Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A heat­ed de­bate erupt­ed in the Sen­ate on Wednes­day night, over the re­turn of T&T’s for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers (FTFs) and their chil­dren, as law­mak­ers con­sid­ered the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (Cit­i­zen­ship) Bill, 2025.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi SC warned the leg­is­la­tion could cre­ate an “open flood­gate” for crim­i­nals, de­por­tees, state­less per­sons and po­ten­tial FTFs to gain cit­i­zen­ship. He said courts abroad had been en­quir­ing about T&T’s po­si­tion on the chil­dren of FTFs and how they might ac­quire cit­i­zen­ship or re­turn here.

Al-Rawi ques­tioned what he de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s “rush” to pass the bill.

“The mis­chief in the bill comes about in the need for greater analy­sis of the im­pact of grand­par­ents by way of de­scent,” he said, point­ing to the need for con­sul­ta­tions with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, in­ter­na­tion­al an­ti-ter­ror­ism agen­cies and even tax­a­tion reg­u­la­tors un­der the Glob­al Fo­rum and Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force.

He added that one of the bill’s “very re­al mis­chiefs” in­volved state­less per­sons whose lin­eage could be traced back to T&T.

“I have per­son­al­ly, in an­oth­er ca­pac­i­ty, dealt with is­sues of courts abroad mak­ing en­quiries of T&T and our po­si­tion in re­la­tion to chil­dren of for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers and how they ac­quire cit­i­zen­ship or re­turn to T&T,” he said.

“That puts us in a co­nun­drum as we treat with in­ter­na­tion­al law, split be­tween law of the blood and place of birth.”

Al-Rawi al­so high­light­ed pro­vi­sions al­low­ing the loss of cit­i­zen­ship ob­tained by fraud or mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, but not­ed the ab­sence of a mech­a­nism to de­ny cit­i­zen­ship to “un­de­sir­ables” as ref­er­enced in the Im­mi­gra­tion Act.

“Crim­i­nals, de­por­tees, state­less peo­ple, po­ten­tial for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers are all re­ceiv­ing an open flood­gate to T&T. What ap­pears to be good to­day re­quires deep­er re­flec­tion,” he warned.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote pushed back, ac­cus­ing col­leagues of “fear­mon­ger­ing.” While she did not sup­port the bill, she urged sen­a­tors to fo­cus on its ac­tu­al pro­vi­sions.

“Could we just stop the fear­mon­ger­ing? When I hear col­leagues talk­ing about ‘Well, you know, for­eign fight­ers, their chil­dren will come back’—if those for­eign fight­ers were T&T cit­i­zens, their chil­dren are cit­i­zens of T&T,” she said.

“As I un­der­stand it, some of them are al­ready back. Let’s put aside the fear­mon­ger­ing.”

Chote ar­gued that chil­dren should not be stig­ma­tised for their par­ents’ ac­tions.

“De­por­tees were de­port­ed pre­sum­ably be­cause they’re T&T cit­i­zens—their chil­dren would be T&T cit­i­zens. Not be­cause their par­ents com­mit­ted crimes does it mean their chil­dren should be stig­ma­tised,” she said.

“Let’s lift our game a bit and try to look at what is ac­tu­al­ly be­fore us for con­sid­er­a­tion and speak to that.”

The bill, which ex­pands el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for cit­i­zen­ship to per­sons born out­side T&T once their grand­par­ents were born here, was passed in the Sen­ate with all Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors and tem­po­rary In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Wes­ley Gib­bings vot­ing in favour. The six Op­po­si­tion PNM sen­a­tors and sev­en of the nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it, while In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish ab­stained. The leg­is­la­tion was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week.

Be­tween 2012 and 2015, an es­ti­mat­ed 130 na­tion­als trav­elled to Mid­dle East con­flict zones to join the Is­lam­ic State ter­ror­ist group. Af­ter ISIS’s de­feat in 2018, sur­viv­ing FTFs, in­clud­ing those from T&T, were housed in refugee camps in Syr­ia and Iraq.

Since 2020, lo­cal rel­a­tives have been seek­ing to repa­tri­ate about 25 women and 75 chil­dren. US Cen­tral Com­mand has re­peat­ed­ly urged coun­tries to bring home their cit­i­zens due to high risks of rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion in the camps.