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Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Govt tackling illegal immigrants

Coast Guard gets back 14 interceptors

by

Gail Alexander
2482 days ago
20181108
Coast Guard vessels in Staubles Bay, Chaguaramas.

Coast Guard vessels in Staubles Bay, Chaguaramas.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

The T&T Coast Guard’s will re­gain use of more in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels for in­creased bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and the po­lice are get­ting premis­es to call “home.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced these de­vel­op­ments at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

Com­ment­ing on the re­cent dis­cov­ery of il­le­gal im­mi­grants en­ter­ing T&T through Los Iros and pos­si­bly oth­er il­la­gal ports of en­try, Young said he’d since asked au­thor­i­ties for struc­tures and plans to in­crease bor­der se­cu­ri­ty.

Con­se­quent­ly, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives will in­volve get­ting 14 Coast Guard in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels back up and run­ning in the short­est time.

He said when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­cent­ly vis­it­ed Coast Guard head­quar­ters, it was learnt that many of the Coast Guard’s 25 in­ter­cep­tors weren’t work­ing.

The cost of get­ting the 14 boats back in­to ser­vice is $6 mil­lion. They will bring to 19 the to­tal num­ber of work­ing in­ter­cep­tors. He said they’ll be strate­gi­cal­ly placed along T&T’s coast on the ba­sis of in­tel­li­gence re­ports, among plans to de­fend the porous bor­ders.

Young ad­mit­ted there are some de­fi­cien­cies in bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, hence need for the in­ter­cep­tors.

“But there are al­so oth­er things we’re do­ing. What will hap­pen is in­tel­li­gence dri­ven,” Young said.

All agen­cies are al­so in­creas­ing pa­trols and process­es. Im­mi­gra­tion is al­so do­ing so, po­lice raids are on and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Venezue­lan coun­ter­parts are al­so on­go­ing, Young said.

Young al­so said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day agreed to give the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­SWA) state land with build­ings on it.

“For many years pri­or, the as­so­ci­a­tion had been look­ing for a home. We ap­pre­ci­ate the job po­lice­men and women do in the ser­vice and the stress­es and rigours they go through dai­ly,” he said.

“TTP­SWA will use the build­ings there and con­struct an area for mem­bers to come to ex­er­cise, meet and as­so­ciate with each oth­er— ba­si­cal­ly a safe zone for po­lice to have well­ness in their lives. They can build their own head­quar­ters, well­ness fa­cil­i­ty and as­sets that will help the ser­vice.”

Young al­so said there was no in­for­ma­tion con­nect­ing any of the re­cent homi­cides. Fol­low­ing some mur­ders, in­clud­ing three dou­ble mur­ders with­in days of each oth­er, he said an emer­gency meet­ing was held last Sat­ur­day and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil met on Wednes­day with all 28 po­lice di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders.

Young added a re­cent “Busi­ness In­sid­er” ar­ti­cle rank­ing T&T as the 12th most dan­ger­ous place glob­al­ly had no com­par­a­tive analy­sis with oth­er states and was sim­ply so­cial me­dia “click bait.”

“...That (re­port) looks le­git­i­mate but is re­al­ly mis­chief,” Young said.


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