Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith wants Venezue­lans sus­pect­ed to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty to be de­port­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

Speak­ing one day af­ter the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter an­nounced an amnesty pol­i­cy for Venezue­lans in this coun­try, Grif­fith said “I am ask­ing for con­sid­er­a­tion now be giv­en (al­though) they may have an amnesty but if based on law en­force­ment in­tel­li­gence any in­di­vid­ual who is here as an il­le­gal im­mi­grant and has been giv­en an amnesty, based on sus­pi­cion, based on in­tel­li­gence of that in­di­vid­ual be­ing in­volved in any ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ty and that in­di­vid­ual is red flagged, that per­son is im­me­di­ate­ly de­port­ed.”

Grif­fith told the me­dia at a press brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing on Fri­day, “I need to en­sure that per­sons of in­ter­est do not eas­i­ly find an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get in here and to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. What they are ba­si­cal­ly get­ting is a get out of jail free card.”

He ex­pressed con­cern about the ris­ing num­ber of Venezue­lans in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty as well re­cent mur­ders of Venezue­lan na­tion­als.

“The con­cern that (we) the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice have, is that over the last three weeks, three Venezue­lan na­tion­als have been killed,” he said in ref­er­ence to the mur­ders of Jose Ro­driguez, Alexan­der Ce­de­no Ro­ro­ba and Maick­al Mar­tinez.

Ro­driguez was shot dead in the front seat of a SUV while dri­ving in Glen­coe on Thurs­day, Mar­tinez died af­ter be­ing shot in Laven­tille on April 5, while Ro­ro­ba was shot dead on De Ver­teuil Street, Wood­brook a short dis­tance from the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees of­fice on Ari­api­ta Av­enue a day be­fore Mar­tinez was shot.

Grif­fith said: “The re­ports have shown that these three Venezue­lan na­tion­als have been in­volved in cer­tain very ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties, in­volved with very ques­tion­able crim­i­nal el­e­ments es­pe­cial­ly in the West­ern Di­vi­sion and Port-of-Spain.”

“Just last night two oth­er Venezue­lan na­tion­als were al­so killed while try­ing to con­front po­lice of­fi­cers with firearms. There are sev­er­al oth­er re­ports. The point that I am bring­ing to the at­ten­tion of the pub­lic is as much it is we are do­ing the char­i­ta­ble thing to help, my con­cern is that char­i­ty must be­gin at home,” he said.

Grif­fith said many Venezue­lans who ar­rived in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly were be­ing drawn to crime.

“We have pin­point­ed through our in­tel­li­gence that many of these in­di­vid­u­als are en­ter­ing here il­le­gal­ly, they do not know where they are go­ing to work so they are eas­i­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed and lured by gang lead­ers to work for them,” he said.

But he was al­so con­cerned that “there is the oth­er as­pect, where oth­er Venezue­lan na­tion­als who have been in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty have now seen here as a bet­ter op­tion for them to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clu­sive of drug deal­ing and gang ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Grif­fith point­ed out the re­cent hu­man traf­fick­ing case in­volv­ing Venezue­lan mi­nors as an­oth­er ex­am­ple of il­le­gal im­mi­grants be­ing lured in­to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.