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Saturday, June 21, 2025

Chief Immigration Officer in contempt for deporting Venezuelans

by

28 days ago
20250524

The Of­fice of the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer (CIO) has been held in con­tempt of court for de­port­ing two Venezue­lan mi­grants when there was an in­junc­tion in place for them to re­main in Trinidad. 

High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo made the or­der yes­ter­day as she up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion from lawyers for Julie Stephanie Vi­vas Abanero and Neyelis Del Valle Her­nan­dez Ugas. 

When the ap­pli­ca­tion was first made in 2020 dur­ing the tenure of for­mer CIO Char­maine Gand­hi-An­drews, the duo’s lawyers led by Lee Mer­ry, SC, were ini­tial­ly seek­ing the con­tempt or­der as well as an un­de­fined fine. 

How­ev­er, they with­drew the re­quest for the lat­ter when pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on ap­pli­ca­tion.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo or­dered the State to pay the duo’s le­gal costs for the ap­pli­ca­tion.  

Both women fled their coun­try due to on­go­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic is­sues and ar­rived in Moru­ga via a boat.

They were even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed for en­ter­ing T&T il­le­gal­ly in No­vem­ber 2018 and were sen­tenced to six months in prison af­ter plead­ing guilty to the of­fence. 

Af­ter serv­ing their sen­tences at the Gold­en Grove Women’s Prison in Arou­ca, they were trans­ferred to the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo to await de­por­ta­tion. 

They spent sev­er­al months at the cen­tre be­fore their lawyers filed a ju­di­cial re­view chal­leng­ing their lengthy de­ten­tion be­fore pro­posed de­por­ta­tion. 

On No­vem­ber 16, 2019, High Court Judge Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well grant­ed an in­junc­tion or­der­ing that they not be de­port­ed pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of their law­suit. 

In the con­tempt of court ap­pli­ca­tion, the duo’s lawyers con­tend­ed that they emailed Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well’s or­der to Gand­hi-An­drews and then-Deputy Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Derek Craig­well.

 They al­so claimed that they spoke to Craig­well via tele­phone but he claimed that he could not pro­vide any as­sis­tance. 

The lawyers even called the cell­phone of one of the women and asked them to hand it over to the flight at­ten­dant, who claimed that she could not do any­thing with­out per­mis­sion from im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials. 

Gand­hi-An­drews re­tired in 2023. 

The duo was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Lemuel Mur­phy, and Devvon Williams. 


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