Derek Achong

Nine­ty three Venezue­lan il­le­gal im­mi­grants were de­port­ed this af­ter­noon, even as some had last ditch le­gal chal­lenges pend­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that this af­ter­noon, the Venezue­lans, who were be­ing housed at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port and the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo, were put on two Coast Guard ves­sels and tak­en to Sol­da­do Rock, a small is­land off the coast of Ica­cos near the T&T/Venezuela mar­itime board­er.

They were then hand­ed over to of­fi­cers of Venezuela's Guardia Na­cional, who took them on the re­main­der of their jour­ney back to their coun­try.

Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands that on Thurs­day, one of the im­mi­grants filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing his de­por­ta­tion and was grant­ed a stay pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case.

A group of at­tor­neys, led by Se­nior Coun­sel El­ton Prescott, filed sim­i­lar cas­es in an at­tempt to pre­vent the planned de­por­ta­tion for 28 of the im­mi­grants.

The de­por­ta­tion took place be­fore the case came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Jacque­line Wil­son yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The cas­es are ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing, next week, to de­ter­mine whether any of the im­mi­grants, who brought the cas­es, were not in­clud­ed in to­day

's de­por­tees.

The same group of at­tor­neys yes­ter­day brought two sets of cas­es for Venezue­lan im­mi­grants that are be­ing quar­an­tined at the He­li­port.

The habeas cor­pus cas­es sought to se­cure the con­di­tion re­lease of a group of three adults and a preg­nant woman and her chil­dren ages four and 16.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions be­fore Jus­tice Joan Charles, Se­nior Coun­sel Regi­nald Ar­mour, who led the State's le­gal team, not­ed that the group of adults were law­ful­ly de­tained as one had test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus, while oth­er two were pri­ma­ry con­tacts.

In terms of the preg­nant woman and her chil­dren, Ar­mour said that they were be­ing de­tained for en­ter­ing the coun­try il­le­gal­ly and were be­ing quar­an­tined as con­tacts of a pos­i­tive case.

Prescott main­tained that his clients de­nied be­ing test­ed for the virus or showed symp­toms.

Charles even­tu­al­ly agreed with Ar­mour and ruled in favour of the State.

While the groups lost their cas­es, they are not due to be de­port­ed as they have ac­tive cas­es chal­leng­ing their pro­posed de­por­ta­tion.

The Venezue­lans were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Criston J Williams, Ker­ri­na Samdeo, Jerome Ri­ley and Kashif Gib­son.