Young: All illegal immigrants to be deemed undesirables

ANYONE caught trying to sneak into this country illegally will be sent back immediately, as they have now been deemed “undesirables.”

Minister of National Security Stuart Young, at a media briefing at the ministry in Port of Spain, on Tuesday said the situation had reached crisis proportions, with scores of illegal Venezuelans entering Trinidad and Tobago in the midst of a global pandemic.

He said government policy is to protect the people of TT even as illegal migrants and human traffickers aided by law enforcement officers, were attempting to “break the borders” which were closed on March 22, to limit this country’s exposure to the pandemic.

Young said government had taken the humanitarian approach last May to register all Venezuelans living in TT, both legal and illegal, and in a two-week process 16,523 people were registered.

Immediately following the close of the registration process, government imposed a visa requirement for any visiting Venezuelan national or they must get an exemption from the Minister of National Security to enter, since the borders were closed.

The government extended the validity of the one-year registration status until December 31, because of the pandemic, and he said Cabinet will meet to decide on any further extension. The minister warned that immigrants with registration cards and others who are registered with the UN Human Rights Committee do not have any “get out of jail” cards and once they breach local laws they will be deported.

Young said that in the overarching law, the Immigration Act, illegal immigrants are now being treated as “undesirables” as a further layer of protection.

Further, Section 8 (q) of the Act empowers the Minister to bar entry to: “any person who from information or advice, which in the opinion of the Minister is reliable information or advice, is likely to be an undesirable inhabitant of or visitor to TT.”

“What that does is allow Immigration that, if they pick up any illegal immigrant –and this is not focused on any particular nationality – any non-Trinidadian citizen who enters the country illegally under the current period in accordance with the law, they will be determined to be an undesirable, and that has certain effects with respect to the laws of TT,” he said.

It allows the police, Coast Guard and Immigration not to “land” the immigrant and simply “re-escort” them back to international waters, as in the case of the 25 Venezuelan nationals, who included 16 children and nine adults, who were arrested at Chatham on November 17. A police press release on Tuesday stated the figure was 27 while Young during his press conference stated it was 29. Young said this came into force during the pandemic in addition to the issuance of detention and deportation orders to protect the people of TT.

He said while this country will continue to treat Venezuelan nationals humanely and in accordance with international standards, it was within its right to change its policy to protect its citizens. He said the legal concept of legitimate expectation had been deleted by the pandemic and it was not open to the Judiciary to interpret government policy but rather the law, as he made reference to the writ of habeas corpus filed over the weekend by attorneys representing the 25 people.

Young emphasised that there was no court order in place when the people were escorted by the Coast Guard into international waters on the weekend. He said he was unaware that the same people hand returned to Los Iros beach, hours earlier on Tuesday. (
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The police have since arrested the freshly landed migrants and it is likely they will once again be escorted out to sea by the Coast Guard, since the quarantine facility at the Chaguaramas Heliport, where illegal Venezuelans are kept, is reportedly overcrowded. Young said law enforcement agencies are doing all that they could with the available resources to prevent illegal immigrants from landing on TT’s shores and the process of escorting them back to sea was another method of border protection.

Editor’s Note:

The incident was reported in the BBC’s World Service on Tuesday night.