JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Sev­en Tri­nis have been placed on the US “Worst of the Worst” list for crimes that in­clude rape and drug pos­ses­sion, af­ter be­ing held by Unit­ed States Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE).

The men’s names, pho­tos, and con­vic­tions were post­ed on the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (DHS) site af­ter they were held re­cent­ly.

“DHS is tar­get­ing the worst of the worst. Be­low are more ex­am­ples of ar­rests ICE made across the coun­try over the week­end,” it stat­ed on the web­site above the names and pho­tos of the men.

The men are Alvin Hen­ry, Michael Flan­ders, John Tenia, Nealon Hy­po­lite, An­drew Lo­gan, Joshua Plen­tie, and Ri­car­do Wal­dron. Hen­ry was con­vict­ed of statu­to­ry rape, while Flan­ders was con­vict­ed of weapon pos­ses­sion, both in Alden, New York. Tenia was con­vict­ed of ag­gra­vat­ed as­sault and car­ry­ing a pro­hib­it­ed weapon in Kearny, New Jer­sey.

Hy­po­lite was con­vict­ed in Rich­mond, In­di­ana, of pos­ses­sion of a weapon and mar­i­jua­na, manslaugh­ter, and neg­li­gent homi­cide. Lo­gan was ar­rest­ed in New York and con­vict­ed of pos­ses­sion of hero­in and pub­lic or­der crimes. Plen­tie was con­vict­ed in Belle­fonte, Penn­syl­va­nia, of rape, while Wal­dron was con­vict­ed in Thom­son, Illi­nois, of sell­ing a weapon.

It was not made clear when the men would be de­port­ed to T&T.

In a me­dia re­lease on No­vem­ber 12, the DHS said: “It’s com­mon sense—when you re­move the worst of the worst crim­i­nal il­le­gal aliens from our coun­try, crime rates plum­met.”

It claimed in what it con­sid­ered “a his­toric win in the fight against vi­o­lent crim­i­nal il­le­gal alien crime,” the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty launched Op­er­a­tion Mid­way Blitz in Chica­go, a sanc­tu­ary state, and “de­creased crime, re­moved the worst of the worst crim­i­nal il­le­gal aliens, and put Amer­i­cans first.”

An­oth­er re­lease 12 days lat­er echoed a sim­i­lar claim, stat­ing, “70% of ICE ar­rests are of crim­i­nal il­le­gal aliens charged or con­vict­ed of a crime in the Unit­ed States.”

It added that the fig­ures did not in­clude for­eign fugi­tives, gang mem­bers, ter­ror­ists, and hu­man rights abusers. The web­site claimed that the Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE) ar­rest­ed more “worst of the worst” crim­i­nal il­le­gal aliens from across the coun­try that week­end, in­clud­ing those con­vict­ed of ag­gra­vat­ed crim­i­nal sex­u­al as­sault of a child, rape, and homi­cide.

At the start of his sec­ond term in of­fice, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump moved to ful­fil one of his key cam­paign promis­es - crack­ing down on il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion. Af­ter his in­au­gu­ra­tion, Trump signed sev­er­al ex­ec­u­tive or­ders re­lat­ed to im­mi­gra­tion, in­clud­ing the Lak­en Ri­ley Act on Jan­u­ary 29, 2025, which man­dates the de­ten­tion of im­mi­grants who are charged with or con­vict­ed of cer­tain crimes.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the de­vel­op­ment, Vi­sion on Mis­sion CEO Giselle Chance said the use of the lan­guage by the US is not a re­flec­tion of how it views cit­i­zens as a whole, as most cit­i­zens are law-abid­ing. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last year, when there were re­ports of some 1,200 Tri­nis to be de­port­ed, she said that was a cause for con­cern, with the Gov­ern­ment need­ing to as­sist. Chance main­tained her po­si­tion yes­ter­day, say­ing there is a need for help in ad­dress­ing de­por­tees, some­thing she has been in­volved in for near­ly 25 years.

“We un­der­stand the chal­lenges that they face. But we al­so un­der­stand the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing the wider com­mu­ni­ty. Based on their crim­i­nal past and the risk that these in­di­vid­u­als have for re-of­fend­ing, I would like to rec­om­mend that there be a mul­ti-agency team or ap­proach used in deal­ing with the an­tic­i­pat­ed in­creas­ing num­bers that we ex­pect to see in the com­ing year, par­tic­u­lar­ly. Vi­sion on Mis­sion, we can’t do it alone; there has to be a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort.”

In May this year, 15 men and two women who lived and worked in the US were de­port­ed to this coun­try. Two from the group were tak­en in­to cus­tody by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU). The rest were as­sist­ed by of­fi­cials from VoM.