OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Ten­sions with­in quar­ters of the Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty have eased af­ter au­thor­i­ties re­leased most of the in­di­vid­u­als de­tained dur­ing a joint im­mi­gra­tion op­er­a­tion in Ari­ma on Fri­day.

Ini­tial re­ports in­di­cat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 mi­grants were held.

How­ev­er, up­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion yes­ter­day con­firmed that 11 in­di­vid­u­als were de­tained dur­ing the ex­er­cise con­duct­ed by the Spe­cial Im­mi­gra­tion Unit along­side of­fi­cers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion CID.

Of those, 10 have since been re­leased.

One per­son re­mains de­tained at the Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice on Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, pend­ing fur­ther pro­cess­ing.

An­oth­er in­di­vid­ual was ar­rest­ed for dri­ving with­out a valid per­mit dur­ing the op­er­a­tion and is ex­pect­ed to face traf­fic-re­lat­ed charges.

The de­ten­tions had sparked con­cern among mi­grant ad­vo­cates, par­tic­u­lar­ly as some of those held re­port­ed­ly had al­ready be­gun the Gov­ern­ment’s 2026 Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work (MRF) process.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, An­driena Browne, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of the La Ca­sita His­pan­ic and Cul­tur­al Cen­tre, de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as send­ing a “con­tra­dic­to­ry mes­sage” at a time when mi­grants are be­ing en­cour­aged to reg­u­larise their sta­tus.

The 2026 Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work has record­ed more than 27,000 on­line ap­pli­ca­tions, in­clud­ing 23,342 Venezue­lan na­tion­als, which in­clud­ed chil­dren.

“These num­bers are not just sta­tis­tics,” Browne said. “They rep­re­sent fam­i­lies, moth­ers, and mi­nors try­ing to reg­u­larise their sta­tus and live with­in the law.”

Sev­er­al de­tainees re­port­ed­ly had com­plet­ed their on­line reg­is­tra­tion and were await­ing in-per­son ver­i­fi­ca­tion ap­point­ments.

“When mi­grants are be­ing en­cour­aged to trust the sys­tem and step for­ward, and at the same time de­ten­tions are tak­ing place dur­ing an ac­tive reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion process, that cre­ates con­fu­sion and fear,” Browne said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the State’s sov­er­eign au­thor­i­ty to en­force im­mi­gra­tion laws, Browne stressed that en­force­ment must align with hu­man­i­tar­i­an prin­ci­ples and in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights stan­dards, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the num­ber of chil­dren in­clud­ed in the reg­is­tra­tion process.

“With more than 16,000 chil­dren iden­ti­fied in this process, the best in­ter­ests of the child can­not be sec­ondary,” she said. “It must be cen­tral.”

She added that the broad­er is­sue is not whether im­mi­gra­tion laws should be en­forced, but how en­force­ment is car­ried out.

“Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion on­ly works when there is cred­i­bil­i­ty,” Browne said. “If the ob­jec­tive of the MRF is to bring or­der, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and pro­tec­tion, then State ac­tions must strength­en pub­lic con­fi­dence, not weak­en it.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Roger Alexan­der, through calls and mes­sages were un­suc­cess­ful.