Sto­ry by AKASH SAMA­ROO, CARISA LEE and KE­JAN HAYNES | Guardian Me­dia

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­mained most­ly silent fol­low­ing a U.S. Em­bassy se­cu­ri­ty alert to­day ad­vis­ing cit­i­zens to avoid all U.S. gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go through the hol­i­day week­end due to a “height­ened state of alert”.

The em­bassy’s mes­sage urged peo­ple to be aware of their sur­round­ings, mon­i­tor rep­utable news out­lets, and re­port sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty to lo­cal au­thor­i­ties. While such no­tices are not un­usu­al, the alert has un­set­tled many giv­en the es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions and like­li­hood of mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela.

When asked to com­ment, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar of­fered on­ly a brief re­sponse:

“Please ask the U.S. It is their no­tice.”

Her lim­it­ed com­ment drew crit­i­cism from For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who said the Prime Min­is­ter had “been in hid­ing for days now and not ad­dress­ing the grow­ing con­cerns of un­cer­tain­ty.”

Young added: “It is the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress the na­tion im­me­di­ate­ly and pro­vide the pop­u­la­tion with in­for­ma­tion and re­as­sur­ance. Do your job, Madame Prime Min­is­ter.”

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, at a me­dia con­fer­ence, al­so called on the Prime Min­is­ter to up­date the pop­u­la­tion ful­ly.

For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ac­knowl­edged the “ru­mours and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” pan­ick­ing the pop­u­la­tion say­ing the pop­u­la­tion hadn't seen the prime min­is­ter for a week.

"Don't ask us. We don't know," Im­bert said.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said the em­bassy’s state­ment was based on in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by the U.S. gov­ern­ment and ap­plies on­ly to its own fa­cil­i­ties.

“Trinida­di­ans are safe,” he said.

When asked about ru­mours that se­nior of­fi­cials were be­ing moved to safe hous­es, Alexan­der replied: “Every house is a safe house.”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie al­so de­clined to en­gage on most ques­tions but re­spond­ed when asked whether the alert was linked to the “No Kings” protests in the Unit­ed States—demon­stra­tions op­pos­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s gov­ern­ment. His an­swer was a sin­gle word: “No.”

Guardian Me­dia has con­firmed that work­ers at the U.S. Em­bassy con­struc­tion site in Mar­aval were sent home “un­til fur­ther no­tice.”

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo is cur­rent­ly abroad, with Wade Mark serv­ing as Act­ing Pres­i­dent.

De­fence Force sources say per­son­nel have been told to pre­pare to shift from aid-to-the-civ­il-pow­er op­er­a­tions to de­fen­sive and bor­der-se­cu­ri­ty roles by year end, in an­tic­i­pa­tion of pos­si­ble refugee flows if the con­flict in Venezuela wors­ens.