Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s Christ­mas Day an­nounce­ment of the in­tro­duc­tion of a unit sim­i­lar to the In­ter-Agency Task Force (IATF) in the North Coast com­mu­ni­ty is good news to law-abid­ing res­i­dents.

Young re­vealed the ini­tia­tive dur­ing a func­tion for the IATF, not­ing the unit’s in­tro­duc­tion in that com­mu­ni­ty could help in stem­ming the il­le­gal flow of drugs and guns in­to T&T. In this re­gard, it is good to hear that Min­is­ter Young has al­ready en­gaged Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and De­fence Force Chief of Staff Dar­ryl Daniel on this plan. How­ev­er, while the plan sounds plau­si­ble, this me­dia house hopes the unit will al­so in­volve Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion mem­bers since they too play crit­i­cal roles in pro­tect­ing T&T’s bor­ders.

It is al­so hoped the unit will fo­cus heav­i­ly on sea-based op­er­a­tions. This is be­cause crim­i­nal el­e­ments in­volved in the drug, gun and hu­man traf­fick­ing trades have sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty on the seas to meet the de­mands of hun­dreds of il­le­gal mi­grants will­ing to pay sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey to ac­cess T&T in re­cent months. The traf­fick­ers, in turn, are gain­ing en­try to T&T via le­gal and il­le­gal ports. In­deed, the T&T Coast Guard has been kept busy in cat-and-mouse games with il­le­gal im­mi­grants in coastal ar­eas such as Ce­dros, Ica­cos, Los Iros, Erin, Chatham, Morne Di­a­blo, Buenos Ayres, and Quinam.

It seems ap­pro­pri­ate then, that Min­is­ter Young should turn his at­ten­tion to a sea-based IATF-styled unit. Even more crit­i­cal will be en­sur­ing the new unit is prop­er­ly equipped with the tools need­ed to achieve its goal. Along­side this should al­so come the beef­ing up of the T&T Coast Guard and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Ma­rine Coastal Pa­trol Unit’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties as well.

Min­is­ter Young was very elu­sive about the equip­ment ca­pac­i­ty of the T&T Coast Guard in re­cent weeks as it re­lat­ed to the mi­grant-re­sponse is­sue. Dur­ing Par­lia­men­tary de­bate, Min­is­ter Young re­ferred to mar­itime as­sets, in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels and radar sys­tems be­ing aug­ment­ed by reg­i­ment land pa­trols in the il­le­gal mi­grant fight. The min­is­ter not­ed too that the T&T’s Air Guard sup­port in this ac­tiv­i­ty in­clud­ed an AW 139 he­li­copter and air as­sets but re­fused to quan­ti­fy the num­bers in­volved for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons. Need­less to say, John Pub­lic was left no more con­fi­dent that law en­force­ment agen­cies are any bet­ter equipped to pro­tect our bor­ders from breach­es, es­pe­cial­ly from mi­grants. From the events of the past weeks, it would ap­pear that the crim­i­nals are gain­ing the up­per hand and now, with ex­ter­nal agen­cies on their own agen­das com­pli­cat­ing the mi­grant sce­nario, it is in­deed hard to say that lo­cal law en­force­ment is win­ning that bat­tle.

In this re­gard, we al­so hope that the lat­est plan is rolled out soon­er rather than lat­er. With 2021 look­ing just as tough as this year due to COVID-19, we hope too that all the arms of sea-based law en­force­ment are giv­en all the tools they need to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.