Act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde says he is yet to re­ceive any in­struc­tions from the Gov­ern­ment through any min­istry to be­gin pro­cess­ing Venezue­lan in­mates to fa­cil­i­tate their de­por­ta­tion from T&T.

Forde con­firmed that the prison ser­vice, as of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, had not yet re­ceived any or­ders.

“We have no such di­rec­tive.

“So if the Prime Min­is­ter would have made such a state­ment, we haven’t re­ceived any di­rec­tive thus far.”

Forde es­ti­mat­ed that close to 130 Venezue­lan na­tion­als were in cus­tody at prison fa­cil­i­ties.

He said Venezue­lan na­tion­als are al­so held at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC), Waller­field, which op­er­ates un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, and the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port, which is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the TT De­fence Force.

Forde said the mech­a­nisms be­hind the de­por­ta­tion of im­pris­oned Venezue­lan mi­grants would in­volve “ju­di­cial pro­ce­dures,” as those held would have had war­rants for their ar­rests.

He, how­ev­er, en­dorsed the de­ci­sion which was an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Tues­day, not­ing that it would ease the fi­nan­cial strain and re­duce the size of the lo­cal prison pop­u­la­tion, al­low­ing for a high­er qual­i­ty of prison man­age­ment.

“If it is the di­rec­tive of the State to de­port those per­sons who are held in our pris­ons, then I think it’s a great ini­tia­tive be­cause, as you prob­a­bly know, it’s ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20,000 to man­age an in­mate ac­cord­ing­ly, so it will re­duce our bill in terms of in­mate man­age­ment and it will al­so re­duce in­mate pop­u­la­tion.

“So, there­fore, part of the over­crowd­ing will be re­duced in some way.

“Fur­ther to that, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of those (Venezue­lan) in­mates are re­mand­ed in­mates and can fo­cus ef­forts on those who are con­vict­ed and serv­ing sen­tences.”

For­mer pres­i­dent of the Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion, Ra­jku­mar Ram­roop, al­so en­dorsed the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to de­port im­pris­oned mi­grants as he felt the re­sources and ef­forts re­quired to house them would best be in­vest­ed in oth­er ar­eas.

“Some of these il­le­gal Venezue­lans are mem­bers of gangs, and this is our great­est prob­lem.

“The T&T prison sys­tem is al­ready fac­ing a myr­i­ad of prob­lems; why add more prob­lems?” Ram­roop asked via email.