Min­is­ter did not re­spond to ques­tions on if the Gov­ern­ment will be­gin a new mi­gra­tion reg­is­tra­tion process for Venezue­lans. The pro­gramme was im­ple­ment­ed in June 2019.