RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

The re­lease of Venezue­lan mi­grants de­tained at the He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas came to an abrupt halt as the State filed an ap­peal on Judge Ricky Rahim's rul­ing on Tues­day.

Jus­tice Rahim's rul­ing or­dered the re­lease of 64 mi­grants and on Tues­day about two hours af­ter the rul­ing was hand­ed down, a team of Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers made their way to the He­li­port where they be­gan is­su­ing Or­ders of Su­per­vi­sion.

Up to 8 pm on Tues­day on­ly 30 mi­grants were re­leased and re­unit­ed with their re­spec­tive fam­i­ly mem­bers who were out­side the He­li­port wait­ing for them.

The re­lease ex­er­cise was due to con­tin­ue on Wednes­day morn­ing, how­ev­er, when the Guardian Me­dia's team ar­rived at the He­li­port from as ear­ly as 6 am, it was made known that there would not be any fur­ther re­lease of mi­grants.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the rep­re­sent­ing at­tor­neys of Quan­tum Le­gal will be fil­ing a Con­tempt of Court.

At­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed has since called on the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, who she said has the pow­er, to or­der the re­lease of all the mi­grants who are de­tained at the He­li­port and not on­ly the ones who were rep­re­sent­ed in the High Court pro­ceed­ings.

Mo­hammed ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in Hinds' han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion from its in­cep­tion, "it did not have to reach so far as to High Court pro­ceed­ings. Where is the leg­is­la­tion to back the UN Con­ven­tion to pro­tect these peo­ple who are refugees and asy­lum seek­ers? These peo­ple are hu­mans, they have their chil­dren and loved ones here."

The mi­grants were de­tained on Ju­ly 19 while at­tend­ing a par­ty at a bar in St James. Ini­tial­ly, there were 143 of them but 20 of them were re­leased with­in a week be­fore Tues­day’s court or­der.