Detainees protest at Santa Rosa facility

CAROL MATROO

WOULD-be immigrants detained at the Santa Rosa Facility, yesterday protested against the conditions in which they are being kept.

Detainees, some of whom have been in custody for more than four years, were reported to have thrown garbage and other items out of their cells, where they are being held together with inmates who have been convicted.

They were moved from the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in Aripo to Santa Rosa over a year ago.

Activist for the detainees Khafra Kambon said they were being treated like criminals, when most of them had just overstayed their time in this country, trying to escape poverty in their homeland.

“They are like abandoned people there, without the authorities taking responsibility. They have no medical treatment. The prison is simply to prevent them from escaping.”

Kambon told the Newsday yesterday, the system for treating with detainees was discriminatory.

“One Chinese national was detained and mysteriously was freed after his boss paid a visit to Immigration. One Nigerian...was here for 12 years and he was told they would allow him voluntary departure to only Nigeria. He is married with five children.

“When this happens you would allow them to go to any nearby jurisdiction and give them a re-entry visa, but that does not happen,” he said.

Kambon said the detainees were not protesting because of ill treatment by the prison officers who are now guarding them, but because of what they had to endure.

He said while some had said they were willing to pay their own way back to their homeland, they were still being kept in custody.

“A number of them are Nigerian, and the Nigerian government said they did not have the money to send for them to get back home. The responsibility for them is for the country in which they are being held. There is no justification for someone who has committed no crime to be held for over four years. The courts are going to come down on that.

“Some of them have the money to go home, but some do not because they came here to escape poverty. These are people who are here working in security and construction, so I mean it is not going to sink the country, because in fact it is costing the country to have them there when they could be outside there working.”

Communications officer of the Prisons Service David Springer said the detainees were being held at Santa Rosa while the IDC was being repaired. He could not say when this would be, or how many detainees were being housed at the facility. Calls to the cell phones of Foreign Affairs Minister Dennis Moses, National Security Minister Edmund Dillon and Chief Immigration Officer Charmaine Gandhi-Andrews all went to voice mail.