Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville

@guardian.co.tt

Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don has ex­pressed sup­port for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to de­port 200 Venezue­lans cur­rent­ly held in lo­cal pris­ons, not­ing that the move could ease strain on cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties.

On Tues­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia that the de­por­ta­tion forms part of ini­tia­tives aimed at com­bat­ing drug traf­fick­ing. The Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments fol­lowed a re­quest from Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro, who re­port­ed­ly sought T&T’s as­sis­tance in search­ing for the re­mains of 11 al­leged Tren de Aragua mem­bers killed in a US Navy strike on a sus­pect­ed drug-run­ning ves­sel.

Re­spond­ing to the de­ci­sion, Gor­don said it is nat­ur­al for gov­ern­ments to de­port for­eign­ers be­lieved to be in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and en­dorsed the mea­sure as a way to main­tain do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty.

“Many Venezue­lans con­tin­ue to do the right thing, work and con­tribute to so­ci­ety, but the 200 who need to be repa­tri­at­ed… I think it’s a move in the right di­rec­tion and it should free up some space for us at the lev­el of the prison,” he said.

While Gor­don could not pro­vide an ex­act fig­ure of Venezue­lans cur­rent­ly in lo­cal pris­ons, he said he did not be­lieve any sin­gle fa­cil­i­ty was over­bur­dened. Venezue­lan in­mates are housed in sev­er­al fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC) in Waller­field and the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port.

When asked about con­cerns that some Venezue­lans could ex­pand crim­i­nal net­works be­hind bars, Gor­don said the prison ser­vice works with oth­er arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to man­age such risks.

“It is some­thing that we try our best to man­age and cer­tain­ly will con­tin­ue to at­tempt to man­age be­cause crime is crime no mat­ter who does it. From where I sit, whether it’s Venezue­lan, Amer­i­can, lo­cal, or who­ev­er, if they find them­selves be­hind the bars of lo­cal pris­ons, we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to treat with them,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde for com­ment, but he was un­avail­able up to press time.