Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

There is no re­search to sug­gest that an in­crease in il­le­gal mi­gra­tion is re­spon­si­ble for a rise in crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This was the sen­ti­ment ex­pressed by in­ter­na­tion­al re­searcher and Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware, Muqtedar Khan, at the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Se­cu­ri­ty, In­tel­li­gence and De­fence in the Caribbean at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean yes­ter­day.

As he ad­dressed at­ten­dees, the Amer­i­can aca­d­e­m­ic called for stud­ies to be con­duct­ed in­to the root cause of crime, al­though he said it was un­like­ly to point to for­eign­ers.

“When you look at the aca­d­e­m­ic lit­er­a­ture, it’s very clear there is no ev­i­dence that there is a di­rect re­la­tion be­tween this rise in im­mi­gra­tion both le­gal and not so le­gal from Venezuela to Trinidad,” Pro­fes­sor Khan said.

“And let me al­so tell you that this is ram­pant across Eu­rope, every­where in the world, im­mi­grants are of­ten the scape­goat of crime.”

He rec­om­mend­ed en­hanced co­op­er­a­tion with the Unit­ed States on state ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and tech­nol­o­gy to aid in crime fight­ing. How­ev­er, he warned that there was a thin line be­tween in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing and spy­ing.

“You must al­ways keep in mind that the mo­ment you start spy­ing on your own cit­i­zens, you be­gin to com­pro­mise your democ­ra­cy, you’re vi­o­lat­ing their hu­man rights.”

Khan al­so ac­cused the me­dia of in­sin­u­at­ing, through re­ports, that mi­grants were main­ly re­spon­si­ble for the rise in crime, when they were, in fact, al­so vic­tims of ex­ploita­tion.

How­ev­er, hu­man rights ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­les de­nied that the me­dia had an agen­da against Venezue­lan mi­grants.

“I think that’s a very ir­re­spon­si­ble state­ment,” she stat­ed.

“I be­lieve that the me­dia is bring­ing a cer­tain amount of aware­ness of what’s go­ing on in re­spect to the mi­grants. For in­stance, what hap­pened to that girl who was raped by three agents of the State, which is the Coast Guard. If the me­dia didn’t bring it out, how would we know?” she asked.

The hu­man rights ac­tivist was com­ment­ing on the case which will be heard by High Court Jus­tice West­min James to­day. The mat­ter in­volves an ac­cu­sa­tion by a 21-year-old Venezue­lan woman that she was raped by Coast Guard of­fi­cers at the He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas. Her at­tor­neys al­lege she was dropped off on the West­ern Main Road fol­low­ing the as­sault.

Mean­while, Gon­za­les chas­tised Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds for his state­ments on May 4, where he not­ed that more than 70,000 Venezue­lan mi­grants are in T&T, which is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than the 16,000 who reg­is­tered to live and work in this coun­try in 2019. She re­mind­ed Hinds that many Venezue­lans were turned away dur­ing the amnesty pe­ri­od.

“A lot of peo­ple came and they had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reg­is­ter–be­cause I was there, and they were stand­ing up for most of the day–and they closed the door in their face. They said that time was up. They said they would have six units where peo­ple would be reg­is­tered and they on­ly had three,” she claimed.

Guardian Me­dia called and sent text mes­sages to Min­is­ter Hinds for com­ment on this claim, but he did not re­spond up to press time.

Al­so con­tact­ed on the is­sue, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer In­spec­tor Michelle Lewis said she would re­spond to the ques­tions once in­for­ma­tion was re­trieved from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch of the TTPS.