Rhon­dor Dowlat

In the past 10 years, over 4,000 T&T na­tion­als were de­port­ed from the Unit­ed States (US), Cana­da and the UK.The rise in de­por­tees came as a con­se­quence of amend­ments to each coun­try's re­spec­tive im­mi­gra­tion leg­is­la­tion.For ex­am­ple, the US passed the Il­le­gal Re­form and Im­mi­grant Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Act (IRI­RA) and the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Ef­fec­tive Death Penal­ty Act (AED­PA) in the 1990s, which all had se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions for law­ful per­ma­nent res­i­dents or green card hold­ers.

Un­der this spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion, the Bu­reau of Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment was grant­ed un­fet­tered pow­ers, ba­si­cal­ly al­low­ing it to re­clas­si­fy mi­nor crimes such as pet­ty theft, shoplift­ing, drug in­frac­tions and drunk dri­ving as de­portable of­fences. Pre­vi­ous­ly, on­ly ag­gra­vat­ed felonies such as rape and kid­nap­ping were de­portable of­fences.

The USA Pa­tri­ot Act, passed af­ter the 9/11 ter­ror­ism in­ci­dents in New York, al­so had se­ri­ous con­se­quences for mi­grants sus­pect­ed of be­ing in­volved in plot­ting, in­cit­ing or aid­ing ter­ror­ism acts.

Sta­tis­tics ob­tained from the US De­part­ment of State's Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty show that dur­ing a ten-year pe­ri­od from 2001-2010, some 72,371 peo­ple with Caribbean links were de­port­ed back to their home coun­tries. Of this fig­ure, 44,422 of them were de­port­ed for crim­i­nal of­fences. There were 4,218 Tri­nis among those de­port­ed and 2,433 of them were de­port­ed for crim­i­nal of­fences.

In the past year, ac­cord­ing to records from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 175 na­tion­als who were sent back to T&T.Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the Gov­ern­ment has a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the gov­ern­ments of the UK, USA and Cana­da re­gard­ing the shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion about de­por­tees and the crimes com­mit­ted in these coun­tries. This in­for­ma­tion is shared pri­or to the ar­rival of the de­por­tees in T&T.

On ar­rival in this coun­try, de­por­tees are first in­ter­viewed by Im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties, then Spe­cial Branch and So­cial Wel­fare Of­fi­cers. In ad­di­tion, the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment has a So­cial Dis­place­ment Unit that as­sess­es a de­por­tee's var­ied needs, best in­ter­ests and wel­fare in this coun­try af­ter a com­pre­hen­sive ex­am­i­na­tion.

De­por­tees are as­sist­ed with hous­ing, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, apart from be­ing re­con­nect­ed with rel­a­tives who may still be re­sid­ing in T&T.Non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions such as Vi­sion on Mis­sion, Liv­ing Wa­ters Com­mu­ni­ty and St Vin­cent De Paul al­so play an in­te­gral role in the re­set­tle­ment and rein­te­gra­tion of the de­por­tees in­to the so­ci­ety.

Help­less feel­ing

One de­por­tee, Dave Dou­glas, 53, of Curepe, was de­port­ed from Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia, af­ter he served time for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. He de­scribed his re­turn to T&T as "be­ing snatched from Africa and sent to T&T as an out­cast and a slave."Dou­glas left Trinidad at age 18 in 1978 seek­ing a bet­ter life. But some 27 years lat­er he got in­to trou­ble with the law and in Oc­to­ber 2010 was de­port­ed to Trinidad. Dou­glas left his sev­en chil­dren be­hind in the US.

"Be­ing sent back here was one of the worst feel­ings," he told the Sun­day Guardian."I was placed on an Amer­i­can Air­lines flight with two US mar­shals, one on each side of me. I was hand­cuffed."I felt equat­ed to slaves be­ing snatched from Africa. When I ar­rived in Pi­ar­co I met with cus­toms of­fi­cials and then I was al­lowed to leave with no mon­ey. I had noth­ing."

Af­ter four years, Dou­glas said, he was yet to adopt to the T&T lifestyle and he was find­ing life very hard. He is still seek­ing res­i­dence at St Vin­cent de Paul's in Port-of-Spain."When I was back home (in the US) I worked as a Class 1 ma­chin­ist on sev­er­al US gov­ern­ment projects. Com­pared to here in Trinidad, it is very tough for me."No one wants to hire me and I am forced to work as a se­cu­ri­ty guard off and on. Read­just­ing is very hard."

Dou­glas said he griev­ed be­cause of his chil­dren and was pray­ing his life would get bet­ter one day.An­oth­er de­por­tee, Steve Charles, 61, re­turned to Trinidad about six months ago, hav­ing been de­port­ed from the US. Charles called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient pro­grammes to prop­er­ly rein­te­grate de­por­tees in­to so­ci­ety."It is re­al­ly hard for us. When we come here in Trinidad, we feel lost," Charles said.

"There needs to be pro­grammes to help us in ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing and prop­er em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for us so we don't have to re­sort to crime and liv­ing on the streets, be­cause this is so easy for some of us to do. We just want to live our lives as the av­er­age T&T cit­i­zen."

Lack of fund­ing

Su­per­vi­sor at the St Vin­cent de Paul home, Sel­wyn Coutain, ad­mit­ted that the or­gan­i­sa­tion was go­ing through a tough pe­ri­od but was con­tin­u­ing its ef­forts to as­sist the needy, in­clud­ing de­por­tees."We are not get­ting the re­quired sub­si­dies to have this place run­ning prop­er­ly," Coutain said.

"Staff haven't got­ten a raise of pay for the past eight years and they are still com­ing out to as­sist with the res­i­dents, and that by it­self is a risk for every­one be­cause we are all ex­posed to res­i­dents who have con­tract­ed dis­eases such as tu­ber­cu­lo­sis, HIV/Aids, her­pes and sca­bies."We don't have the prop­er health care pro­tec­tion and equip­ment. We al­so have no in­sur­ance."

Ac­cord­ing to the Vi­sion on Mis­sion's Web site, many de­por­tees en­counter ma­jor dif­fi­cul­ties in ad­just­ing af­ter in­car­cer­a­tion or up­on re­turn to T&T, es­pe­cial­ly when it came to re­con­nect­ing with their fam­i­lies, ad­just­ing to their new en­vi­ron­ment, find­ing em­ploy­ment and ac­com­mo­da­tion.

"Some have even ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere men­tal break­down as a re­sult of the tran­si­tion and sep­a­ra­tion from the fam­i­lies or loved ones they were forced to leave be­hind. A large num­ber of de­por­tees are un­skilled and need to be trained or re­trained to work with­in the so­ci­ety. They may al­so be plagued with sub­stance abuse and health prob­lems, which may re­quire spe­cial di­etary needs," the Web site not­ed.

Re­gion­al prob­lem

In the most re­cent Cari­com Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty Re­port, crim­i­nal de­por­tees were wide­ly viewed as the ma­jor force dri­ving the in­creas­ing rate of vi­o­lent crime, in­tro­duc­ing new types of crime and gen­er­al­ly ex­tend­ing the crim­i­nal reper­toire of lo­cal crim­i­nals. The re­port said it was be­lieved that they helped to ex­tend and in­ten­si­fy the transna­tion­al links of or­di­nary crim­i­nals, and were in­volved in or­gan­is­ing and fa­cil­i­tat­ing the traf­fick­ing in il­le­gal drugs and firearms.

The re­port added that de­por­tees pre­sent­ed a new and spe­cial dan­ger to Caribbean so­ci­eties, but the al­ready high lev­els of un­em­ploy­ment in some of the ter­ri­to­ries; lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for ac­quir­ing new skills; the stig­ma of crim­i­nal de­por­ta­tion; and dif­fi­cul­ty in start­ing a new, con­ven­tion­al life made the rein­te­gra­tion of a de­por­tee in­to so­ci­ety dif­fi­cult.