BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is mov­ing to clamp down on il­le­gal im­mi­grants en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as 15 beach­es have now been iden­ti­fied as ma­jor points of en­try for this ac­tiv­i­ty.

It comes as the coun­try con­tin­ues to grap­ple with the spread of the Brazil­ian Vari­ant of the COVID-19 dis­ease, first dis­cov­ered in a test sam­ple from a Venezue­lan na­tion­al.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds re­vealed these steps would in­clude the soon launch of mar­itime pa­trols by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice via its re­cent­ly re­in­sti­tut­ed po­lice mar­itime branch, the use of drones, the re­cov­ery of all the laws about the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Act, and on­go­ing poly­graph tests for po­lice of­fi­cers to en­sure there was no fa­cil­i­ta­tion of bor­der breach­es.

The Gov­ern­ment will al­so pur­chase two cape class ves­sels from the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to add to T&T’s Coast Guard fleet.

Hinds said yes­ter­day’s con­fer­ence was called af­ter cit­i­zens be­came trau­ma­tised by a video wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed last Sat­ur­day of Span­ish-speak­ing na­tives dis­em­bark­ing a boat at a beach’s shore­line while peo­ple wait­ed in cars for them.

The video turned out to be a scene cap­tured of il­le­gal im­mi­grants en­ter­ing Puer­to Ri­co.

How­ev­er, Hinds ad­mit­ted that it res­onat­ed with T&T’s own is­sue of porous bor­ders.

“The Prime Min­is­ter us­ing his prime min­is­te­r­i­al ca­pac­i­ty and vi­sion and wis­dom and the re­spect that he has ac­quired in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and the re­spect that he has for the oth­er el­e­ments in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty was able to ne­go­ti­ate with the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment and to or­der with their help two cape class ves­sels, which I am hap­py to let you the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and know are ex­pect­ed some­time soon,” said Hinds.

He said the ves­sels would join the fleet that the Coast Guard has at its dis­pos­al to ex­pand the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty to in­ter­dict and treat bor­der is­sues bet­ter.

Re­gard­ing the 15 beach­es dis­cov­ered to be the main en­try points, Hinds said he could not go in­to de­tails on what would be done.

How­ev­er, he said those beach­es would come un­der im­me­di­ate and se­ri­ous fo­cus. He said based on the re­port be­fore him, it was quite clear the beach­es were ac­tive points of il­le­gal en­try.

He not­ed the re­port al­so re­vealed clear in­for­ma­tion that there were cit­i­zens of T&T who were fa­cil­i­tat­ing the bor­der breach­es.

Hinds said, how­ev­er, there were im­pli­ca­tions for such deal­ings.

In a bid to al­so un­earth il­le­git­i­mate wealth earned through il­le­gal means, Hinds re­vealed he was al­ready in dis­cus­sions with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (AG) Faris Al Rawi on the in­struc­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to en­sure all of the laws of T&T in­clud­ing civic as­sets re­cov­ery laws (Ex­plain Your Wealth) were re­in­forced.

“So those of you who have wealth and have mon­ey and have as­sets, you may be very well called up­on in a short time to be­gin to ac­count to the au­thor­i­ties un­der those laws for your ac­qui­si­tions. So the die…plur­al (sic) are still rolling, they’re not set­tled yet,” he warned.

He said it was in the con­text that it was the job of all law en­force­ment in­clu­sive of the courts and the whole crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that he has asked the AG to pro­vide the guid­ance and to en­sure that all pro­ce­dures were in place, to fa­cil­i­tate the process of the re­in­force­ment of the civic as­sets re­cov­ery laws.

Ear­li­er, Hinds re­ferred to the re­cent bust of a cache of weapons, which was seized by the po­lice, at the Pi­ar­co Air­port on April 22, say­ing T&T was bat­tling breach­es of both il­le­git­i­mate and le­git­i­mate en­try points.

“We have le­gal ports of en­try…our air­ports, our sea­ports and of course based on the fact that we are an is­land state, we have per­haps over 200 points from il­le­gal en­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go and there­fore, we have a prob­lem,” said Hinds.

Mean­while, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith dis­closed with the ad­vent of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tion Fu­sion Cen­tre there was now greater syn­er­gy be­tween dif­fer­ent arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices that have made it much eas­i­er for the po­lice to be in­volved in bor­der pro­tec­tion. He said, to­geth­er they were in­volved in an on­go­ing mas­sive op­er­a­tion to en­sure bor­der se­cu­ri­ty.

“Very soon there would be drones pro­vid­ed for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to as­sist us as the spe­cif­ic units would al­so be sent to the south­west­ern penin­su­lar in­clu­sive of MOP, SORT, and oth­er units in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice. So we are putting a mas­sive op­er­a­tion to make sure we can lock down that south­west­ern penin­su­lar,” Grif­fith re­vealed.

Re­lay­ing some sta­tis­tics, Grif­fith said with­in the last three years, 213 Venezue­lans were charged with se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes, while last year 533 il­le­gal im­mi­grants were de­tained in the TTPS’ south­west­ern di­vi­sion alone. And over 135 were de­tained so far in 2021.

Re­it­er­at­ing Hinds’ sen­ti­ments Grif­fith said, “As it per­tains to se­cu­ri­ty we have to se­cure our bor­ders, through the il­le­git­i­mate and the il­le­gal ports of en­try. Through the le­gal ports of en­try, you would have seen what has tak­en place over the last few weeks. All I can state is that there are game-chang­ers tak­ing place, which is why we would have ac­quired those two hits of il­le­gal weapons, am­mu­ni­tion en­ter­ing the coun­try through the le­git­i­mate ports of en­try as well as drugs.”

Re­gard­ing the reestab­lish­ment of the TTPS’ Ma­rine Branch, Grif­fith said, it would com­prise of a three-part op­er­a­tion.

“We will be in­volved in what is known as Tier 1—we will be do­ing pa­trols along the coast from the beach to two miles out. We will now com­ple­ment and work along­side the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard. From there we look at Tier 2, from two to ten miles out, and then Tier 3 can be con­sid­ered the ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone from ten miles out to 200 miles out. That is where you need larg­er craft,” Grif­fith il­lus­trat­ed.

He said poly­graph test­ing was an­oth­er tool be­ing used on of­fi­cers in the south­west­ern penin­su­lar to en­sure those po­lice of­fi­cers would be do­ing what is re­quired of them and not be­com­ing a li­a­bil­i­ty in the TTPS’ op­er­a­tions.