An application by a 17-year-old minor to enter Trinidad and Tobago has been dismissed by High Court Judge Justice Ricky Rahim, clearing the way for Immigration Division officials who had denied him entry to deport him. The minor’s father is a T&T-born national who is considered a terrorist by both the United States and Trinidad and Tobago.
According to court filings obtained by Guardian Media, the teenager and a United States social worker, who was escorting him to T&T to visit his mother for two months, were refused entry after arriving on a flight from New York on Saturday. Both were subsequently detained.
The teenager, who is a US citizen, and his six siblings were allegedly taken to Syria by his father, who holds dual citizenship, in 2015.
In March 2019, his father and older brother were detained after surrendering in Baghuz, Syria and were taken to the US, where they were convicted of terrorism offences and sentenced to prison terms.
The teenager was also transferred to the US, where he was placed in foster care.
Attached to his lawsuit were documents from a US court granting the teenager permission to visit his mother in T&T.
In the lawsuit, the teenager’s lawyers, Criston J Williams and Celeste St Louis, claimed immigration officials at the Piarco International Airport did not follow the correct process in rejecting the teenager’s entry into the country.
They claimed that while his father and brother have been deemed terrorists locally, he was not and could not be considered to be within a class of persons prohibited from entering T&T.
Rahim said the teen had the opportunity to let the immigration officer know he wanted to challenge the rejection notice, since the procedure is set out in the order. He said if he had done so, it would have led to the special inquiry he wanted and also given him an opportunity to provide further proof he was entitled to enter the country.
Rejecting an argument that the teen was not told he could “appeal” the rejection order, the judge said he was accompanied by an adult – a social worker from the US – whose duty it was to assist him.
A summary of Justice Rahim’s ruling noted that it was in the teen’s interest to have the return process not unreasonably delayed so that the trauma of the event may be ended sooner rather than later, noting that the teenager had failed to prove he was of T&T descent.
In addition, he cited the teen’s trip to Syria at the age of seven as an indication that he has also been trained in or engaged in warfare or terrorism.
But Rahim said this had no bearing on the denial of entry.
“As far as the court is concerned, the relevance of the information lies more...with the hardship and indescribable long-lasting trauma that the minor must have endured having been plucked from normal living at the age of seven and placed in a country ravaged by a war in which he may have been made to participate.”
On Monday, Rahim is expected to rule on the issue of costs and a separate application filed by the State for a wasted-cost order.
The Immigration Division and the Chief Immigration Officer were represented by attorneys Gregory Delzin, Domonique Bernard and Jinai Chong Sing.
Efforts to contact the minor’s mother and stepfather, who are in Trinidad were unsuccessful yesterday, as calls went unanswered.