A video now cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia of the group of Venezue­lan mi­grants de­tained short­ly af­ter they came ashore at Los Iros on Tues­day af­ter­noon, shows chil­dren and adults crowd­ed in­to one cell at a po­lice sta­tion.

A lo­cal at­tor­ney, who con­firmed the au­then­tic­i­ty of the video, said it was filmed by one of the mi­grants. He said they are de­tained at the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion.

The Span­ish-speak­ing woman record­ing the video is heard say­ing: “We are all in the same cell—24 peo­ple.”

The video was shared by Venezue­lan jour­nal­ist Ser­gio Nov­el­li via his Twit­ter ac­count and has been post­ed by news out­lets in that coun­try, where re­ports of the de­por­ta­tion saga in­volv­ing the mi­grant chil­dren has been wide­ly shared.

The woman de­scribes con­di­tions in the cell and re­ports that one of the mi­grants is suf­fer­ing from back pains and “has not stopped cry­ing be­cause of his pain.” She al­so said some of the oth­ers are ill, in­clud­ing the four-month-old ba­by, who has a fever.

“We are all here beg­ging the Lord to get us out of this cell,” the women said.

An ac­tivist with the Venezue­lan NGO Foro Pe­nal, Or­lan­do Moreno, said af­ter the de­por­ta­tions on Sun­day the group went to an in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ty in the town of Bar­ra de Cocuina on Venezuela’s east coast be­fore re­turn­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The is­sue has been wide­ly re­port­ed in the me­dia there.

The Com­mis­sion­er for For­eign Re­la­tions in Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion-con­trolled Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, Julio Borges, said a for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been sent to T&T For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Brown about the de­por­ta­tion.

It states: “On be­half of the in­ter­im gov­ern­ment of Venezuela, we re­spect­ful­ly de­mand the ini­ti­a­tion of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of these facts by the com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ties of your coun­try, and like the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights, we urge them to guar­an­tee the in­ter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion of in ac­cor­dance with the prac­tice recog­nised by the States and in­ter­na­tion­al treaties in force and bind­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go, to the peo­ple who ar­rive in its ter­ri­to­ry whose hu­man rights are vi­o­lat­ed by the pre­vail­ing dic­ta­tor­ship in Venezuela.”