Shas­tri Boodan

Prison breach­es and spi­ralling vi­o­lence in San­gre Grande point to a deep­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge, who says the threat is be­ing fu­elled by the in­fil­tra­tion of Venezue­lan gang Tren de Aragua in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s un­der­world.

Speak­ing at a bud­get con­sul­ta­tion in Freeport on Wednes­day night, Sturge said three of six high-risk in­mates re­cent­ly ex­tract­ed from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison were lead­ers of gangs op­er­at­ing in the north-east, in­clud­ing To­co and his home con­stituen­cy of San­gre Grande. He said the re­lo­ca­tion was nec­es­sary be­cause prison au­thor­i­ties could no longer re­strain them.

“In or­der to curb that we had to cut off the head of the snake,” Sturge said. Yet even af­ter their re­moval, he added, one of the in­mates is­sued threats to law en­force­ment via voice note.

Sturge said the Min­istry is con­cerned by a new lev­el of vi­o­lence in that re­gion and across the coun­try, warn­ing that lo­cal gangs are now be­ing ab­sorbed in­to a dan­ger­ous transna­tion­al net­work.

“They them­selves have been in­fil­trat­ed by a group from Venezuela which is now des­ig­nat­ed as a ter­ror­ist group,” he said. “Have you all heard of Tren de Aragua? That’s Venezue­lan. I don’t want to call it a car­tel, but they are mer­ce­nar­ies in essence, they op­er­ate on be­half of drug car­tels and they are here. They are in­te­grat­ing with our lo­cals and that’s a very dan­ger­ous thing.”

Tren de Aragua has been linked to arms and drug traf­fick­ing, il­le­gal min­ing, kid­nap­ping, ex­tor­tion, bribery and hu­man smug­gling across Latin Amer­i­ca. Its re­port­ed pres­ence in T&T, Sturge said, marks a shift in the scale of or­gan­ised crime, and un­der­scores the need for ad­vanced sur­veil­lance and more ag­gres­sive en­force­ment.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that many Venezue­lans have fled po­lit­i­cal tur­moil, Sturge warned, “There are el­e­ments who are well en­trenched among the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in Venezuela and they are here. They are here and they are be­com­ing en­trenched here and you are see­ing a dif­fer­ent lev­el of vi­o­lence, a dif­fer­ent lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty to what we have known in the past.”

He said one of the most press­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties is prison se­cu­ri­ty it­self. He point­ed to re­cent dis­cov­er­ies—in­clud­ing firearms and a 65-inch tele­vi­sion in­side Build­ing 13—as ev­i­dence of the deep en­trench­ment of or­gan­ised net­works be­hind bars.

“On the one hand we may be­lieve that prison of­fi­cers are cor­rupt and on the oth­er hand there is an­oth­er dy­nam­ic to it—the lev­el of fear they face. It’s easy for com­mu­ni­ca­tions from some of the most dan­ger­ous pris­on­ers to get out in­to the pub­lic do­main and for them to car­ry out all sorts of ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties with­out fear of de­tec­tion, with­out fear of pros­e­cu­tion.”

He called for pa­tience from the pub­lic as the gov­ern­ment steps up its re­sponse, which in­cludes a pro­posed ex­ten­sion to the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

“We ask that you be pa­tient, there is a lot that will be re­vealed but there is a lot that ought not to be re­vealed be­cause we don’t want to both­er you too much and cause you to be too con­cerned be­cause the re­al­i­ty is that we are in con­trol and we have con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion.”

Sturge said the Min­istry is seek­ing ad­vanced scan­ning sys­tems to re­duce re­liance on per­son­nel, not­ing that cor­rup­tion at ports of en­try has al­lowed weapons to come in un­de­tect­ed.

“There are peo­ple who con­trol con­tain­er ter­mi­nal sheds who have been find­ing every rea­son not to op­er­ate scan­ners,” he said, adding that the gov­ern­ment would be im­ple­ment­ing al­ter­na­tive mea­sures.