RHON­DOR DOWLAT and

AN­NA LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porters

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

an­na-lisa.paul@ guardian.co.tt

For the past 16 days, Miri­an­nys Her­nan­dez has re­mained with­out med­ica­tion for a com­mon flu she con­tract­ed short­ly af­ter be­ing de­tained at the He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas.

Her­nan­dez was one of the first three mi­grants to be re­leased on Mon­day night. How­ev­er, she and the oth­ers were on­ly al­lowed to leave at sun­rise yes­ter­day.

Up to late yes­ter­day, of the 143 mi­grants de­tained, eight of them have so far been re­leased—five women and three men.

Speak­ing through an in­ter­preter with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter her re­lease, Her­nan­dez, who did not want to be pho­tographed, said she rushed home to be re­unit­ed with her two chil­dren, whom she had left in the care of her 16-year-old niece.

She said, “It was hard for my niece, but my friends and neigh­bours ei­ther gave her food to cook for her and the chil­dren or gave her cooked food.

“I was one among so many peo­ple that were de­tained in St James on Ju­ly 9. I was one of those who got a fever, a ter­ri­ble flu and I still have not re­cov­ered from the loss of my voice due to the flu. I’m bet­ter now that I’m out be­cause I can get meds.”

Her­nan­dez added, “Our fam­i­ly and friends took med­i­cines for us while we were in there but many of us did not get it as it was con­fis­cat­ed. They on­ly gave us meds when they felt to. Mind you, these are the meds brought to the He­li­port by our friends. They wouldn’t give us the meds when re­quest­ed and that is just the com­mon cold meds,” she claimed.

“There were no doc­tors, medics, nurs­es that came to at­tend to us since Ju­ly 9. Up­on en­ter­ing the He­li­port we on­ly got a COVID test.”

Speak­ing on be­half of the woman who suf­fered a mis­car­riage while in de­ten­tion last week, Her­nan­dez claimed she was al­so not giv­en prop­er med­ical at­ten­tion.

“While that was hap­pen­ing we asked for help an of­fi­cer mocked us and laughed very shame­less­ly, the lack of at­ten­tion for the old­er ladies who are there, some with high blood pres­sure, low blood pres­sure, was ter­ri­ble,” she fur­ther claimed.

She, how­ev­er, not­ed that there were of­fi­cers who were kind and co­op­er­at­ed with them, but ex­pressed dis­gust by the way they were treat­ed by cer­tain of­fi­cials from the Venezue­lan Em­bassy.

On Tues­day morn­ing, mem­bers of the T&T Coast Guard were a bit con­cerned at Guardian Me­dia’s pres­ence in the vicin­i­ty of the He­li­port and ex­pressed con­cerns about se­cu­ri­ty. They asked the news team not to video record or take “close up” pho­tographs of the He­li­port.

Mean­while, un­will­ing to delve any fur­ther in­to what led to their re­lease af­ter 16 days in cus­tody, sis­ters Dios­maris del Car­men Mejias Tor­tolero, 37; and De­siree del Car­men Mejias; 35; along with Maria Her­rera, 28; had plead­ed for le­nien­cy and com­pas­sion on Mon­day as they begged to see their young chil­dren.

The three wept and hugged their loved ones tight­ly as they re­turned home yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Say­ing they had been “ter­ri­bly scarred” by the sit­u­a­tion, the sis­ters ex­pressed re­lief at be­ing able to hug their chil­dren once again.

Ex­press­ing hor­ror and dis­gust over the un­san­i­tary con­di­tions at the He­li­port, one of the women said, “It was ex­treme­ly un­san­i­tary and un­hy­gien­ic.”

The group said sev­er­al peo­ple con­tract­ed the flu which then spread rapid­ly as they were all kept in close quar­ters. They claimed that up­on re­quest­ing med­ica­tion from their fam­i­lies, it was tak­en by the of­fi­cers and dis­trib­uted freely.

“The per­sons who the med­ica­tion was in­tend­ed for, nev­er got it. What the au­thor­i­ties did was share the med­ica­tion for every­one who pre­sent­ed with the virus.”

Ex­press­ing con­cerns that they have not been able to meet their 70 clients since they were ini­tial­ly de­tained on Ju­ly 9 dur­ing a raid at the Apex Bar, St James, at­tor­ney Criston J Williams said he in­tend­ed to write Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to in­di­cate that the mi­grants that re­mained in cus­tody would be ap­ply­ing for refugee sta­tus.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Williams com­mend­ed fel­low at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen for se­cur­ing the re­lease of the eight mi­grants yes­ter­day morn­ing.

How­ev­er, he asked, “What about the oth­er per­sons who are present there? And how do we stop their de­por­ta­tion in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame?”

Williams said he was not con­fi­dent the au­thor­i­ties would abide by the wish­es of the ma­jor­i­ty of the mi­grants who have in­di­cat­ed they do not wish to be sent back to Venezuela.

Seat­ed next to ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­les, Williams said their next step was to pro­vide Hinds with a spread-sheet of the list of mi­grants whom they are rep­re­sent­ing and sim­ply re­quest they not be de­port­ed.

Gon­za­les, mean­while, said the The­mas Foun­da­tion of the Amer­i­c­as con­tin­ued to work with the mi­grants to high­light the un­san­i­tary con­di­tions.

Ques­tions sent to the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Dr Amery Brown, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and the UN­HCR on the mat­ter sur­round­ing the pend­ing de­por­ta­tion of over 100 mi­grants and how it will af­fect T&T’s in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, in­ter­na­tion­al fund­ing, the al­leged in­fringe­ment of hu­man rights and the is­sue of refugee and asy­lum seek­ers sta­tus in T&T were not an­swered up to late yes­ter­day.