For the last two months, the coun­try’s fo­cus has been on the wor­ri­some rise in COVID-19 cas­es and deaths, as well as the en­su­ing re­stric­tions and State of Emer­gency meant to curb the spread of the virus.

But yes­ter­day, the dis­cov­ery of 14 dead peo­ple, all sus­pect­ed to be mi­grants, in­side a boat adrift in the wa­ters off To­ba­go, serve as a grim re­minder that while the na­tion re­mains in the throes of the COVID cri­sis, its oth­er prob­lem — porous bor­ders — re­mains an on­go­ing is­sue which is of great cause for con­cern.

Since 2016, Venezue­lans flee­ing the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic tur­moil in their home­land have set their sights on Trinidad and To­ba­go as a safe haven to take refuge un­til they can re­turn home. Some have en­tered legal­ly, and oth­ers risk their lives to en­ter un­der stealth in­to this coun­try.

Decades be­fore, the ease with which oth­er mi­grants from sev­er­al coun­tries in­clud­ing Cari­com found them­selves in this coun­try had been the top­ic of much de­bate and dis­course.

The le­gal­i­ties aside, these in­ci­dents past and present have all high­light­ed how vul­ner­a­ble this coun­try’s ports of en­try, le­gal and il­le­gal, and bor­ders are and how eas­i­ly mi­grants and those in­tent on ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties can ac­cess this coun­try.

Soon af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Fitzger­ald Hinds as­sured that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces will be im­ple­ment­ing strong mea­sures to stem the flow of mi­grants. He al­so re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment has ap­proved the pur­chase of two Cape-Class pa­trol boats to in­crease bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and safe­guard the coun­try’s mar­itime do­main.

While the min­is­ter’s as­sur­ances ap­pear promis­ing, in­ci­dents like yes­ter­day and the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of il­le­gal mi­grants by po­lice, show that there is much more that needs to be done in this area of con­cern.

Res­i­dents in To­ba­go com­plained ear­li­er this week about the poor re­sponse of the T&T Coast Guard to a dis­tress call from fish­er­men af­ter a group from Trinidad was drift­ing close to a shal­low area off Spey­side. The fish­er­men them­selves even­tu­al­ly con­duct­ed the res­cue mis­sion.

This, cou­pled with the ves­sel found float­ing off Belle Gar­den with the ghast­ly find, begs the ques­tion about how ef­fi­cient­ly the bor­ders and coasts are mon­i­tored and the re­sponse of those so tasked with this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is al­ready do­ing its part with the es­tab­lish­ment of a Ma­rine Unit.

But this soli­tary move may clear­ly not be enough to pro­tect the bor­ders and ports.

What is need­ed is an am­pli­fied ef­fort by all to ef­fec­tive­ly se­cure and for­ti­fy the coun­try, not on­ly against il­le­gal mi­gra­tion — es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the spread of COVID-19 and the emer­gence of nu­mer­ous vari­ants — but to en­sure the cit­i­zen­ry can feel safe know­ing it is pro­tect­ed both with­in and from el­e­ments on the out­side.