High Court judge Justice James Aboud has blocked immigration authorities from deporting a 14-year-old Cuban teenager who was refused entry at Piarco Airport last Sunday.
In an emergency hearing, on Monday night, the judge granted an injunction and ordered that the teenager Bhalia Massiel Perez Delgado be released in the custody of her mother Lucrecia De La Caridad Delgado Lopez.
The child was denied entry after she returned from Cuba and was scheduled to be deported yesterday on a Copa flight back to Cuba.
Her attorneys, Owen Hinds Jr and Renuka Sagramsingh-Sooklal, had at first sought to get the Minister of National Security to overturn the immigration authority order and when that failed they petitioned the High Court for a hearing.
Justice James Aboud heard the matter before granting the injunction shortly before 7 pm. Immigration authorities only released the child around 11 pm after the Registrar of the High Court intervened.
The child’s mother has been granted refugee status in this country in 2017. Her daughter came to Trinidad that same year and was allowed entry on the condition that she report to the Immigration Division periodically.
Against the advice of her attorney, the child’s mother allowed her daughter to travel to Cuba to visit her ailing father but she encountered difficulties when she attempted to return.
No date has yet been set for the hearing of the judicial review lawsuit challenging the decision of the immigration authorities.