OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Venezue­lan mi­grants who are de­tained at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port were grant­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with their at­tor­ney. This spe­cial per­mis­sion was ex­tend­ed to 24 mi­grants, al­low­ing them to con­sult with at­tor­neys.

For some time now, the law of­fice has been ad­vo­cat­ing for the Gov­ern­ment’s co­op­er­a­tion in fa­cil­i­tat­ing these meet­ings be­tween the mi­grants and their le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The mi­grants are part of a group of 196 who were ar­rest­ed at Apex Bar in St James on Ju­ly 9.

Since then, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 mi­grants have been re­leased, and eight of them were re­cent­ly freed through court pro­ceed­ings brought by At­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen.

At­tor­ney Shiv­anan Mo­han, from the law firm Quan­tam Le­gal, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia, ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion af­ter he was able to meet with his clients at the Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice, Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain.

“I met with 20 mi­grants, and dur­ing our dis­cus­sions, with­out go­ing in­to too much de­tail, we fo­cused on their state of mind, emo­tions, and their sta­tus, in­clud­ing whether we should ap­ply for a min­is­ter’s per­mit and their UNCHR sta­tus, which is a cru­cial as­pect of this mat­ter.

“We col­lect­ed their in­for­ma­tion, which will be for­ward­ed to the UNCHR. The ma­jor­i­ty of them al­ready pos­sess UNCHR cards or are in the process of be­ing reg­is­tered as refugees or asy­lum seek­ers,” he said.

His law firm is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing a to­tal of 70 mi­grants, all of whom are seek­ing le­gal sup­port.

Mo­han added that over the com­ing days, at­tor­neys are hop­ing to bring re­lief to the mi­grants.

“So far, we had in­ter­viewed four on Fri­day, and we in­ter­viewed twen­ty yes­ter­day. I have sched­uled an ap­point­ment to­mor­row for 20 more. It’s pos­si­ble that we may see 20 more over the week­end or on Mon­day morn­ing, to­tal­ing over 70 in­di­vid­u­als that we in­tend to see and rep­re­sent,” he said.

On Wednes­day, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad up­held a habeas cor­pus from a Venezue­lan na­tion­al Samih Tarek Sori­ti Ben­itez, who has been de­tained at the fa­cil­i­ty af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed along­side al­most 200 fel­low na­tion­als in St James.

This sit­u­a­tion arose due to a de­lay by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in de­clar­ing the fa­cil­i­ty a de­ten­tion cen­tre af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had end­ed.

Some mi­grants were served with de­por­ta­tion or­ders while at the fa­cil­i­ty.

Yes­ter­day, Mo­han said the fo­cus was on gath­er­ing as much in­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble from them, since they have been de­tained for over two weeks and their men­tal state was a crit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tion.