Less than 20 out of the 143 Venezue­lan mi­grants who are de­tained at the He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas are said to have signed vol­un­tary de­por­ta­tion forms hand­ed out to them by of­fi­cials of the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain.

This was con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia by some­one close to the sit­u­a­tion on Sat­ur­day.

An of­fi­cial from the Em­bassy, who did not wish to be named, said that from Thurs­day to Fri­day, of­fi­cials from the Em­bassy were al­lowed in­to the He­li­port to meet with the mi­grants.

“They went in to do a con­sen­sus to see how many of them will be will­ing to go back and to sign the vol­un­tary de­por­ta­tion forms. But on­ly just about 12 to 20 of them signed. The ma­jor­i­ty of them said they want to meet with their at­tor­neys be­cause they do not want to go back to Venezuela,” the of­fi­cial said.

“So, I think be­cause a small amount of them signed there may be dif­fi­cul­ties for the gov­ern­ment here to de­port them be­cause they work with a spe­cif­ic num­ber and more. For in­stance, the last de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise they did was 80 of them,” the source said.

A few days ago, the 143 Venezue­lan mi­grant de­tainees re­leased a video mes­sage plead­ing with the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to as­sist them.

They al­so ques­tioned the im­mi­gra­tion process and treat­ment to­wards mi­grants in T&T.

The group said they want to know if there is a de­por­ta­tion or­der or if they have “an op­por­tu­ni­ty to due process with­out fear.”

The group al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the Venezue­lan Em­bassy.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly we are faced with a Venezue­lan Em­bassy that on­ly al­lows us to gain ac­cess to our doc­u­men­ta­tion, it’s im­por­tant to note that the Venezue­lan Em­bassy has vis­it­ed us twice, they have prop­er­ly iden­ti­fied every sin­gle one of us de­tained at the He­li­port, they came, took pic­tures of each of us in­di­vid­u­al­ly and know who we are. They still haven’t done any­thing for us,” a spokesper­son for the group said.

“It is for this rea­son that we re­spect­ful­ly ask the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to help us to seek an an­swer with re­gards to our hu­man rights to which we are all en­ti­tled and should be re­spect­ed,” he added.

On Ju­ly 9, close to 200 mi­grants were held dur­ing a raid at a bar in St James.

A spokesper­son for the group called for com­pas­sion from lo­cal au­thor­i­ties.

“We ask our­selves where is the hu­man­i­ty of this coun­try called Trinidad & To­ba­go, we would like to un­der­stand what is the grave dam­age we have done to be treat­ed this way.”

The spokesper­son was speak­ing via a record­ing done on a cell­phone that was re­leased to Guardian Me­dia.

Sev­er­al lo­cal Venezue­lan ac­tivists and at­tor­ney Criston J Williams have been seek­ing the in­ter­ests of the mi­grants and mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion on their be­half.

The mi­grants have asked that un­til their sit­u­a­tion is sort­ed out through le­gal chan­nels, they be treat­ed more hu­mane­ly.

“It’s im­por­tant for you to un­der­stand that we are all hu­man, just like all of you. It is un­jus­ti­fi­able that some of the pop­u­la­tion of mi­grants that are in­side the He­li­port (we) are sick and have fever, in­fec­tions and flu­like symp­toms. Plus there is a par­tic­u­lar case of a woman who is with us locked up here in the he­li­port that had a mis­car­riage and did not get the med­ical at­ten­tion need­ed, the au­thor­i­ties went as far as mock­ing her when she was plead­ing for her child’s life. We still do not un­der­stand the fi­nal­i­ty of Im­mi­gra­tion of hav­ing us de­tained for ten days, ei­ther they charge us, de­port us or re­lease us,” the spokesper­son said.

The mi­grants said their on­ly crime was that some had no doc­u­men­ta­tion, “even though all of us here have an UN­HCR card and were UN­HCR/Liv­ing Wa­ters reg­is­tered.”

In­side the He­li­port there are 72 men and 71 women.

Ef­forts to reach an of­fi­cial from the Venezue­lan Em­bassy for com­ment proved fu­tile.