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Sunday, July 6, 2025

AG: Migrants linked to certain crimes

by

Gail Alexander
2216 days ago
20190611
Venezuelan nationals Miguel Velasquez and identified another only as “Freddie” who were among the four people killed by police in Chaguanas in April.

Venezuelan nationals Miguel Velasquez and identified another only as “Freddie” who were among the four people killed by police in Chaguanas in April.

T&T is grap­pling with eco­nom­ic mi­grants since Venezue­lans be­gan to seek refuge here and it is a fact that the coun­try has seen an uptick in “cer­tain of the crimes” as re­sult of some of the mi­grant is­sues, says At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

“The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er can speak to that him­self,” Al-Rawi added in Sen­ate on Tues­day.

“But suf­fice to say the num­ber of mur­ders has been not­ed to have risen as a re­sult of some of our mi­gra­tion is­sues. I’m not talk­ing on­ly about Venezuela, I’m talk­ing about oth­er po­si­tions.”

The AG was pi­lot­ing amend­ments to the Bail Act to de­ny bail for peo­ple with con­vic­tions, found in pos­ses­sion of guns. The bill pro­hibits bail for those on se­ri­ous of­fences found with guns. Claus­es in­clude al­low­ing a per­son to ap­ply for bail if a tri­al has not start­ed in 120 days or been com­plet­ed in a year.

The pro­posed changes will be re­viewed af­ter five years and it re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage.

Al-Rawi ad­mit­ted the bill may vi­o­late con­sti­tu­tion­al as­pects and could be chal­lenged in court. But he said sta­tis­tics have shown a “cool­ing off pe­ri­od” of­ten oc­curs with such leg­is­la­tion. He not­ed the UNC once brought sim­i­lar law.

Al-Rawi not­ed the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns en­ter­ing T&T—4,387 be­tween 2009 and 2019. This in­clud­ed a to­tal of 43 sub-ma­chine guns, ri­fles and shot­guns. He not­ed 17,271 firearm mat­ters in courts over the pe­ri­od.

“The phe­nom­e­non of ma­chine guns alone and T&T’s mur­der sta­tis­tics—T&T needs a fight­ing chance. We’re deal­ing with arms and am­mu­ni­tion com­ing from out­side our ju­ris­dic­tion...a preva­lence of sub-ma­chine guns, shot­guns and ri­fles,” he said, ask­ing if the Gov­ern­ment should ig­nore the sit­u­a­tion and the uptick in crime and eco­nom­ic mi­gra­tion.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira, sup­port­ing the bill, said T&T should make it clear to its “bad boys” to “lay down your arms as Par­lia­ment won’t al­low you to car­ry il­le­gal arms. If you do there will be dire con­se­quences. We have to draw a line—there’ve been too many weep­ing moth­ers and sud­den deaths.”

“I re­mem­ber a time when homes had no bur­glar-bars (sic) and you could leave your car un­locked. I went away last week and it was so re­fresh­ing not to feel threat­ened. T&T has lost so much, it no longer feels safe. We have a scourge of il­le­gal arms. Be­cause of what’s hap­pen­ing in Venezuela, guns are bar­ter­ing tools—enough is enough. The car­nage on streets, il­le­gal gun trade, gang wars and weep­ing moth­ers show there’s just cause for the bill.”

Vieira sug­gest­ed amend­ments to pro­tect peo­ple who might be framed. He not­ed cas­es years ago where he had de­fend­ed peo­ple who had been framed for gun and drug is­sues, adding that all sorts of is­sues arose in­clud­ing po­lice tak­ing short­cuts.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein, call­ing for the with­draw­al of the bill, said it is not a time to give po­lice added pow­ers. He not­ed ques­tions on the qual­i­ty of ev­i­dence and pros­e­cu­tion re­cent­ly and added po­lice pow­ers should not be in­creased when de­tec­tion rates are on­ly be­tween 20 and 30 per cent. He not­ed a sim­i­lar bail bill the UNC Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed did not suc­ceed. He said the long wait for bal­lis­tic re­ports, leav­ing those on re­mand to lan­guish for years.

“We’re see­ing a trend of bills vi­o­lat­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights—a grow­ing dic­ta­tor­ship, the death of democ­ra­cy,” he added, say­ing UNC would not sup­port the bill.

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