Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has firm­ly de­nied claims that a para­mil­i­tary group en­tered Venezuela from Trinidad and To­ba­go, de­clar­ing the gov­ern­ment has seen no ev­i­dence to sup­port such as­ser­tions.

“I say cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly we have no ev­i­dence to val­i­date this at this point,” she said, ad­dress­ing re­ports cir­cu­lat­ing in both Venezue­lan and lo­cal me­dia.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred specif­i­cal­ly to a re­port in the Venezue­lan press in which the Jus­tice Min­is­ter al­leged that Trinida­di­an na­tion­al Guis Kendell Jerome had been cap­tured among the group. “Again, we have seen no ev­i­dence to sup­port the com­ments from these Venezue­lan of­fi­cials,” she said.

She al­so ad­dressed re­marks at­trib­uted to Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, where he warned: “There must be jus­tice. We are go­ing af­ter the gangs wher­ev­er they are.”

Re­spond­ing di­rect­ly to those words, the Prime Min­is­ter is­sued a stern warn­ing to Cara­cas. “To­day I want to make it very clear to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and of­fi­cials that they can do what­ev­er they want on Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry, but they can­not come here. T&T ter­ri­to­ry is off lim­its to them.”

She called on Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to re­con­sid­er any thoughts of cross­ing the bor­der. “If Mr. Ca­bel­lo’s com­ments are a re­al threat to en­ter T&T ter­ri­to­ry, they should re­con­sid­er any such in­ten­tion,” she said.

“As a re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment, we have to take all threats against any in­cur­sion in­to our ter­ri­to­ry se­ri­ous­ly,” she con­tin­ued. “I will speak to the Min­is­ter of De­fence and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to seek ad­vice on pro­tec­tions for our Coast Guard to use dead­ly force on any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel en­ter­ing T&T wa­ters from Venezuela.”

She re­it­er­at­ed that T&T will not tol­er­ate unau­tho­rised cross­ings. “Smug­gling mil­i­tary-abled men, able-bod­ied men and women—T&T is off lim­its to them.”

In light of re­cent com­ments from Venezue­lan lead­ers Nicolás Maduro and Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her gov­ern­ment must now re­assess na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. “We have to now take se­ri­ous­ly the threat by that gov­ern­ment send­ing their agents in­to our coun­try to com­mit acts that can be ad­verse to our own wel­fare.”

She added that the gov­ern­ment will re­view its ap­proach to Venezue­lan mi­grants cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly those of mil­i­tary age. “We will al­so have to take a look at how we go for­ward with Venezue­lan mi­grants here who are mil­i­tary-aged and able-bod­ied men and women. We have to take this threat se­ri­ous­ly now.”

“They have done this be­fore,” she warned. “They made sim­i­lar pro­pa­gan­da com­ments about Guyana and Colom­bia when­ev­er they had in­te­ri­or prob­lems.”