Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter, Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, is ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go of “at­tack­ing” Venezue­lans due to the in­creas­ing num­ber of de­por­ta­tions fol­low­ing a re­duc­tion in the avail­abil­i­ty of work per­mits for Venezue­lans.

The Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has slashed the num­ber of work per­mits is­sued to Venezue­lans from 4,275 in 2024 to a mere 757 this year. This re­flects a de­cline of 3,518 per­mits, or an 82 per cent de­crease.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so an­nounced that 200 il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants will soon be de­port­ed.

“They don’t care about any­thing at all. Well, Venezuela, as al­ways, re­serves the ac­tions that cor­re­spond. They will see what they do with the Venezue­lans who are there. We have a lot of Trinida­di­ans here. We don’t do any­thing bad to them. Noth­ing. Those who want to know how things are mov­ing, here is the Gov­er­nor of the state of Su­cre. How do peo­ple from Trinidad come to take Venezue­lan prod­ucts? Every sin­gle day. True or false?” Ca­bel­lo asked.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ca­bel­lo an­swered a ques­tion from a jour­nal­ist about the work per­mits of Venezue­lans be­ing can­celled and Venezue­lans be­ing de­port­ed.

He ac­cused the T&T of be­tray­ing the “ex­tra­or­di­nary re­la­tions” both coun­tries have had for decades.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad, sad­ly, for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, has as­sumed a po­si­tion of af­front against our coun­try. His­tor­i­cal­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go has good re­la­tions with Venezuela, ex­tra­or­di­nary re­la­tions. Many Venezue­lan peo­ple have con­stant trade with Trinidad and To­ba­go, con­stant­ly. We have been at­tacked by Trinidad and To­ba­go and in the voice of the la­dy who is the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go. She doesn’t care about the time of good re­la­tions.”

He said T&T’s Gov­ern­ment was not go­ing to pro­voke Venezuela in­to tak­ing any ac­tion it may re­gret lat­er.

“It will not be the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go with their provo­ca­tions that are go­ing to take us off the train of peace. No, no. Be­cause they have the habit of threat­en­ing us, of at­tack­ing us, and then we have the best in­ten­tions of fol­low­ing good re­la­tions.”

He said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has “too many prob­lems” to deal with to be “in­ter­fer­ing in Venezuela’s in­ter­nal af­fairs.”

“The Prime Min­is­ter, with her provo­ca­tions, is not go­ing to de­rail us from our train of peace.”