Who gave deportation order?

Z ROMEO

There needs to be an investigation into the illegal deportation of Venezuelan women and children, including a four-month-old, on Sunday by the Coast Guard with help from the police. The following questions need to be answered:

1. Who gave the police the authority to hold children in cells for five days without Immigration’s intervention?

2. Who gave the police authority to hand them over to Coast Guard officers for deportation?

3. Who gave the Coast Guard the authority to deport children in perilous conditions via a very small fishing boat, thus putting their lives in danger at sea? As can be seen from photos, they had no life jackets and rough seas were expected.

4. Did the State not care if these children fell into the hands of human traffickers?

5. Did the State not care if the boat overturned and all of them perished?

6. Would the Prime Minster and Minister of National Security approve of this behaviour if one of their family members was put in harm’s way in that boat?

Firstly, as recognised in law by High Court Justice Joan Charles, who ruled (in another matter) that the Government broke the law by putting children under detention in the first place and then attempting to deport them. There is no law in TT that facilitates this. It is illegal and Stuart Young as a lawyer should know this.

The chief of Defence Staff and the commander of the Coast Guard need to answer if they were ordered by the Prime Minister or National Security Minister, either verbally or through written orders, to escort the pirogues with children in treacherous waters back to Venezuela.

Even if they were ordered, they and the officer in charge of the Cedros base should have known better and refused rather than follow an illegal order, ie, ultra vires of the Law of the Sea and the Children's Act of TT, which penalises one for endangering the life of a child. The defence that "we are just following orders" did not stand up at the Nuremberg trials which saw many Nazi criminals hanged for blindly following illegal orders.

The Defence Staff chief and Coast Guard commander, the National Security Minister and the Prime Minister, the later by his defence of Young's actions, are complicit in this illegal act and must be held to account.

The Commissioner of Police must also launch an investigation as to why these children were kept in filthy cells for five days without Immigration intervention and why they took it upon themselves to hand over these children to Coast Guard officers without the input of Immigration, the UN and the Children's Authority.

The Defence Staff chief and the Coast Guard commander must revisit what their roles really entail. The role of the Coast Guard is to protect our borders and provide life-saving measures to those at peril at sea, not the other way around, which is to directly put people in harm's way and blindly follow orders. Once an illegal immigrant enters our borders they must be taken to be processed and then their fate must be decided by due process, ie, the courts.

If they have to be repatriated it must be done in a humane and safe manner. What the Coast Guard did was put their lives in danger by forcing them to go back in an unsound vessel with little food, water that was uncovered – and the boat was overloaded from what I saw.

To put a four-month-old on an open vessel in treacherous seas can be tantamount to attempted murder (due to weather conditions and unsound vessel) and the Defence Staff chief and Coast Guard commander must say who gave the order to do so. Again, was it the Prime Minister as head of the National Security Council or was it Stuart Young?

The Prime Minister, based on what he said in the press release, is complicit and supportive in what took place with those children for he did not condemn the actions of his subordinates including Minister Young. Instead, he sought to criticise Donald Trump and the head of the OAS.

Before Nicolás Maduro there was no refugee crisis. What does that say about the regime? The Prime Minister's refusal to call out Muduro to better the lives of his people, which would cause them not to seek refuge elsewhere, is immoral and unethical.

The Government, TTPS, Immigration and the Coast Guard have violated the rights of the UN Convention on Refugees and Human Rights and the Children's Act. That being said, I call on the Commissioner of Police to launch an immediate investigation into this criminal conduct. The Chief of Defence Staff must do the same. This must not be allowed to continue. Treat every human being as if they are your own and with the dignity they deserve.