Judge orders home quarantine for Venezuelan

A HIGH COURT judge has ordered a Venezuelan man who is accused of having entered TT illegally in February, to mandatory home quarantine.

On Friday, Justice Eleanor Donaldson-Honeywell ordered the Commissioner of Prison to immediately release Jonathan Cruz Becerra from the Port of Spain prison.

She also ordered, in a habeas corpus application filed by his attorneys, that he undergo mandatory quarantine at his address in Diego Martin for 14 days.

Becerra is represented by attorneys Criston J Williams and Jerome Riley. The Venezuelan national is challenging the decision of the Chief Immigration Officer’s failure to put him on an order of supervision and to take him to the Living Waters Community for him to be assessed as a refugee.

He also intends to challenge his arrest and charge for illegal entry.

According to his lawsuit, Becerra was sentenced to one month imprisonment for illegal entry on July 21, and was held at the Immigration Detention Centre from July 1-21 after which he was quarantined to the Eastern Correctional and Rehabilitation Centre before he was taken to the Port of Spain prison to serve his sentence.

He appealed the conviction and sentence and was granted bail pending the hearing and determination of his appeal. There were also conditions attached to his bail and he was put on a 10 pm-5 am curfew.

Becerra accessed bail on August 10 but was not released from prison because the documentation from the court was not sent to the prison.

His attorneys filed the application for the writ of habeas corpus which was heard on Friday by Donaldson-Honeywell, who ordered that he be released immediately and put into home quarantine.

In reply to the writ, prison officers had admitted that compliance may not be possible in certain circumstances because a prisoner at the Port of Spain prison had tested positive for covid19 and other inmates in the H division of the facility were all primary contacts, quarantined in that division.

The officers said it would have been be unwise for the prison to move Becerra from the part of the prison he was in which, according to them, was untouched by the virus as far as they knew or to another prison to risk potentially infecting inmates.

One officer said the H Division also housed the virtual courts.