RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Mi­grants in south Trinidad are liv­ing in fear as po­lice pa­trols con­tin­ue in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, says Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, co­or­di­na­tor of the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Ram­nar­ine said she was very con­cerned for mi­grant fam­i­lies as she called on the State to ex­plain what sys­tems were in place for peo­ple de­tained.

Ram­nar­ine de­scribed one re­cent case that left an en­tire Venezue­lan fam­i­ly in hid­ing af­ter po­lice ar­rived at their home on Tues­day and de­mand­ed to see pa­pers. Ac­cord­ing to her, the fam­i­ly lives in an iso­lat­ed vil­lage in the deep south, rais­ing chick­ens, pigs and crops in an ef­fort to be in­de­pen­dent. She said the fam­i­ly had no po­lice record and lived “a very sim­ple, un­com­pli­cat­ed life”.

How­ev­er, Ram­nar­ine said the fam­i­ly fled af­ter of­fi­cers de­mand­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and shout­ed at them to leave. She said the moth­er told her the po­lice were “re­al­ly im­pa­tient and an­gry with her” and that the fam­i­ly feared be­ing forced in­to a ve­hi­cle that could not hold all eight of them.

Ram­nar­ine said, “They’re just here to move ahead, to save some mon­ey, to re­turn to their home­land when­ev­er it’s safe to do so, but yet they’re be­ing tar­get­ed by a po­lice pa­trol, and they’ve had to flee from their home to find refuge un­til I don’t know when they can re­turn.”

She be­lieves fear among mi­grants has in­creased since the Oc­to­ber 27 mem­o­ran­dum from the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, which in­di­cat­ed a plan for the mass de­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal im­mi­grants. The let­ter ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia re­vealed the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty in­struct­ed the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer to de­tain all “il­le­gal im­mi­grants” and hold them at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre “un­til repa­tri­a­tion.” The memo al­so con­firmed that “con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a mass de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise.”

Ram­nar­ine said she did not know whether this had trig­gered more re­ports to the po­lice by mem­bers of the pub­lic.

“I don’t know if it’s a case of xeno­pho­bia. “I don’t know what it is,” she said.

“If there is a line in that mem­o­ran­dum say­ing that there is go­ing to be a mass de­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal mi­grants, you need to see how this is go­ing to be done. Or is there just go­ing to be the el­e­ment of sur­prise? I’m aghast at what method­olo­gies are be­ing used.”

Ram­nar­ine ques­tioned where mi­grants would be housed if mass de­ten­tion be­gan, not­ing re­ports that the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment had been un­will­ing to take back na­tion­als.

“To me, it’s very un­clear. Where are you go­ing to take these peo­ple? Where are you go­ing to keep them? Do we have the fa­cil­i­ties to keep peo­ple in de­ten­tion un­til they are de­port­ed?”

She said the lack of a clear na­tion­al pol­i­cy had left NGOs, em­ploy­ers and mi­grants un­cer­tain. She ar­gued that em­ploy­ers should be part of any leg­isla­tive process, as many re­ly on Venezue­lan labour.

Ram­nar­ine said the fam­i­ly in ques­tion has al­so dealt with un­want­ed at­ten­tion from men, in­clud­ing men “mak­ing pass­es” at the moth­er and her 15-year-old daugh­ter. The par­ents have six chil­dren, ages one to 15.

She said the moth­er asked why the po­lice tar­get­ed her home and not oth­er near­by mi­grant fam­i­lies. Ram­nar­ine said it is pos­si­ble some­one re­port­ed them to im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties, as has hap­pened in past cas­es.

“I came to­day to bring some food be­cause I know that they were afraid to go out to buy what­ev­er food, afraid to take any trans­port,” she said.

De­spite their hard­ship, the fam­i­ly has tried to be self-suf­fi­cient. Ram­nar­ine said neigh­bours of­ten buy their live­stock and crops to sup­port them.

She warned that more fam­i­lies may be hid­ing, afraid to work, afraid to send chil­dren to school, and un­clear about their rights as po­lice ex­er­cis­es con­tin­ue.

South­west­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice told Guardian Me­dia there was no mass de­por­ta­tion that they were aware of. Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­is­ter Gue­var­ro did not re­spond to mes­sages left up to press time.