Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Of­fice of the Om­buds­man has up­held the Min­istry of Civ­il Avi­a­tion’s de­ci­sion to with­hold records re­lat­ing to Unit­ed States mil­i­tary flights through Trinidad and To­ba­go, rul­ing there is no ba­sis to rec­om­mend dis­clo­sure un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA).

In a let­ter dat­ed April 27, 2026, Om­buds­man Jacqui Samp­son Meiguel said she had re­viewed Guardian Me­dia’s com­plaint over the min­istry’s re­fusal to re­lease doc­u­ments con­cern­ing for­eign mil­i­tary air­craft op­er­at­ing in T&T be­tween Oc­to­ber 2025 and Jan­u­ary 2026.

The com­plaint cen­tred on three cat­e­gories of records: air traf­fic con­trol tran­scripts, flight logs and com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­lat­ing to for­eign mil­i­tary air­craft, as well as records show­ing ap­provals or re­quests by for­eign mil­i­taries to use T&T’s air­space, air­ports or oth­er fa­cil­i­ties.

Af­ter re­view­ing the min­istry’s po­si­tion, the Om­buds­man ac­cept­ed its ar­gu­ments for with­hold­ing the doc­u­ments.

“Hav­ing re­viewed the min­istry’s re­sponse, I am sat­is­fied that the rea­sons and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions ad­vanced for the non-dis­clo­sure of items 1-3 are ra­tio­nal,” Samp­son Meiguel wrote.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, I am not mind­ed to make any rec­om­men­da­tions for dis­clo­sure in this mat­ter.”

The rul­ing ef­fec­tive­ly clos­es the Om­buds­man’s re­view, al­though Guardian Me­dia re­tains the op­tion of ap­ply­ing to the High Court for ju­di­cial re­view.

In late 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­proved re­quests for US mil­i­tary air­craft to tran­sit through lo­cal air­ports.

Al­so in late 2025, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­knowl­edged that at least 100 US Marines had been in the coun­try in con­nec­tion with the in­stal­la­tion of a tem­po­rary US radar sys­tem in To­ba­go, which the Gov­ern­ment said was in­tend­ed to as­sist with coun­ternar­cotics and bor­der se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions.

Min­istry cit­ed na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty

The Om­buds­man’s de­ci­sion fol­lows the min­istry’s Jan­u­ary 9 re­fusal to re­lease any of the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments.

In that re­sponse, the min­istry re­lied on Sec­tions 25, 26 and 27(1) of the FOIA, ar­gu­ing dis­clo­sure would like­ly prej­u­dice T&T’s de­fence, harm na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and re­veal in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in con­fi­dence by a for­eign gov­ern­ment.

The min­istry al­so con­firmed the mat­ter had been re­ferred to the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, where Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der signed a Cer­tifi­cate of Ex­emp­tion un­der Sec­tion 25(3) cov­er­ing air traf­fic con­trol tran­scripts, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and records re­lat­ing to for­eign mil­i­tary air­craft.

While re­fus­ing dis­clo­sure, the min­istry ac­knowl­edged that the records ex­ist.

At the time, it said it had con­sid­ered whether the pub­lic in­ter­est favoured re­lease, in­clud­ing pro­mot­ing trans­paren­cy and keep­ing the pub­lic in­formed about for­eign mil­i­tary air­craft op­er­at­ing in T&T, but con­clud­ed the se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns out­weighed those con­sid­er­a­tions.

Con­tra­dic­to­ry Gov­ern­ment re­spons­es

The re­fusal came de­spite an ear­li­er re­sponse from the Min­istry of De­fence, which told Guardian Me­dia it had found no records of re­quests by for­eign mil­i­taries to use T&T’s air­space or mar­itime zones and no records of di­rec­tives sup­port­ing for­eign mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions.

Those po­si­tions ap­peared to con­flict with a De­cem­ber 2025 state­ment from the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, which pub­licly con­firmed this coun­try had ap­proved re­quests for Unit­ed States mil­i­tary air­craft to use lo­cal air­ports “in keep­ing with es­tab­lished bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion.” The min­istry de­scribed the flights as lo­gis­ti­cal mis­sions in­volv­ing sup­ply re­plen­ish­ment and per­son­nel ro­ta­tion.

The is­sue gained greater promi­nence fol­low­ing in­ter­na­tion­al re­port­ing on in­creased Unit­ed States mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty around Venezuela be­fore the op­er­a­tion, which led to the cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

For­eign Af­fairs re­quests still un­re­solved

Guardian Me­dia has al­so been at­tempt­ing to ob­tain re­lat­ed records from the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs.

Rather than con­firm­ing whether records ex­ist­ed, the min­istry re­ject­ed the re­quest, ar­gu­ing it was too broad and in­suf­fi­cient­ly par­tic­u­larised un­der Sec­tion 13(2) of the FOIA. Of­fi­cials in­vit­ed Guardian Me­dia to sub­mit a more spe­cif­ic re­quest.

On March 25, Guardian Me­dia filed a re­vised ap­pli­ca­tion seek­ing records of diplo­mat­ic re­quests made by the US be­tween April 28, 2025 and the present for per­mis­sion to use T&T’s air­space, ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters or mar­itime zones.

On May 14, the min­istry ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt and ad­vised the re­quest had been re­ferred to its Treaties, In­ter­na­tion­al Agree­ments and Le­gal Di­vi­sion, say­ing the unit had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for FOIA mat­ters.

More than a month lat­er, no sub­stan­tive re­sponse has been re­ceived.