Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds is staunch­ly con­demn­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s hard­line stance on Venezue­lan mi­grants, de­scrib­ing it as a cheap po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy. He said it was dan­ger­ous to so­ci­ety with the po­ten­tial to spread un­war­rant­ed hate and anger.

Hinds told Guardian Me­dia that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments have proven once again to him that she is, “noth­ing more than a po­lit­i­cal crus­tacean and scraper.”

He even went as far as to com­pare her “reck­less out­burst” to mim­ic­k­ing a Don­ald Trump-style of pol­i­tics.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar warned Venezue­lan mi­grants to be­have or be de­port­ed. She said every day for the last year, there were re­ports of vi­o­lent crimes be­ing com­mit­ted by il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants against cit­i­zens and promised that the UNC gov­ern­ment would take ag­gres­sive ac­tion if that does not change. The Op­po­si­tion Leader lament­ed that the UNC has re­peat­ed­ly called for a clear mi­grant pol­i­cy to be im­ple­ment­ed by the State.

How­ev­er, Hinds said the Gov­ern­ment al­ready has a pol­i­cy in place, and there­fore the Op­po­si­tion Leader is call­ing for some­thing that al­ready ex­ists.

“And there­fore her in­ter­ven­tion now, ob­vi­ous­ly aimed at scrap­ing votes, be­cause, as you would know, in pre­vi­ous com­men­taries she was quite sym­pa­thet­ic to them. Every­thing she is say­ing now is con­trary to what she had pre­vi­ous­ly said, un­der­scor­ing the fact that for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar would tell lies; she would twist her socks more than her shoe,” Hinds said.

Hinds said the process of de­port­ing il­le­gal mi­grants was as “old as Methuse­lah.” “We made it very clear; we ar­tic­u­lat­ed it in doc­u­men­tary form in the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work (MRF), so that is not new, that has been the case. And on a dai­ly ba­sis, I sign, among oth­er things, de­por­ta­tion or­ders for those per­sons who do not de­serve the pro­tec­tion of the law and the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing Venezue­lans, and some of them, be­cause they in­fringed the laws of T&T, we have been de­port­ing Venezue­lans on an on­go­ing ba­sis,” Hinds added.

This was echoed by For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne, who post­ed on X, “The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has con­tin­u­ous­ly been de­port­ing Venezue­lan na­tion­als who break the laws of T&T while here.”

He added that the Op­po­si­tion Leader wants to do what is al­ready be­ing done. Re­spond­ing to his post was Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who post­ed, “Mad­ness. She pre­vi­ous­ly de­mand­ed that we ac­cept all of them carte blanche with­out ques­tion. Now, all of a sud­den, she wants to de­port them en masse?”

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter be­lieves the vot­ing pub­lic will see through her strat­e­gy. “She’s on­ly do­ing it in her des­per­ate search for votes on the premise that she would form the next gov­ern­ment. But Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans are far wis­er and sharp­er than that, and they know the threat that Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the UNC pose to them, and just like 2015 and just like 2020, they are go­ing to re­ject them in 2025,” he said firm­ly.

Hinds al­so be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion will in­stil hate and anger in so­ci­ety even against those he de­scribed as the law­ful­ly present Venezue­lan mi­grants.

“And to be politi­cis­ing a well-es­tab­lished pol­i­cy that is in prac­tice in this coun­try, what she has al­so done is gen­er­ate hate and anger on the part of some peo­ple in T&T to­wards the mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing those who are law­ful­ly reg­is­tered and en­ti­tled on the gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy to be here,” he ar­gued.

Elab­o­rat­ing on how his gov­ern­ment han­dled the mi­gra­tion wave of 2018, Hinds un­der­scored that the gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy on Venezue­lan mi­grants and mi­grants gen­er­al­ly was well es­tab­lished.

Hinds said it was worth know­ing that DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin has pre­vi­ous­ly em­pha­sised the po­lice’s com­mit­ment to jus­tice, re­gard­less of the na­tion­al­i­ty of the per­pe­tra­tors.

An­a­lysts weigh in

Ram­samooj crit­i­cis­es Per­sad-Bisses­sar

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj strong­ly crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion on mi­gra­tion, say­ing pol­i­tics in this so­ci­ety is not an all-fours game of play­ing ‘Trump’ and every­one else fol­low­ing suit.

“It is a sad day when our po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship prac­tices ex­clu­sion as op­posed to in­clu­sion. The is­sue is the mon­ey laun­der­ers, drug trade, and com­pa­nies who have le­git­imised ill-got­ten gains in the bank­ing sys­tem; that is where the re­al crim­i­nal­i­ty in our so­ci­ety ex­ists. How many cam­paign fi­nanciers of ques­tion­able in­come sources par­tic­i­pate in cam­paign fi­nance?” he added.

Ram­samooj al­so ques­tioned if the Op­po­si­tion Leader was in­tent on break­ing up fam­i­lies.

“Is the leader of the Op­po­si­tion say­ing that she is pre­pared to re­move the chil­dren of the Venezue­lans who may have been born here back to Venezuela? Dur­ing this last wave of Venezue­lan mi­gra­tion, the num­ber of chil­dren born to Venezue­lan par­ents may have a le­git­i­mate right to be here. Is she ad­vo­cat­ing her will­ing­ness to break up fam­i­lies by leav­ing chil­dren here and send­ing their par­ents back home?” he asked.

The po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst said peo­ple must re­mem­ber that this na­tion was built on the back of mi­gra­tion.

He ad­vised Per­sad-Bisses­sar to fo­cus on the more per­ti­nent is­sues af­fect­ing this so­ci­ety.

“At­tempt­ing to be a politi­cian prac­tis­ing pop­ulism when you fail to ad­dress na­tion­al is­sues of crime in our so­ci­ety and your plans for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion be­ing brought to pub­lic scruti­ny is much more im­por­tant to in­flu­enc­ing vot­ers than prac­tis­ing xeno­pho­bic pol­i­tics,” he said.

Mo­hammed: Kam­la may see some gains

How­ev­er, an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst thinks that Per­sad-Bisses­sar may see some gains af­ter her now-con­tro­ver­sial state­ments. Dr Shane Mo­hammed be­lieves the Op­po­si­tion Leader needs to elab­o­rate more on her im­ple­men­ta­tion plan.

“Trump has a very ro­bust plan. This is part of a plan that I be­lieve is the end prod­uct. I be­lieve it should be ar­tic­u­lat­ed fur­ther where­by a sys­tem of checks and bal­ances is put in place to en­sure our im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy is more than just a re­volv­ing door of de­port­ed to­day–re­turn in two days. So, for ex­am­ple, visa re­quire­ments, stronger bor­der con­trol, and syn­chro­ni­sa­tion of state agen­cies,” Mo­hammed added, “It may work here to some ex­tent based on a per­son’s per­spec­tives of the ex­is­tence of the Venezue­lans in the coun­try. So, are they a threat to our do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty as cit­i­zens? Are they threat­en­ing fam­i­ly life? Are they a drain on our econ­o­my? Are they con­tribut­ing to our eco­nom­ic growth? Those an­swers will on­ly come with an ef­fec­tive plan to as­cer­tain how many are ac­tu­al­ly here. And how can they make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to so­ci­ety as op­posed to ex­ist­ing as a sub­set and not pay­ing their dues via tax­es?”