ICE style unit for all illegal migrants

The proposed multi-agency task force expected to deal with unregistered Venezuelans will be used to deal with all illegal immigrants.

Minister in the Ministry of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds yesterday said the agency will be implemented to enforce the immigration laws. He said those laws governed all immigrants coming into TT, and this agency would deal with all the issues that the process entailed.

The agency will be similar to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in the US.

Hinds said it costs about $25,000 a year to keep a prisoner in prison.

“Of course, if you have people in a detention centre, which is not a prison, we still have to provide for their basic needs once they are in detention, and therefore there is a significant cost. There are also significant costs in negotiating and settling their departure to their respective countries.

“We have to hire airplanes, and provide security and escorts when they are going certain places. It is a very costly and burdensome exercise, but I expect some countries attract some of this because they are being moved from one space to the next.”

Asked what will be done with Venezuelan refugees who were not registered, Hinds said they will be dealt with accordingly.

“The general law of the Immigration Act will now be applied which is to say if you are now here in breach of that and you did not make use of the registration process, now you no longer enjoy the protection that the registration process afforded and as such the general law will apply to you.

“If we have to remove people from TT for any reason that is an expense to the people of TT, so we will do what has to be done to remove persons who are not here legally in this country, and we equally ask them to entertain and protect and welcome those who are here legally.”

Hinds also said the one-year period given to Venezuelans to stay and work in TT was not an amnesty, but really a permission to stay here for this time which would have been dispensed under the National Security Minister’s discretion provided for in the Immigration Act.

“That has been there all along and many persons, on an individual basis, have benefited from that since since 1971 when the act was born. It is the minister’s permission, permit, authority to be here. He just did it en-block (sic) on this occasion because of the Venezuelan issue, but it is not a new power. He is acting on a power that he long had in so doing.”