The swift de­por­ta­tion of 160 Venezue­lans by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty late Sat­ur­day came on the cusp of a planned meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Venezuela's Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro. The de­por­ta­tion al­so fol­lows the fi­as­co last week in which 27 Venezue­lans, in­clud­ing 16 mi­nors, were es­cort­ed back to Venezuela on the or­der of this Gov­ern­ment last Sun­day, on­ly to re­turn two days lat­er.

That in­ci­dent, which has at­tract­ed in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines, prompt­ed Maduro to re­quest a meet­ing with the T&T Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress mat­ters of "se­cu­ri­ty, hu­man mo­bil­i­ty, crime, and drug traf­fick­ing," ac­cord­ing to a tweet post­ed by Venezuela's For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Jorge Ar­reaza four days ago. The time and de­tails of that meet­ing are yet to be ironed out.

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi.

KERWIN PIERRE

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young in a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day stat­ed that it had come to his at­ten­tion, via a me­dia re­port, that cer­tain lawyers ap­proached a High Court Judge, ex-parte, and that the judge made cer­tain or­ders per­tain­ing to some Venezue­lans who are in T&T il­le­gal­ly.

Young said the State was not rep­re­sent­ed at this hear­ing and he has spo­ken to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi for this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter to be ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ad­dressed.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, At­tor­ney Jerome Ri­ley and oth­ers, from Criston J Williams and Com­pa­ny, rep­re­sent­ing mi­grants at court, ap­plied for ju­di­cial re­view to stop the or­der of de­por­ta­tion. Ri­ley said Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams grant­ed the stay of the 19 mi­grants.

How­ev­er, there was con­fu­sion over whether the 19 had been grant­ed a stay. Al-Rawi said the State was in the dark over the mo­tion filed and no mat­ter has been served on the AG's of­fice.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Al-Rawi said the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has no­ticed un­con­firmed re­ports in the me­dia that pro­ceed­ings were al­leged­ly filed in High Court on Sat­ur­day rel­a­tive to im­mi­gra­tion and de­por­ta­tion mat­ters.

“I can con­firm that no pro­ceed­ings have been served on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or even the Im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties as far as I am aware, and have been ad­vised nor has for that mat­ter, any or­der as re­port­ed in the me­dia been served up­on us.

“If there are in­deed pro­ceed­ings they may have been filed and heard ex-parte with­out the State’s in­volve­ment.”

National Security Minister Stuart Young

NICOLE DRAYTON

He said this was a mat­ter of “grave con­cern” as the very con­cept of due process re­quires trans­paren­cy and op­por­tu­ni­ty for sub­mis­sions to be fac­tored in ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings and it is un­seem­ly for lit­i­ga­tion to be car­ried out large­ly in the me­dia.

"I make no com­plaint of the Ju­di­cia­ry in re­la­tion to ex-parte pro­ceed­ings as it is per­fect­ly ac­cept­able for a court to act ex-parte in ur­gent mat­ters. I do con­demn the im­pres­sion that the State has ‘lost’ mat­ters when they are yet to be heard in in­ter partes pro­ceed­ings.'

He said at­tor­neys for the claimants should be clear in their com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the me­dia "so as to avoid false im­pres­sions tak­ing root."

 Lawyers get phone call from fam­i­ly mem­bers

Ri­ley said they re­ceived a phone call from fam­i­ly mem­bers of the group of mi­grants in­di­cat­ing that the Coast Guard in­formed them that there was go­ing to be a de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise on Sat­ur­day.

 “Af­ter re­ceiv­ing that in­for­ma­tion from oth­er cred­i­ble sources, we im­me­di­ate­ly filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9:30 am seek­ing to stop the or­der of de­por­ta­tion among oth­er re­liefs. The said or­der was ob­tained at 11:54 am. The in­ter­im re­lief be­ing to stay the or­der of de­por­ta­tion, mean­ing to stop it. The court saw mer­it in our ap­pli­ca­tion and grant­ed our  prayer.”

 The mat­ter is against the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer, and the Chief of De­fence Staff, he said.

The mi­grant group in ques­tion com­pris­es 19 in­di­vid­u­als who ar­rived through­out Sep­tem­ber, Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber. 

 “We are cur­rent­ly seek­ing an­swers from the First Sec­ond and Third Named De­fen­dants as to why there has been no ac­knowl­edge­ment of ser­vice of any of our pro­ceed­ings in keep­ing with the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules (1998) in this tech­no­log­i­cal age, as well as why there seems to be the flout­ing of the court’s or­ders,” his state­ment added.

Up to late Sat­ur­day, it could not be con­firmed whether the 19 im­mi­grants who re­port­ed­ly re­ceived the stay of de­por­ta­tion were among the 160 sent back.

Young's me­dia re­lease stat­ed that the 160 Venezue­lans had been de­port­ed from this coun­try "in con­junc­tion with Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties." The re­lease gave the as­sur­ance that the ex­er­cise had been "car­ried out in com­pli­ance" with this coun­try's laws and the "ful­fil­ment of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy."

The re­lease ap­peared, how­ev­er, to be vague at best as it failed to give a com­pre­hen­sive break down of the num­bers and which lo­ca­tions they had been tak­en from be­fore they were de­port­ed.

Im­mi­gra­tion sources con­firmed to the Sun­day Guardian that at least 46 Venezue­lan im­mi­grants, some who had over­stayed their time in this coun­try and oth­ers who had en­tered T&T il­le­gal­ly, were whisked away from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC) ear­ly Sat­ur­day around 6 am.

Sources said that 20 Venezue­lan males and 26 Venezue­lan fe­males were tak­en from the fa­cil­i­ty and lat­er trans­port­ed by bus­es to the Coast Guard base in Ch­aguara­mas "where they were processed and lat­er placed on a ves­sel bound for Venezuela with sev­er­al oth­ers."

That par­tic­u­lar ex­er­cise at the IDC was over­seen by Im­mi­gra­tion Four Of­fi­cer Har­ri­cou.

Sources al­so said that sev­er­al Venezue­lans who were be­ing de­tained in Ch­aguara­mas were al­so placed aboard the ves­sel.

Young, in the re­lease, added that in 2019 the Gov­ern­ment in an “un­prece­dent­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an ex­er­cise,” hav­ing con­cern for T&T’s Venezue­lan neigh­bours, car­ried out a Venezue­lan Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Ex­er­cise for all Venezue­lans present in T&T. The re­sult of this ex­er­cise, he said, was that 16,523 Venezue­lans were reg­is­tered and per­mit­ted to be legal­ly in T&T.

“While the Gov­ern­ment ac­knowl­edges that there may be per­son­al views sur­round­ing the il­le­gal en­try in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go by per­sons, the Gov­ern­ment, through the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er arms of the state, will con­tin­ue to ap­ply the laws and do all that it rea­son­ably can to se­cure the bor­ders and pre­vent il­le­gal en­try in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Young said the mea­sures be­ing tak­en, in­clud­ing the clo­sure of T&T's bor­ders, are to pro­tect the health and safe­ty of T&T's cit­i­zens and those who are here legal­ly in T&T.

Ri­ley told the Sun­day Guardian that if the mi­grants are be­ing de­port­ed with­out due process, then their hu­man rights are be­ing de­nied.

 "This is re­al­ly an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion as there are peo­ple be­ing de­port­ed with­out due process. This goes against fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights. It is a sad sit­u­a­tion.”