Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Garvin Heer­ah says there is an ur­gent need for a co­or­di­nat­ed Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy on how to ad­dress con­cerns of de­por­tees from the US.

Heer­ah’s com­ments come as the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry last Sat­ur­day is­sued a press re­lease stat­ing that 21 na­tion­als are due to be de­port­ed back to T&T this Fri­day.

The re­turn­ing in­di­vid­u­als—17 men and four women—are cur­rent­ly in US im­mi­gra­tion cus­tody. The US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE) re­quest­ed a sin­gle char­ter flight to Port-of-Spain as an ef­fi­cient means to repa­tri­ate the group. This is the sec­ond batch of de­por­tees af­ter 11 were de­port­ed on March 28.

Heer­ah said, “At present, our ex­ist­ing sys­tems are not equipped to ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress the full spec­trum of is­sues sur­round­ing these re­turns, which go far be­yond air­port in­ter­views or ba­sic im­mi­gra­tion pro­cess­ing. A co­or­di­nat­ed, mul­ti-agency ap­proach—one that in­cludes Im­mi­gra­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Health, So­cial Ser­vices, Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence, and In­ter­na­tion­al Li­ai­son—is im­per­a­tive.”

Heer­ah spoke with Guardian Me­dia as Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge met with the ex­ec­u­tive of the Vi­sion on Mis­sion NGO to ad­dress the de­por­ta­tion is­sue.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the meet­ing, CEO of Vi­sion on Mis­sion, Giselle Chance, said her or­gan­i­sa­tion had the ca­pac­i­ty for ten de­por­tees, with dis­cus­sions on al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tions be­ing raised in the meet­ing.

She en­cour­aged the pub­lic to give the de­por­tees “a chance”, high­light­ing the con­cerns of some about in­creased crime be­cause of them.

“We want per­sons to lend sup­port, es­pe­cial­ly fa­mil­ial sup­port. Al­so, un­der­stand that these per­sons are com­ing back, and dis­crim­i­na­tion is a ma­jor is­sue be­cause of the crime sit­u­a­tion. Please, give them a chance in the first in­stance to be able to suc­cess­ful­ly rein­te­grate back in­to so­ci­ety. Al­so, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is on cit­i­zens to en­sure that if you know you have a rel­a­tive that’s re­turn­ing that’s in­volved in crime, you have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to al­so make the nec­es­sary re­ports to the TTPS and al­so to en­sure that you do not be­come in­volved in aid­ing and abet­ting and con­tin­u­ing their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. We want to en­cour­age you to en­cour­age them to reach out to Vi­sion on Mis­sion.”

While they are yet to de­ter­mine who will need as­sis­tance from Vi­sion on Mis­sion, the ex­ec­u­tive says they are aware of who is be­ing de­port­ed but did not have the list of of­fences com­mit­ted by the de­por­tees.

Heer­ah said this de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise can pro­vide the coun­try with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op a mod­el for man­ag­ing such a com­plex chal­lenge. He added that many na­tions fal­tered by adopt­ing re­ac­tive, dis­joint­ed, and un­der-re­sourced re­spons­es to sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions.

“Fail­ure to act de­ci­sive­ly could re­sult in in­creased crime, so­cial in­sta­bil­i­ty, and rep­u­ta­tion­al risks. As a re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert, I urge the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, to act swift­ly in es­tab­lish­ing the mech­a­nisms re­quired to man­age these repa­tri­a­tions re­spon­si­bly and strate­gi­cal­ly,” he warned.

Sturge told Guardian Me­dia that there will be an­oth­er meet­ing to­day with the Vi­sion on Mis­sion ex­ec­u­tive and will in­clude oth­er stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Alexan­der, Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit, and high-rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.