Derek Achong

A High Court Judge is ex­pect­ed to de­cide on whether the 17-year-old son of an Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS) for­eign fight­er should be re­leased from im­mi­gra­tion cus­tody, pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of his law­suit over be­ing de­nied en­try in­to T&T by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials on Fri­day. 

Jus­tice Ricky Rahim re­served his de­ci­sion on the in­ter­im or­der and whether he should be grant­ed leave to pur­sue his ju­di­cial re­view law­suit, af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Tues­day. 

Ac­cord­ing to court fil­ings ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the teenag­er and a Unit­ed States (US) so­cial work­er, who was es­cort­ing him to Trinidad to vis­it his moth­er for two months, were re­fused en­try af­ter ar­riv­ing on a flight from New York on Sat­ur­day. Both have since been de­tained.

The teenag­er, who is a US cit­i­zen, and his six sib­lings were al­leged­ly tak­en to Syr­ia by his fa­ther, who holds dual cit­i­zen­ship, in 2015. 

In March 2019, his fa­ther and old­er broth­er were de­tained af­ter sur­ren­der­ing in Baghuz, Syr­ia and were tak­en to the US, where they were con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism of­fences and sen­tenced to prison terms.

The teenag­er was al­so trans­ferred to the US, where he was placed in fos­ter care. 

At­tached to his law­suit were doc­u­ments from a US Court grant­i­ng the teenag­er per­mis­sion to vis­it his moth­er in T&T. 

In the law­suit, the teenag­er's lawyers, Criston J Williams and Ce­leste St Louis, are claim­ing that im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port did not fol­low the cor­rect process in re­ject­ing the teenag­er's en­try in­to the coun­try. 
They claimed that while his fa­ther and broth­er have been deemed ter­ror­ists lo­cal­ly, he was not and could not be con­sid­ered to fall with­in a class of per­sons pro­hib­it­ed from en­ter­ing T&T. 

They al­so con­tend that he should have been con­sid­ered a cit­i­zen of T&T by de­scent and was not in­formed of his rights to ap­peal the de­ci­sion or seek le­gal ad­vice. 

In an af­fi­davit in op­po­si­tion to the law­suit, Deputy Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Ve­ra Per­sad de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to de­ny him en­try, as she not­ed that he did not pro­vide any ev­i­dence of T&T cit­i­zen­ship or an ap­pli­ca­tion for such.

The Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer al­so pro­vid­ed an af­fi­davit from an of­fi­cer of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Spe­cial Branch Ter­ror­ism In­ter­dic­tion Unit, who sought to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on the teenag­er and his rel­a­tives. 

The of­fi­cer claimed that he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from the US Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions (FBI), which in­di­cat­ed that the teenag­er was ex­posed to mil­i­tary train­ing and was in­volved in com­bat in Syr­ia.

He re­ferred to al­leged What­sapp com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the teenag­er's broth­er and moth­er, in which he (the broth­er) claimed that the teenag­er was in­volved in com­bat when he was 13-years-old. 

"In­tel­li­gence fur­ther sug­gests that the In­tend­ed Claimant has been rad­i­calised, re­ceived mil­i­tary and guer­ril­la train­ing and con­duct­ed at­tacks on the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and its al­lies in Syr­ia," he said. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Rahim on Tues­day, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of New York City's Ad­min­is­tra­tion for Chil­dren's Ser­vices and the city's May­or were present. 

Through the law­suit, the teenag­er's lawyers are seek­ing de­c­la­ra­tions that the re­jec­tion or­der is­sued by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials was un­law­ful and pro­ce­du­ral­ly im­prop­er.

 The Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer was rep­re­sent­ed by Gre­go­ry Delzin.