IDC detainees protest by video

A group of about ten detainees at the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) at Aripo recently recorded and posted online a cellphone video clip protesting about the conditions in detention.

The men are clad in orange smocks, each with a number, and wear face masks. A young Cuban man is heard pleading their case in broken English.

“All of us are suffering. We have no lawyers. We have no money to come out of here. “We are not criminals. All of us are human beings.”

He said he was married to a Tobagonian woman who has three children.

Saying they were being treated like dogs, he said, “We ready to dead.”

The man appealed to the public to visit and help them.

Another man joined in to plead for the detainees to be released, saying their only offence had been to overstay their time in TT.

“We want this to go to Mr Stuart Young. Some of us overstayed our time. Some of us did our time already in jail.”

He claimed they were now in IDC “for no reason at all.”

He complained that the facility had no canteen, offered poor-quality food and barred detainees from accepting anything brought to them from outside the IDC. The man said their daily routine amounted to simply eating and sleeping, under allegedly disrespectful treatment by their guards.

He pointed to a man lying on a cot, who he said was a Nigerian who had been locked up for eight years and was now quite ill.

“We have to do something about this.”

Newsday was unable to contact Chief Immigration Officer Charmaine Gandhi Andrews or Minister of National Security Stuart Young for a comment.