Ot­to Car­ring­ton

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.