Venezuelans and T&T Thread

[Deeks]

Newsday asked if his recent promise to regularise Venezuelans to work for up to a year in T&T could create a labour market distortion by migrants exploited to work for far lower wages than locals.

Duh!!!!!!!

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34 Venezuelans plead guilty.
By Laurel Williams (Newsday).

THIRTY-FOUR Venezuelans, among them 14 women, appeared in the Siparia Magistrates’ Court yesterday when each pleaded guilty for entering the Trinidad illegally.

The foreigners appeared in the second court before magistrate Ava Vandenberg-Bailey who read that on unknown dates at unknown locations they entered the country and failed to report to immigration as required by law. South Western Division police arrested the 34 over the weekend at Erin, San Flora and Siparia.

Legal officer Sheldon Salazar prosecuted and interpreter/ translator Luz Marina Tapias translated yesterday. The Venezuelans were between the ages of 18 and 42 and cannot speak English. Among them were Yurismeel Flores,42, and her 18-year-old son Kirry Jimenez and Jose Luis Cantillo, 35, and his brother Cesar Cantillo Payola,18. Many of the women told the court they are homemakers, students and a hairdresser. One of the women, Jessica Martinez, 28, via the translator, said she works in a bakery in Venezuela. She has a one-month-old baby who was born in Trinidad. When police detained her, the baby remained in the care of a sitter.

Some of the men said they are students of different schools, plumbers, labourers and have families to take care off. They came to Trinidad to seek better lives given the economic, social and political hardships in their homeland. During the hearing, many of the Venezuelans wept.

After the magistrate reprimand and discharged them, they said “gracias” (thank you) in unison. But the Venezuelans remain in police custody and are expected to be deported.

After the case was called, two of the men seen earlier crying in the court alleged that “Fyzabad police” seized US$150 from them while they were in custody at the station. Speaking in Spanish, one said he is waiting for police to return his US$90.

Another said police did not return US$60 and a cell phone. As they were being led out, they asked this reporter for help to recover the money and phone.

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Venezuelans denied entry, sues State.
By Jensen La Vende (Newsday).

HIGH COURT judge Justice Carol Gobin yesterday ordered that eight Venezuelans, out of 14 rejected by immigration at the Piarco International Airport on Thursday, not to be deported, pending the outcome of their lawsuit against the State.

In her written ruling, Gobin gave an interim order stopping the rejection order against the Venezuelans and allowed them to file their claim by tomorrow challenging the decision to refuse them entry. The Venezuelans are being represented by a team of lawyers from Regius Chambers – Wayne Sturge, Mario Merritt, Lemuel Murphy, Abigail Roach, Kirby Jackson, Shirvani Ramkissoon and Keishel Grant.

On Thursday, 14 Venezuelans were denied entry and according to their attorneys, they were not given any reason. Merritt said in the absence of an acceptance by T&T, the Venezuelans are in the care of the airline that brought them, Venezolana. The airline, he said, does not have an office in the country and a local travel agency was the one caring for them. Merritt told Sunday Newsday that of the 14, eight were housed at a guest house in Arouca.

The Venezuelans are locked in their rooms with no cellphones, he said, and are kept in rooms with more people than beds. He added that none of the Venezuelans were told why they could not enter the country after they presented the necessary documents and information on their finances during their stay. Two brothers who came with a letter from their relative in T&T were separated after one was denied entry and the other allowed to enter. Merritt said there was an arbitrary denial of his clients which needed to be addressed.

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V’zuelan children not taken away from parents.
By Sean Douglas (Newsday).

THE children of illegal migrants from Venezuela recently held at Cedros were not separated from their parents to be held by the State, assured Stuart Young, Minister of National Security. He replied to an urgent question by Oropouche West MP Vidia Gayadeen-Gopeesingh, last Friday in the House of Representatives, who asked if the five children in the group of 10 people had been admitted to the Child Protection Unit at the Oropouche Police Station.

“No,” Young replied. “The immigration officers took the very humane decision, after doing an assessment of these Venezuelans including the children, and decided to release them on supervision orders.

“So they were not detained for any length of time and they were not sent to the police station.”

Gayadeen-Gopeesingh asked if there was any set policy or procedure to deal with children of Venezuelan migrants?

Young replied, “All children who are within the borders of T&T fall under our suite of children’s legislation. However in immigration matters, the Immigration Division can take decisions with respect to the detaining of persons who have entered illegally or who have overstayed their visits. So with respect to these particular children, that was utilised.

“With respect to other children, Venezuelan or otherwise, the Children’s Authority is the body that has jurisdiction over them when they’ve run afoul of the law, which would include overstaying. They work hand in hand with our Immigration Division.”

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Immigration agrees to supervision orders for 8 Venezuelans
By Jada Loutoo (Newsday).

Detained at guesthouse for six days

AFTER being detained at a Trincity guesthouse for almost six days, a group of eight Venezuelans who were rejected by immigration at the Piarco International Airport, will be released and will be placed under supervision orders.

Today, immigration officials agreed to issue supervision orders for the eight who came into T&T last Thursday, after their attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus application in the high court.

The Venezuelans are being represented by a team of lawyers from Regius Chambers – Wayne Sturge, Mario Merritt, Lemuel Murphy, Hasine Shaikh, Kirby Joseph, Delicia Helwig-Robertson, Shirvani Ramkissoon, Karunaa Bisramsingh and Danielle Rampersad.

The writ called on Nav Tours – the travel agency acting on behalf of the airline that brought the Venezuelans to T&T – to justify the continued detention of the eight.

The eight were in the care of the airline that brought them, Venezolana, but, since the airline does not have an office in the country, Nav Tours housed them at a guesthouse, awaiting instructions from immigration on what to do with them.

The eight were said to be locked in their rooms with no cellphones, and were kept in rooms with more people than beds.

On Saturday, a high court judge ordered that they not be deported, pending the outcome of their lawsuit against the Chief Immigration Officer (CIO).

Earlier today, their habeas corpus applications were listed for hearing before two judges at 11 am, and were called in two separate courts, at which time a request was made to have one judge hear all applications.

The matters were transferred to Justice Jacqueline Wilson, who was told of the agreement of the CIO to issue the supervision orders for the eight.

For two hours, the judge heard submissions on the question of who should pay the costs of the eight having to come to court.

The State, represented by attorney Coreen Findley, argued that at no time were the eight in the custody of the CIO, so the State should not have to pay costs to either party, despite agreeing to issue the supervision orders.

“They are not in the chief immigration officer’s custody,” she said, adding that the agreeing to the supervision orders was only to facilitate the judicial review claim of the eight.

“We have not detained the applications so we are not entitled to pay costs,” she said.

In the end, Wilson made no order for costs, saying that she saw nothing in the conduct of immigration to warrant the State having to pay the Venezuelans’ or Nav Tours’ costs.

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Venezuelans claim Immigration officers in racket
By Peter Christopher & Rhondor Dowlat (Guardian).

Bribes to stay in T&T

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is chal­leng­ing ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­les and oth­er Venezue­lan na­tion­als to bring ev­i­dence they have against Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers they al­lege are tak­ing bribes from Venezue­lan na­tion­als seek­ing to gain en­try in­to T&T and to stay here af­ter their time has elapsed.

Young made the call yes­ter­day, hours af­ter Gon­za­les made the claim on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew and some of her com­pa­tri­ots backed up the al­le­ga­tion.

“A par­tic­u­lar per­son of Venezue­lan her­itage…let’s call her that…was mak­ing a whole host of al­le­ga­tions…I am call­ing on Ms Gon­za­les, if she has ev­i­dence of any of those ac­tiv­i­ties, to come for­ward to the TTPS and give the in­for­ma­tion to them,” Young said af­ter at­tend­ing a pass­ing out pa­rade for po­lice of­fi­cers at the St James Train­ing Acad­e­my.

He added that the po­lice would bear the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of in­ves­ti­gat­ing if there are any al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Young al­so clar­i­fied one of the things he said in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, say­ing while he knows al­le­ga­tions of in­tim­i­da­tion of Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers are be­ing made against Venezue­lan na­tion­als, there were al­so T&T na­tion­als who were do­ing so as well.

“We are work­ing with the TTPS to hold these per­sons,” Young said.

The is­sue arose af­ter Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers claimed they were in­tim­i­dat­ed by rel­a­tives of a group of Venezue­lan na­tion­als who were re­fused en­try in­to the coun­try af­ter ar­riv­ing on a flight from Venezuela last week. Young ad­dressed the mat­ter in the Sen­ate on Tues­day and said po­lice would now set up sting op­er­a­tions at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and oth­er ports of en­try to ar­rest any in­di­vid­u­als who may en­gage in this ac­tiv­i­ty.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Venezue­lan na­tion­als liv­ing in T&T, Gon­za­les among them, scoffed at the claims.

“That is (a) big joke. Every­body laugh­ing at the state­ment that the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (made) and he has to be very care­ful about,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les said con­trary to what Young was say­ing, she felt it was the oth­er way around as many Venezue­lans felt they were be­ing vic­timised and ex­ploit­ed by the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers, with many who were al­ready here forced to make pay­ments to stay in the coun­try.

“It is the Im­mi­gra­tion (of­fi­cer) who has a lot of the pow­er. They are the ones who are de­port­ing them and per­se­cut­ing them and ask­ing them for mon­ey from peo­ple who don’t even have mon­ey and they say they are il­le­gal. A lot of com­pli­cat­ed things, a lot of neg­a­tive things go­ing on with the Venezue­lans here, who look­ing for­ward for a safe place or some­thing like that and the im­mi­gra­tion just tak­ing ad­van­tage of that,” Gon­za­lez said.

Gon­za­lez said she be­lieved it was more like­ly that per­sons who were in­volved in bring­ing Venezue­lans and oth­er na­tion­als in­to the coun­try il­le­gal­ly were the ones threat­en­ing Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers.

“The per­sons who bring peo­ple here and do­ing all sorts of thing to Venezue­lans, they are prob­a­bly the ones do­ing that to Im­mi­gra­tion, not the Venezue­lans. The Venezue­lans don’t have any­body here, they don’t speak the lan­guage,” said Gon­za­lez.

“The Im­mi­gra­tion seem to have more pow­er than the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

Venezue­lan refugee and hu­man rights lawyer Kar­la Hen­riquez al­so said there were nu­mer­ous in­stances of Venezue­lans and oth­er refugees be­ing asked to pay im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers se­cu­ri­ty bonds for their con­tin­ued stay in this coun­try. In­ter­est­ing­ly, the cost of the se­cu­ri­ty bond would vary based on the na­tion­al­i­ty of the asy­lum seek­er, she said.

“When your time is up, you get a bond to ap­ply to stay and then the Im­mi­gra­tion tell you you’re gonna get back the mon­ey when you leave,” said Hen­riquez via a trans­la­tor.

“Colom­bians, Cubans and oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties pay a dif­fer­ent amount.”

She said the price was al­so in­creased based on if the asy­lum seek­ers came in us­ing le­gal pa­pers or not.

“If you have le­gal pa­pers and you ask for the bond it’s $2,100, but if you came via an il­le­gal act it’s more mon­ey that you have to pay,” Hen­riquez said.

Guardian Me­dia re­ceived pho­tographs of the bonds, stamped by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials, in­di­cat­ing the var­i­ous forms of pay­ment. How­ev­er, Hen­riquez said these pay­ments should not be le­gal based on treaties Trinidad and To­ba­go had signed with the Unit­ed Na­tions.

In Jan­u­ary, sev­er­al refugees protest­ing out­side the Par­lia­ment al­so claimed Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers were ask­ing them for mon­ey in or­der for them to see their fam­i­lies at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre. When Guardian Me­dia asked about that prac­tice then, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials de­nied there was any such prac­tice.

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More Venezuelan children coming to Authority.
By Julien Neaves (Newsday).

CHILDREN’S Authority director/CEO Safiya Noel says the authority has noted an increase in requests from the Immigration Division to care for children of Venezuelans detained for illegal entry.

Asked to comment on a news article about a group of Venezuelans recently held in Cedros, Noel said yesterday if people are detained for illegal entry and they have children, many times, Immigration Division would contact the authority for help with caring for the children until the adults are released.

“So we make ourselves available for those children who come in and cannot remain with their parents. And when it is the parents are leaving we just release the children back into their care. So yes, we have seen an increase in requests from the Immigration unit and we do our best to facilitate.”

Noel said the number of these children the authority is required to house is very small compared to the wider population of children in T&T. “We need more space in the system to house children but what we really need is for children to remain with families.

“That is what we really need. We don’t need children emptying out into other spaces. That is not what we need really. Which is why we continue to appeal to parents.” Noel was also asked how cases of abuse against Venezuelan children were treated by the authority.

“Children who are coming from Venezuela or any other part of the world, they are afforded their rights in terms of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. But they are afforded their rights within the confines of the local law.”

She said if a child who is abused is a non-national, the authority investigates as it would any other child, get to the root of the problem and provide interventions for the safety of that child. “So it is no different whether it is a non-national or a citizen of T&T. We will intervene.” In the House, two Fridays ago, Oropouche West MP Vidia Gayadeen-Gopeesingh asked if five children in a group of ten Venezuelans, had been admitted to the Child Protection Unit at the Oropouche Police Station.

National Security Minister Stuart Young replied that immigration officers took the very humane decision, after doing an assessment of these Venezuelans including the children, and decided to release them on supervision orders.

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‘Treat Venezuelans with humanity’
By Carol Matroo (Newsday).

PM urges T&T

IS there a refugee/immigration/migrant crisis in T&T? According to the Prime Minister, there is not. However, he said there was an increase in the number of people who come and go, from Venezuela in particular.

“Some of them would like to remain because of economic circumstances in Venezuela – economic migrants – and as a good neighbour, we allow them to remain. We do not put out a call, ‘Come hither,’ but it is not such that people come here and not meet our humanity.”

Speaking on Monday, Dr Rowley was asked about offering work permits to Venezuelans for a year, but denied that it was “an offer.”

“We are not making a call for Venezuelans to come here, but if they do come, we try to treat with the situation the best we can.

“If we make ourselves a port of call and issue a call for Venezuelans to come to T&T – we are a very small country. We have 1.3 million people on a small piece of land. Venezuela has 33 million people on a very large piece of South America.

“But by the same token, the few who have come here are what, 30,000, 40,000, we will establish that very soon, we try to ensure that they are treated as well as we can.”

Asked why T&T was not recognising that Venezuela was in a humanitarian crisis and atrocities were being committed on its people, the PM said there was a process for what was happening. He said there were some who were experiencing difficulty with the Venezuelan business model.

Rowley said the anti-Venezuela sentiment did not start with President Nicolas Maduro, but started with former president Hugo Chavez.

“We seem to forget that the Chavez regime was no more popular than Maduro in certain quarters, and when you add the difficulty to treat with the population’s needs, then you move from problem to crisis.

“But that is not a crisis that T&T can fix or can address. We are not in the position to fix Venezuela’s problems.”

He said what was being seen in Venezuela was not a regional problem between T&T and Venezuela, but an international problem.

Rowley said the government was just concerned that T&T did not get the backlash that could come from clashes among countries with interests in Venezuela.

There was very little T&T and Caricom could do, he said, to prevent the world superpowers who were now focused on Venezuela from doing what they were doing, except to stand on principle.

“We can’t prevent the US or Colombia from bringing about regime change in Venezuela. What we do know is, our borders would come under tremendous pressure from people who in that circumstance will impact on T&T. If there is a military conflict in Venezuela, you think the supply of arms and personnel will be reduced in T&T?

“No, it is likely to increase.

“If there is a deterioration in Venezuela’s conditions, does that bring about a reduction in the number of Venezuelans fleeing those conditions? “No, we expect more economic migrants in T&T.” The PM also said he did not know of any increased presence of US military in the southwest peninsula.

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Cops rescue 4 abducted V’zuelans
By Ken Chee Hing (Newsday).

THE Special Operations Response Team (SORT), the Anti-Kidnapping Unit (AKU) and Western Division police have rescued four Venezuelans who were reportedly kidnapped.

Police said the rescue took place around 11.50 am yesterday at a house in Union Road, Four Roads, Diego Martin.

Missing-persons reports had been filed at the St James Police Station after two of the women did not return to where they were staying after leaving earlier in the day to look for apartments to rent in St James.

Acting on intelligence, officers went to the house in Diego Martin, where they rescued four women being held hostage. They have since arrested three men for kidnapping, robbery and sexually assaulting those women.

Several police units are now involved in this investigation.

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CoP: ‘Deport Them’
By Ryan Hamilton-Davis (Newsday).

Gary on Venezuelans involved in crime:

COMMISSIONER of Police Gary Griffith is asking that consideration be made to deport all Venezuelans, who, through intelligence gathering, have been found to be involved in criminal activity.

He made the statement earlier at a police press briefing held at the TTPS Administration building in Port of Spain, a day after Government announced that registration for legal and illegal Venezuelan immigrants would be undertaken in June.

Griffith's statement was also made hours before two more Venezuelan men were killed, this time in a shoot-out with police in Central T&T.

Griffith said three Venezuelans had been murdered for the year, and investigations had indicated that they were linked with criminal elements. He added that several others had been arrested for various crimes. According to Griffith, six were arrested for their involvement in robberies, three were held with firearms, one was held with narcotics, two were arrested in relation to malicious woundings, one, in relation to a kidnapping and another for sexual offences.

“While we are doing the charitable thing and we are trying to help, my point is charity must begin at home. There is a clear and present danger when certain Venezuelans are entering this country and they are involved in one thing and one thing alone – criminal activity.” Griffith said.

“The reason I am saying this is, as much as they would have all the people who would like to say that Jesus was a refugee and we have to take care of everyone, the fact is that I have to take care of T&T citizens.”

Griffith explained Venezuelan refugees are coming into the country, and because they are in desperate need of work some are being lured into a life of crime by criminals, while others who have had a criminal past in Venezuela, have managed to come into the country with the intention of continuing their lives of crime.

Griffith said letting these criminal elements into the country unchecked would severely damage the work being done by police to protect the citizens of T&T and reduce crime and the fear of crime.

“This situation with Venezuelan nationals coming in here with a deliberate intention to be involved in criminal activity is unacceptable... What they are basically getting is a “get out of jail free card.”

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Greenlight for Venezuelans
By Akash Samaroo (Guardian).

Cab­i­net has agreed to open a two-week reg­is­tra­tion for Venezue­lans in Trinidad and To­ba­go, to al­low then an ini­tial stay of six months in which they can al­so work in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The de­ci­sion is for Venezue­lans who ar­rive here legal­ly or il­le­gal­ly.

The two-week amnesty will be­gin on May 31st and run un­til June 14th.

Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Stu­art Young told to­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence that five reg­is­tra­tion cen­tres will be set up with in­ter­preters for the reg­is­tra­tion process.

The cen­tres will be lo­cat­ed in Port-of-Spain San Fer­nan­do, Ari­ma, Ce­dros and Scar­bor­ough.

The Venezue­lans will un­der­go med­ical ex­am­i­na­tions and at the end of the six months, will have their sit­u­a­tions eval­u­at­ed be­fore an­oth­er six-month pe­ri­od be­comes avail­able to them.

The min­is­ter said they will al­so be able to ac­cess emer­gency med­ical care as well as pri­ma­ry and pub­lic care, in­clu­sive of treat­ment for heart at­tacks, strokes, di­a­bet­ic co­mas and so on.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter says any­thing be­yond that will have to be paid for.

He said the Cab­i­net al­so agreed that there will be no guar­an­tees to a right of ed­u­ca­tion or so­cial ser­vices.

Min­is­ter Young said that the gov­ern­ment's first pri­or­i­ty for the pro­vi­sion of ed­u­ca­tion is to Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens but he notes that if there are ex­tra spaces in schools, then Venezue­lans could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed.

They will not be re­quired to pay NIS but if he says that if qual­i­fy to pay PAYE, then they will.

The reg­is­tra­tion cards will have pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures.

The min­is­ter said that when the process is com­plete, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty will re­vert to the nor­mal ap­pli­ca­tions of im­mi­gra­tion laws.

He added that this is not a process to al­low more Venezue­lans to ar­rive here il­le­gal­ly.

He said the Cab­i­net al­so agreed to re­view the sit­u­a­tion with re­spect to oth­er per­sons in the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre.

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42 Venezuelan women fined $.28m.
By Sascha Wilson (Guardian).

Fifty-six Venezue­lan na­tion­als, in­clud­ing 42 women, were fined sums to­tal­ly $280,000 in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court this week af­ter they plead­ed guilty to en­ter­ing the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

Thir­ty-two of them were fined on Thurs­day—the same day Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that reg­is­tra­tion for all Venezue­lans in this coun­try will com­mence be­tween May 31 and June 14.

Young said Venezue­lans housed at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre will al­so be al­lowed to reg­is­ter.

Reg­is­tered Venezue­lans would be giv­en a form of an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card and the op­tion to work for six months to a year. The 56 Venezue­lans plead­ed guilty in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court. They en­tered the coun­try through an il­le­gal port of en­try this year and failed to re­port to an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer.

They were each fined $5,000 and al­lowed two months to pay or serve three months in jail. At least 24 of the women were ar­rest­ed at Clas­sic Sea­men and Four Play Restau­rant and Bar.

All of them were held in the South­ern Di­vi­sion with­in the last week. Twen­ty four of the women ap­peared in court on Mon­day and were fined. Nine­teen oth­ers, con­sist­ing of ten women and nine men, ap­peared on Tues­day and were re­mand­ed to Thurs­day. And on Thurs­day they along with 13 oth­ers, in­clud­ing eight women, ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate In­dar Ja­groo.

With the as­sis­tance of Span­ish in­ter­preter Luz Maria Tapais-de-Copi­lah, they claimed they en­tered the coun­try this month. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of Venezue­lans have been flee­ing their home­land which is in a so­cial and po­lit­i­cal cri­sis.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tion records as of May 2018 than es­ti­mat­ed 40,000 Venezue­lans were liv­ing in T&T.


Some of Venezuelan women who were fined for entering the country illegally escorted to the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court earlier this week.

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'Trinis are enslaving us' - Venezuelans, Cubans appeal for help
By Alexander Bruzual (T&T Express).

ABUSE. Sexual assault. Blackmail. Victimisation by both citizens and law enforcement.

These were just some of the horri­fying allegations made yesterday by men and women from Venezuela and Cuba who told of the problems they’ve endured since they came to Trinidad seeking asylum.

More than 30 men, women and children assembled at Grant Avenue, Mt Lambert, to speak to reporters ­yesterday.

The group came together and recalled incidents of how they have been taken advantage of, persecuted and victimised in Trinidad and Tobago, as they tried to find sanctuary away from life-threatening conditions in their home countries.

Many of them broke down in tears as they recalled what they have been through.

In the end, they pleaded with the authorities to intervene, with members indicating they have written a ­letter to Prime Minister Dr Keith ­Rowley for help.

Copies of the letter are to be delivered to the office of the Minister of National Security and the office of the Commissioner of Police as well.

Most said they had refugee status or were asylum-seekers, and ­proudly displayed documents and cards to ­illustrate their status.

Documents not enough

However, despite being in possession of these documents, they said they were still targeted, victimised, even charged and brought before the courts, as many police officers refused to acknowledge their status.

Activist Yesenia Gonzales, who has lived in Trinidad for many years, told the Express she had heard Government ministers on TV telling the public many of the foreigners held in the Immigration Detention Centre were there because they had not applied for refugee or asylum status—a claim she countered by saying many of these people were in possession of refugee cards and applications.

But in the eyes of this country, these documents were not enough.

“You make an application (at the UNHCR in Port of Spain) and are given a card, and told it has to go through a process, which can last from months to years. In the interim, they give you documentation indicating as such. But if you are walking the roads just to get groceries or anything like that, these papers are not enough. “You will have officers who will arrest you regardless, telling you the law is that your passport has to be stamped properly or you have to have direct documentation approving your stay. Applications are not enough. So then you end up before courts,” Gonzales said.

‘Making slaves of us’

Another Venezuelan national, Martha Tobar, pleaded with the Government to put things in place to treat with refugees and asylum seekers, saying the current system was only leading to persecution and ­victimisation.

“This is the only country that we can come to that gives us even a remote chance of improving our lives. If we could have gone to another country and avoid the hardships here, or the victimisation we experience, we would. But we don’t have those options. Most people give up everything they have to leave Venezuela and come here. The other option is that they kill you. So it’s either we come here, or we lose our lives. This is our reality. And most times, the documents you have, passports, identification cards, birth certificates, all these things are either destroyed or left behind due to circumstances. So we literally come here with the clothes on our backs. That is all we have.

“But then when we arrive here, there is no protection. It is not as bad as Venezuela, but it is not much of an improvement either. Because as soon as people know that you are running away, as soon as they know that you don’t have anything, they try to take advantage of you. Man or woman. It doesn’t matter. They will basically make slaves of you, or in some cases send people into prostitution.”

Tobar continued: “The situation is so bad that there are immigration officers who are blackmailing us. If they see us on the roads, they will pull us aside, tell us give them money, or they will bring the police. But where are we getting this money? If we hold to the conditions of the applications, we can’t work. If we break the conditions, we are brought before the courts ­because we have broken the laws of the land. So where is the care? Where is the understanding and compassion for your fellow human beings?”

Month of hell

Among the stories which were given yesterday was that of a young woman who endured what she said was a “month of hell” trying to reach Trinidad and Tobago.

She told the Express that on ­November 29, she arrived in this country legally.

However, she claimed immigration officials refused to allow her into the country.

“They said that I could not leave Immigration because I didn’t have anyone to go by and that no one was there to claim me. I told them that my friend was outside and they said they checked and no one was there. They didn’t allow me to call or check via Internet messages. They deported me the following day. I learned upon returning to Venezuela that this was all a lie. My friend was outside waiting the whole time. And he said he was never approached nor heard his name called or anything,” the woman recalled.

However, she was desperate to try to make some money to send back to her 15-year-old brother and father, and she admitted she returned to the country illegally on December 8.

She spent a few days with people she thought she knew and trusted, but on December 13 she said she was “set up” and kidnapped.

The woman said she and another Venezuelan friend were beaten and sexually assaulted by a group of men, and moved around from house to house.

They endured this for several days until they were rescued from their ­kidnappers by police.

The woman said what was worse was that she spent more time in police custody than the men she alleged assaulted her, as police investigators told her she was here illegally, and as a result she did not have any rights.

Eventually, she was released and applied for refugee status.

But she said the people who kidnapped her were eventually freed from custody and she has been told they are looking for her.

“This is not a situation I am wishing on anyone. I came here to work to send back things for my family, but instead I was given the worst treatment that any human being can be given. My advice to Venezuelans who are coming to this country, male or female—until the Government steps up and fixes the persecution we face here, trust no-one. People who claim they are helping you, they will sell you in a heartbeat because they know it will benefit them and they know the authorities simply do not care on what happens to us,” the woman said.

How application process works

An application is made and in response to this, a certificate is given to the person, identifying he/she as an asylum seeker.

The certificate identifies the applicant, their UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) registration number, date of registration, country of birth, country of asylum, and arrival date.

Following this is a letter, which is stamped by the UNHCR, in which it is noted that the applicant is an asylum seeker whose application is being processed.

The letter states, “(name) is a person of concern to the UNHCR and should be protected from forcible return to a country where she would face persecution, pending a final decision on her refugee status. Any assistance accorded to the above named individual would be appreciated.”

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi has been criticised for statements on legislation for refugees and asylum seekers.

Amnesty International has said this country was a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol.

Al-Rawi said that the convention has not been ratified and must be enacted in domestic law.

[Flex]

Notorious Venezuelans infiltrate T&T gangs
By Mark Bassant (Guardian).

Deadly alliance

A mur­der­ous and no­to­ri­ous Venezue­lan gang has in­fil­trat­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders and many of them are now part of the crim­i­nal land­scape that has in­ten­si­fied this coun­try’s vi­o­lence over the last few months.

The find­ings, se­nior in­tel­li­gence sources say, are con­tained in a num­ber of se­cret in­tel­li­gence re­ports that have been re­cent­ly pre­pared by var­i­ous arms of lo­cal law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia saw the re­ports which high­light­ed the wor­ry­ing trend of the pres­ence here of mem­bers of the Venezue­lan gang Evande. Law en­force­ment of­fi­cers say sev­er­al hun­dred mem­bers of Evande, which re­port­ed­ly has more than 650 mem­bers, are in this coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

The law en­force­ment re­ports say Evande mem­bers have been re­spon­si­ble for sev­er­al vi­o­lent crimes in Venezuela, in­clud­ing high pro­file kid­nap­pings and mur­ders. How­ev­er, Evande mem­bers here have now em­bed­ded them­selves with lo­cal gangs and have al­so sought jobs on con­struc­tion sites across the coun­try. The re­ports al­so point­ed to the gang’s in­volve­ment in the traf­fick­ing of nar­cotics and firearms in­to this coun­try.

What au­thor­i­ties have al­so un­rav­elled in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion is that Evande mem­bers fled Venezuela for T&T not on­ly to es­cape ri­val gangs, but al­so the Venezue­lan Guardia Na­cional who were giv­en in­struc­tions to dis­man­tle their op­er­a­tions due to their “vi­o­lent and heinous na­ture.”

One se­nior in­tel­li­gence said, “This is go­ing to have a domi­no ef­fect in Trinidad and To­ba­go. With more drug seizures some­one is go­ing to have to pay the price.”

An­oth­er high rank­ing in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cer fa­mil­iar with the re­port said the Venezue­lan gangs op­er­ate with a dif­fer­ent modus operan­di.

“These gang mem­bers move in groups and when they are go­ing to put down a hit they move with AK47s. If their tar­get is one per­son, they will open fire on that per­son even if there are oth­er peo­ple around. They will not be both­ered if in­no­cent peo­ple are killed. And that’s the dif­fer­ence with these Venezue­lan gangs,” he ex­plained.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figueira, who spoke to the T&T Guardian last Sat­ur­day, said Venezue­lan gangs have been set­ting up or­gan­ised crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions here and us­ing their com­pa­tri­ots in these ac­tiv­i­ties.

“They are pros­ti­tut­ing un­der the di­rec­tions and con­trol of Venezuela’s or­gan­ised crime, which is dis­turb­ing the bal­ance of forces on the ground in T&T’s gang­land,” Figueira said.

Figueira al­so al­lud­ed to the fact that these Venezue­lan gangs form coali­tions with lo­cal gangs. He said those Venezue­lans have al­ready af­fil­i­at­ed them­selves with lo­cal gang­land op­er­a­tors and they are not afraid to die.

Two se­nior in­tel­li­gence sources re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia that they have re­ceived cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion that at least three Venezue­lan na­tion­als shot and killed over the last month and a half in T&T were in some way con­nect­ed to the Evande gang.

One Venezue­lan na­tion­al was found dead on Feb­ru­ary 21 but is yet to be iden­ti­fied. His body was found dumped off Morne Co­co Road, Pe­tit Val­ley, with gun­shot wounds and his hands tied be­hind his back. Sources say he was a mem­ber of the Evande gang al­so they have not been able to con­firm his giv­en name. The oth­er Venezue­lan na­tion­als who had ties to the gang were Alexan­der Ce­de­no Ro­ro­ba, who was shot and killed near the El Pecos Grill in Wood­brook re­cent­ly. The man was re­port­ed­ly an asy­lum seek­er, but po­lice sources told Guardian last week that he worked as a hit­man in Venezuela.

The third Venezue­lan with deep ties to Evande was Jose Ro­driguez, 36, who was shot and killed by a lone gun­man while dri­ving along the West­ern Main Road in Glen­coe last Thurs­day.

One of the se­nior in­tel­li­gence sources ex­plained that Ro­driguez was able to get a ship­ment of co­caine from a Colom­bian link for a busi­ness­man in this coun­try. How­ev­er, the ship­ment was in­ter­cept­ed by po­lice sev­er­al months ago and Ro­driguez told the busi­ness­man the mon­ey for the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar ship­ment was still owed to the Colom­bians. But the busi­ness­man, the in­tel­li­gence source ex­plained, lat­er had Ro­driguez ex­e­cut­ed to can­cel out the debt.

“But be­cause these Colom­bian drug deal­ers are so con­nect­ed to Venezue­lan gangs and they are still owed mon­ey, it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore they come knock­ing.”

CoP mon­i­tors grow­ing pat­tern

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has not­ed a “grow­ing pat­tern of cer­tain el­e­ments from the South Amer­i­can main­land at­tempt­ing to set up their trade of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties in this coun­try.”

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Grif­fith warned that this emerg­ing pat­tern could com­pro­mise the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty.

In an in­ter­view ear­li­er, how­ev­er, Grif­fith had re­fused to com­ment on the in­tel­li­gence re­ports on the Venezue­lan gang­sters in­fil­trat­ing T&T gangs and be­com­ing in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

He al­so said he did not have any in­for­ma­tion to counter claims made by crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figueira on Venezue­lan gangs now in­fil­trat­ing the coun­try.

In his re­lease last evening, he al­so stopped short of mak­ing any ref­er­ence to the T&T Guardian’s ex­clu­sive sto­ry. How­ev­er, he re­it­er­at­ed his po­si­tion on de­port­ing per­sons of in­ter­est back to their coun­tries.

He said to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of an in­ci­dent at the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion in­volv­ing Venezue­lan women at­tack­ing of­fi­cers, of­fi­cers will now be “equipped with pep­per spray and tasers in tan­dem with the min­i­mum use of force pol­i­cy.”

In re­la­tion to that par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent, Grif­fith said if the Venezue­lan na­tion­als are found to have over­stayed their time here they will be de­port­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

Grif­fith al­so not­ed a num­ber of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties in­volv­ing non-na­tion­als who were ei­ther per­pe­tra­tors or vic­tims of crime over the past few months.

Cit­i­zens warned to be vig­i­lant

Se­cret in­tel­li­gence re­ports com­piled by law en­force­ment agen­cies have ad­vised all arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to be vig­i­lant of the ex­is­tence of mem­bers of the Venezue­lan gang Evande and their po­ten­tial threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The re­port al­so urged cit­i­zens to be­ware of their pub­lic sur­round­ings near their gro­ceries, homes, mar­kets and oth­er pub­lic ar­eas.

In­struc­tions were al­so giv­en to cross-ref­er­ence Venezue­lan na­tion­als who en­tered Trinidad and To­ba­go il­le­gal­ly with sev­er­al law en­force­ment agen­cies, in­clud­ing the as­sis­tance of In­ter­pol.

Crime in­volv­ing non-na­tion­als Jan-April 2019:

• Four Venezue­lans mur­dered

• Two Chi­nese men, one Venezue­lan woman and one Guyanese man charged in sex-ring bust

• Nine­teen fe­male non-na­tion­al mi­nors res­cued from hu­man traf­fick­ing ring

• Nine non-na­tion­als ar­rest­ed for pos­ses­sion of nar­cotics

• Five de­tainees es­caped the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre

• Po­lice res­cued four Venezue­lan women from a house at Diego Mar­tin

• Fifty-six Venezue­lans ar­rest­ed and charged for il­le­gal en­try

• Six Venezue­lan women at­tack po­lice

[Flex]

Four V’zuelans denied bail for assaulting police.
By Laurel Williams (Newsday).

Four Venezuelans – three women and a man – appeared before a Chaguanas magistrate yesterday charged with a total of 17 offences. including obstructing two police officers in the execution of their duties and assaulting them.

The four accused stood before senior magistrate Rajendra Rambachan in the first court. One woman and the man were each charged with assaulting PC Mohammed, throwing missiles to endanger people, resisting arrest, obstructing him and behaving in a disorderly manner.

Another woman was charged with resisting arrest, behaving in a disorderly manner, assaulting PC Mohammed and WPC Glasglow.

The last woman was charged with resisting WPC Glasglow, obstructing PC Mohammed and behaving in a disorderly manner.

They pleaded not guilty.

The charges stemmed from a fracas on Sunday at Freeport. Police on patrol at Uquire Road, Freeport stopped and searched two men, a Venezuelan and a Trinidadian. It is alleged when they tried to search the Venezuelan, the women intervened and assaulted the police.

Ag Cpl Bain and PC Mohammed of Central Division laid the charges.

Sgt Alicia Soodeen prosecuted and objected to bail, saying they were foreigners and had no fixed addresses in TT.

Attorney Nicholas Rampersadsingh represented the accused and Moonilal Ragbir translated.

The magistrate denied them bail and remanded them into police custody to reappear on May 14.

[Flex]

We can't stop a Venezuelan influx—Padarath
By Radhica De Silva (Guardian).

Even as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced yes­ter­day that se­cu­ri­ty forces were lock­ing down T&T’s bor­ders in re­sponse to Venezuela’s wors­en­ing cri­sis, Op­po­si­tion MPs said it was a lit­tle too late to do this.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath said noth­ing will stop des­per­ate peo­ple from flee­ing their home­land if civ­il war breaks out in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela.

Padarath said with fac­tions of Venezuela’s mil­i­tary sup­port­ing Op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do, T&T could be­come caught in the fall­out as flee­ing Venezue­lans could flock to the is­land, cre­at­ing a neg­a­tive im­pact on T&T’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty among oth­er is­sues.

“Could our re­sources han­dle the in­flux of Venezue­lans and would we be able to man­age the sit­u­a­tion?” he asked in re­la­tion to Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to reg­is­ter Venezue­lans and al­low them to work for up to a year legal­ly.

He said ed­u­ca­tion and the health sec­tor will al­so be strained un­der this sce­nario, adding that while it was im­por­tant to deal with the sit­u­a­tion in a hu­man­i­tar­i­an way, the Gov­ern­ment should al­so take pre­cau­tions to en­sure there is no neg­a­tive im­pact on T&Ts se­cu­ri­ty.

MP for Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Rush­ton Paray said since the at­tempt was made by Guai­do to over­throw the Nico­las Maduro regime there have been no re­ports of a high in­flux of Venezue­lans com­ing to T&T from the east coast. How­ev­er, he said he was sure they were com­ing in from oth­er points along the coast.

He not­ed that the Ma­yaro re­gion had a large num­ber of hard work­ing Venezue­lans who were ea­ger­ly wait­ing for reg­is­tra­tion. He warned, how­ev­er, that un­der the ad-hoc reg­is­tra­tion process no plan was put in place for a Venezue­lan woman who bears chil­dren in T&T dur­ing the one-year pe­ri­od.

“Will the chil­dren get cit­i­zen­ship? Will the par­ents be sent back? Why did the Gov­ern­ment al­low a 50-day win­dow be­fore reg­is­tra­tion be­gins?” Paray asked.

He al­so pre­dict­ed a high­er in­flux of Venezue­lans com­ing to T&T over the next few days. He said while NGOs in Ma­yaro were as­sist­ing Venezue­lans with ac­com­mo­da­tion and school­ing, he was un­cer­tain whether the coun­try will be able to ac­com­mo­date any great num­ber of them seek­ing refugee sta­tus in T&T.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said T&T was main­tain­ing its prin­ci­pled po­si­tion of non-in­ter­fer­ence and non-in­ter­ven­tion in the Venezue­lan cri­sis. How­ev­er, he said Gov­ern­ment hoped that the Venezue­lan peo­ple could re­solve their is­sues peace­ful­ly.

[Flex]

Venezuelans continue to enter South coast.
By Radhica De Silva (Guardian).

Boat­loads of Venezue­lans are still con­tin­u­ing to se­cret­ly en­ter Trinidad through Ica­cos even though the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that all bor­ders are now in lock­down.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the coastal vil­lages of Coro­man­del, Fullar­ton, Ica­cos and Bonasse yes­ter­day to see whether there was any phys­i­cal proof of ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. No ad­di­tion­al po­lice, sol­diers or coast guard were seen.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents said the num­ber of il­le­gal Venezue­lans had in­creased since vi­o­lent street protests erupt­ed in Venezuela fol­low­ing the at­tempt by Op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do to oust Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro.

Short­ly be­fore the T&T Guardian team ar­rived at Ica­cos Beach at noon, res­i­dents said a boat with five Venezue­lans pulled up and the oc­cu­pants ran out and en­tered a forest­ed area to hide.

A source, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said more than 50 Venezue­lans were seen en­ter­ing Ica­cos dur­ing Mon­day night and about a dozen ven­tured in dur­ing the day.

“On Tues­day at 5 am, three max­is were at the beach pick­ing up the women and chil­dren, many of whom could be no more than 20-years old.

“This is a reg­u­lar thing. We can­not talk about it but every­one sees and knows what is go­ing on,” the source said.

Some fish­er­men, who were try­ing to hoist a boat off the sand and who the source claimed had or­ches­trat­ed the il­le­gal trip, de­nied see­ing any Venezue­lans on the beach. They did not want pho­tos tak­en.

Sev­er­al fish­er­men said since the min­is­ter an­nounced a lock­down there has been no ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Adri­an Massey, who was kid­napped by Venezue­lans two years ago while fish­ing in lo­cal wa­ters, said he was con­cerned about de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela.

“It is cause for con­cern be­cause there is war in Venezuela . It will mean a lot of Venezue­lans com­ing here,” he said.

He said while lo­cals could not fish in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters, the Venezue­lans were com­ing in with lit­tle or no re­stric­tions.

While he ex­pressed sym­pa­thy for the plight of the Venezue­lans, Massey said one could not be cer­tain whether the for­eign­ers were crim­i­nals.

Pres­i­dent of Ica­cos Unit­ed Fish­er­men As­so­ci­a­tion Gary Ed­wards said, “There is no lock­down here. Who cares what is hap­pen­ing in Ica­cos. Do you think peo­ple don’t know what is hap­pen­ing? You know and that is why you are here.”

He added that Venezue­lans were liv­ing in every part of the penin­su­la.

At Bonasse Vil­lage, Ce­dros tour guide Ed­ward Mar­celle said there was no ev­i­dence of a bor­der lock­down be­cause of the Coast Guard in­ter­cep­tor was not sta­tioned off the coast.

How­ev­er, at Bowen and Carlise Trace, Coro­man­del, army of­fi­cers were spot­ted in­side the for­est trails. There were al­so ad­di­tion­al sol­diers seen by res­i­dents in the Gal­fa area.

On Mon­day, Young said the bor­ders will be locked down to stop il­le­gal en­try. He said the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing a non-in­ter­fer­ence and non-in­ter­ven­tion stance to the Venezue­lan cri­sis.

[Flex]

22 Venezuelans fined $3,000 each for illegal entry
By Sascha Wilson (Guardian).

A teacher, a stu­dent and a trainee po­lice­man were among 22 Venezue­lans who fled their cri­sis-strick­en home­land to Trinidad in search of work, food and a bet­ter life.

On Mon­day, they all ap­peared in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court charged with il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing the coun­try. The 20 men and two women plead­ed guilty.

Hav­ing lost their jobs, un­able to find work or food and pen­ni­less, they came to Trinidad leav­ing be­hind their chil­dren and spous­es in Venezuela.

Some of them said they were work­ing on an agri­cul­tur­al farm in Erin. They ap­peared be­fore First Court Se­nior Mag­is­trate Jo-Anne Con­nor who read the charge that on an un­known date they en­tered the coun­try in a place not des­ig­nat­ed as a port of en­try and failed to re­port to an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer.

They ar­rived in the coun­ty about two weeks ago. Their ages ranged from 18 to 45 years old and they were charged by Cpl Richard­son of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.

The 18-year-old, the po­lice trainee, and one of the women, age 45, were rep­ri­mand­ed and dis­charged. The oth­ers were each fined $3,000. They were giv­en three months to pay the mon­ey or serve six months in jail.

[Flex]

$123,000 in fines imposed against migrants.
T&T Guardian Reports.

In two days, a to­tal of 47 Venezue­lans ap­peared in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates Court for il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing the coun­try. The ma­jor­i­ty have been slapped with fines to­tal­ly $123,000.

Twen­ty-two ap­peared on Mon­day, 19 were fined a to­tal of $57,000 and three were dis­charged. On Wednes­day, 25 Venezue­lans, in­clud­ing six women, plead­ed guilty be­fore First Court Se­nior Mag­is­trate Jo-Anne Con­nor.

They ad­mit­ted to en­ter­ing the coun­try at a port of en­try which is not des­ig­nat­ed port and fail­ing to re­port to an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer.

The ma­jor­i­ty of them claimed they lost their jobs in oc­cu­pa­tions such as bak­ers, babysit­ters, con­struc­tion work­ers and me­chan­ics and came to here look­ing for work. They sneaked in­to the coun­try be­tween Feb­ru­ary and May and had been stay­ing in var­i­ous lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing Union Hall, San Fer­nan­do, Aripero, Rousil­lac, Moru­ga, Williamsville, Mara­bel­la and Palmiste.

Some were able to find jobs here do­ing main­ly do­mes­tic and con­struc­tion work. Three women, a 23-year-old woman work­ing as a babysit­ter, a 21-year-old work­ing as a maid and a 25-year-old who holds an ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant de­gree and was earn­ing a liv­ing by clean­ing hous­es and cook­ing here, were all rep­ri­mand­ed and dis­charged. The oth­er 22 were giv­en three months to pay the fines or serve six months in jail.

In any event, they will be de­tained at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre to await de­por­ta­tion. Christie Ramkissoon was the Span­ish trans­la­tor while WPC Limo of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion laid the charges.

Close to 100 Venezuelans held in Santa Flora

Po­lice have de­tained scores of Venezue­lan na­tion­als in San­ta Flo­ra in South Trinidad.

Many of those de­tained were car­ry­ing back­packs, sug­gest­ing that they had re­cent­ly come ashore.

We're told that close to 100 were de­tained.

This is a de­vel­op­ing re­port and we will have more lat­er.

Released! Venezuelans allowed until end of July

The 93 Venezue­lan na­tion­als who have been de­tained by po­lice in Pa­lo Seco, are be­ing re­leased.

The men, women and chil­dren were tak­en to Siparia where they were processed by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials.

They were giv­en doc­u­ments al­low­ing them to stay in the coun­try un­til the end of Ju­ly.

Some of the of­fi­cers even took the Venezue­lan na­tion­als to get dou­bles in Siparia.

They were al­so giv­en soft drinks and sand­wich­es.

Most of them said they have not eat­en since they came ear­ly this morn­ing.

They say they are not sure where they will stay but are ask­ing per­sons in the area to bor­row phones to make phone calls.

The Venezue­lans were held at a two-storey house in a forest­ed area in Pa­lo Seco.

[maxg]

This is the saddest problem going forward. As if we don't have enough social issues. Not sure what can be done.   

[soccerman]

We may have to explore alternatives to be proactive to intercept these refugees before they get on land. At the very least we can document who's entering or trying to enter through undesignated ports. Coast guards with the help of other military units I guess? I'm not even sure what measures we currently have in place.

[Flex]

Young urges Venezuelans to register
By Sampson Nanton (Guardian).

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is send­ing a mes­sage to Venezue­lan na­tion­als in Trinidad and To­ba­go, "do not to lis­ten" to those telling them to stay away from the reg­is­tra­tion process.

At a news con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day, Min­is­ter Young said that it is in their own in­ter­est, be­cause when the reg­is­tra­tion process is done, the state will re­vert to en­forc­ing the law of de­port­ing per­sons who are here il­le­gal­ly.

He has made a fresh call for all Venezue­lans, whether here legal­ly or not, to come for­ward and reg­is­ter dur­ing the time-pe­ri­od May 31 to June 14.

"I want to tell you of the con­se­quence of not reg­is­ter­ing. Come June 15, per­sons who have not tak­en part in the reg­is­tra­tion process, we re­vert back to the en­force­ment of the law as it cur­rent­ly stands. Do not lis­ten to any­one try­ing to con­vince you not to par­tic­i­pate in the ex­er­cise," he said.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, which is spear­head­ing the process, has re­duced the num­ber of reg­is­tra­tion cen­tres from five to three.

They will be at the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain, the Achiev­ers Ban­quet Hall in San Fer­nan­do and the Car­o­line Build­ing on Wil­son Street, Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go.

He said that there has been an over-sub­scrip­tion of per­sons re­spond­ing to the call for in­ter­preters, trans­la­tors and as­sis­tants for the process.

The process will in­volve an on­line seg­ment, in which per­sons will be asked to fill out forms, fol­low­ing which they will ac­quire iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers.

The forms will be both in Eng­lish and Span­ish.

At each reg­is­tra­tion point, there will be com­put­er ter­mi­nals for those wish­ing to fill out their forms and there will be as­sis­tants there to help.

He said there will on­ly be a cer­tain num­ber of per­sons reg­is­tered dai­ly but that no one will be turned away.

The reg­is­tra­tion form will al­so al­low for the reg­is­tra­tion of chil­dren.

Per­sons will then be tak­en to a desk for ver­i­fi­ca­tion, fin­ger­print­ing and pho­tograph­ing.

"Every­one, in­clud­ing chil­dren, will be reg­is­tered that way," Young said.

He added that the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­is­ter of Health will al­so be avail­able and that quick health scans will be con­duct­ed to en­sure there are no is­sues re­gard­ing the health of those be­ing reg­is­tered.

In the end, every­one will be giv­en a re­ceipt which will en­ti­tle them to a reg­is­tra­tion card.

Reg­is­tra­tion cards will on­ly be giv­en to Venezue­lans above the age of 16, and will al­low them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to stay and work in Trinidad and To­ba­go for a year.

Young said the cards will have spe­cial se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and can al­so be used by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials for ver­i­fi­ca­tions.

He has re­it­er­at­ed that the cards will not pre­vent those in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, from be­ing de­port­ed, adding that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tives have been get­ting in­for­ma­tion from In­ter­pol with re­gards to those in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

"So we have a red flag list of any­one who comes up as a crim­i­nal," he said.

He said he has signed around 10 de­por­ta­tion or­ders in the last few weeks.

Min­is­ter Young in­sists that the gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy on Venezue­lans has not changed and that the de­ci­sion by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials to grant su­per­vi­sion or­ders to 93 Venezue­lans held in Pa­lo Seco this week, is not a new thing.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the space at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre and al­so the care need­ed for women and chil­dren.

He said in that case, it would be more hu­mane to re­lease them on su­per­vi­sion or­ders, with re­quire­ments for them to ap­pear every two weeks so that their where­abouts can be tracked.

"There is no soft­en­ing of our pol­i­cy," he said.

On the oth­er end, he said that the au­thor­i­ties have dis­cussed with Venezuela's 'Guardia Na­tion­al', ef­forts to al­so stop shiploads of Venezue­lans from trav­el­ling from Venezuela to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The cost of the reg­is­tra­tion process is $5 mil­lion but the min­is­ter said the fig­ure is flu­id as they may come across con­tin­gen­cies that they have not catered for be­fore.

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Venezuelans in court for illegal entry
By Sascha Wilson (Guardian).

Even as aid is be­ing sought for more 100 Venezue­lans mi­grants found hid­ing in the Pa­lo Seco area, 46 oth­ers ap­peared in court this morn­ing charged with en­ter­ing the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

The ma­jor­i­ty of them were con­vict­ed and or­dered to pay fines of $2000 and $3000. They were giv­en three months to pay the fines or serve six and four months in jail. Most were men and they came in­to the coun­try at dif­fer­ent dates be­tween last Au­gust and this month.

Af­ter ap­pear­ing be­fore San Fer­nan­do Se­nior Mag­is­trate Jo-Anne Con­nor the mi­grants were tak­en away in prison vans.

On Thurs­day, more than 100 Venezue­lan men, women and chil­dren were held by po­lice in the Pa­lo Seco area. They ar­rived in the coun­try via boat and were hid­ing in the forests. They were lat­er giv­en shel­ter at a sports com­plex in Siparia and Good Samar­i­tans pro­vid­ed them with food and cloth­ing. Med­ical care was al­so pro­vid­ed.

Those mi­grants have been giv­en per­mis­sion to stay here un­til the end of Ju­ly.

More Venezuelans arrive via Icacos
By Radica De Silva (Guardian).

While po­lice locked down the coastal points at Beach Camp, Pa­lo Seco and Erin on Wednes­day night, three more boat­loads of Venezue­lans ar­rived at Ica­cos Beach and Colum­bus Bay.

A source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said the boats came in be­tween 11 pm on Wednes­day to 1:30 am on Thurs­day. Short­ly af­ter mid­night, a heavy con­tin­gent of po­lice came in, search­ing for the Venezue­lans. It is be­lieved they fled in­to the forests near Con­stance es­tate, La Vege Es­tate, St Quintin Es­tate at near Colum­bus Bay. A few of them were lat­er ar­rest­ed but the ma­jor­i­ty are still in hid­ing.

"Things were hot here last night. Ear­li­er on they picked up 12 of them at Fullar­ton Beach. The peo­ple who nor­mal­ly come for them did not show up last night be­cause there was too much po­lice around," the source added.

Usu­al­ly, a maxi taxi is hired and the for­eign­ers are car­ried to var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions.

A pho­to of Venezue­lans be­ing held for ques­tion­ing at the Ce­dros Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia on Thurs­day morn­ing.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, coun­cil­lor for the area, Shankar Teelucks­ingh ques­tioned whether the 360-de­gree radar was func­tion­al.

"I want to know whether the radar is work­ing? How is it that the Venezue­lans are still ar­riv­ing at the south­ern coasts? Where is the Coast Guard? Is it that they are on­ly pa­trolling to stop the Venezue­lans fer­ries?" Teelucks­ingh asked. He al­so ques­tioned why Im­mi­gra­tion grant­ed an Or­der of Su­per­vi­sion to 105 Venezue­lans who were picked up on Wednes­day at Aguillera Trace, Beach Camp. One of the or­ders of su­per­vi­sion pa­pers hand­ed to Er­i­ca Yohan Men­doza Miche­le­na ad­vised that he has to re­port to the se­nior im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer at Knox Street, San Fer­nan­do.

Teelucks­ingh said the Venezue­lans should have re­ceived clear­ance to stay for one week in Trinidad to get sup­plies and then the fer­ries should have been hired to de­port them back to Venezuela. He called on the Min­istry to set up refugee camps and to li­aise with agen­cies like the UNCHR and Red Cross to help the Venezue­lans.

Many of those in­ter­viewed at Siparia af­ter their re­lease were left with nowhere to go. They even­tu­al­ly spent the night at the Ir­win Park pavil­ion af­ter Guardian Me­dia im­plored chair­man of the Siparia Regi­ion­al­Cor­po­ra­tion Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh to find suit­able ac­com­mo­da­tion for them.

Sev­er­al busi­ness own­ers and church groups have of­fered to pro­vide lunch for the home­less Venezue­lans. Once reg­is­tra­tion be­gins, Venezue­lans who qual­i­fy will be al­lowed to live and work in Trinidad for a year.

Guardian Me­dia will bring you more on this as this sit­u­a­tion de­vel­ops.

Women, children hideout in Icacos forest

Des­per­ate to es­cape be­ing caught by the po­lice, more than 50 Venezue­lan women and their chil­dren are hid­ing in the forests of Ica­cos, with man­goes and co­conuts for a meal.

By dusk, when the mos­qui­toes, gnats and sand flies de­scend, the hun­gry women stum­ble out of the forests in search of food, hold­ing their chil­dren pro­tec­tive­ly around them.

Guardian Me­dia went in search of the bush fam­i­lies on Thurs­day and saw ev­i­dence of their ex­is­tence. Fresh tracks were seen in the for­est lead­ing to the sea and a knap­sack was spot­ted on the road. A team of of­fi­cers from the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion were seen search­ing in a road lead­ing to the beach near Gal­far.

It is an area ac­ces­si­ble on­ly through the bumpy Gran Chemin vil­lage in Ica­cos where an old colo­nial road once broke off leav­ing the land ex­posed to the sea.

Vil­lager Rox­anne Williams who was seen shred­ding co­conut branch­es to make co­coyea brooms con­firmed that she had seen the home­less for­est chil­dren.

“It is so sad see­ing them. I can­not imag­ine how they are liv­ing in there where there are snakes and all kinds of an­i­mals,” she said.

“We es­ti­mate that about 300 of them came up here over the past few days. On Wednes­day, I saw one woman who had a ba­by not old­er than a year. The oth­er child was about four. They were look­ing for food. They run across the road when they saw me,” Williams said.

She said when­ev­er the Venezue­lans see the po­lice, Cus­toms or Im­mi­gra­tion, they would run in the bush­es and hide.

An­oth­er vil­lager Can­dy Ed­wards said he es­ti­mat­ed there were still about 50 Venezue­lans hid­ing in the bush­es and aban­doned co­conut es­tates in Ica­cos.

“Some of those who came be­fore had a con­tact to take them to var­i­ous places to work but many who are com­ing now have no mon­ey, no pos­ses­sions and nowhere to go,” Ed­wards said.

Hav­ing been im­pris­oned in Venezuela for 52 days af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed by the Guardia Na­cional last year, Ed­wards said the last thing he want­ed was to be in Venezuela.

“It is no won­der that peo­ple run­ning from there. In the vil­lagers like Ped­er­nales, Tu­cu­pi­ta and Capri, peo­ple are suf­fer­ing. They have no food, no wa­ter and no med­i­cine.”

While Ed­wards ex­pressed con­cerns that some of the Venezue­lans were crim­i­nals he said some­thing has does be done to pro­tect the chil­dren.

“It’s not right. My moth­er has been feed­ing the chil­dren from the forests but she can­not take them in.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, chair­man of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Han­iff Ben­jamin said the Au­thor­i­ty has been work­ing with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to as­sist all chil­dren in T&T in­clud­ing those who were for­eign­ers.

“We have a man­date to pro­tect all the chil­dren of T&T. We are a sig­na­to­ry to the Unit­ed Na­tions Rights of Child and we have a du­ty to pro­vide care and at­ten­tion to chil­dren as well as to pro­tect all chil­dren. The mech­a­nisms of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty will kick in­to place to pro­vide help to the chil­dren.

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PM: Volume of Venezuelans will become a burden.
By Sampson Nanton (Guardian).

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not be the so­lu­tion for mil­lions of Venezue­lans who are flee­ing the coun­try and that there will come a time when the vol­ume of Venezue­lans com­ing here will be­come a bur­den.

He made the re­mark at to­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence.

The prime min­is­ter said the first pri­or­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment is the wel­fare of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He told the me­dia con­fer­ence that while Trinidad and To­ba­go is at­tempt­ing to keep its doors open, it will not be able to cope with a large mi­gra­tion of Venezue­lans.

"In­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, many of them with dif­fer­ent agen­das to our in­ter­est in Trinidad and To­ba­go, will not en­cour­age us in­to con­vert­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, this lit­tle is­land na­tion in the mouth of the Orinoco, in­to any refugee camp for the larg­er Venezue­lan pub­lic," he said.

Dr Row­ley added: "To pro­tect the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go we will have to lim­it our ex­po­sure to the fall­out in Venezuela."

He said one way of do­ing so is to con­tin­ue the 90-day lim­it al­lowed for Venezue­lans com­ing in­to the coun­try.

How­ev­er, he is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go might have to en­sure that the mi­gra­tion of Venezue­lans to this coun­try, stops.

"There comes a time when the vol­ume and the pres­ence of these eco­nom­ic mi­grants in Trinidad and To­ba­go will threat­en the qual­i­ty of life of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and it falls to us to pro­tect our­selves from that," he said.

He said the gov­ern­ment is not naive to the fact that crim­i­nal el­e­ments are al­so at­tempt­ing to ex­ploit the gen­eros­i­ty of this coun­try in al­low­ing Venezue­lans in.

Dr Row­ley said he will chair a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Fri­day to ad­dress ma­jor con­cerns re­lat­ed to that.

He said the reg­is­tra­tion process which be­gins on May 31, will help the au­thor­i­ties to know how many are here, where they are and who they are.

"If you en­gage in crim­i­nal con­duct of any kind, we will de­port you be­cause you are our guests," he said.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says that the gov­ern­ment did not play a role in the de­ci­sion to grant su­per­vi­sion or­ders to Venezue­lan na­tion­als found in Pa­lo Seco on Wednes­day.

Close to 100 Venezue­lans were found in a house in a forest­ed area and were tak­en to Siparia for pro­cess­ing.

Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers al­lowed the Venezue­lans to go free on su­per­vi­sion or­ders, un­til the end of Ju­ly.

Min­is­ter Young said that he could not say on what grounds the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials act­ed.

"I can't say what was the de­ci­sion tak­en by the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers," Young said, adding, "I can tell you that the gov­ern­ment did not par­tic­i­pate in that de­ci­sion."

Min­is­ter Young said the might have had to do with the space avail­able for hold­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants.

"You have to un­der­stand there are lim­it­ed fa­cil­i­ties for hold­ing per­sons and that is some­thing we are go­ing to be work­ing on, and I think they just took a de­ci­sion on the ground there that if they re­lease them on su­per­vi­sion or­ders - and I was told that peo­ple are hold­ing to the terms of the su­per­vi­sion or­ders, so they are ac­tu­al­ly turn­ing up when they are sup­posed and re­port­ing in etc - that was a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer who was in charge yes­ter­day," he said.

He said he did not have in­for­ma­tion on where they were to­day.

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No one will be turned away —Young.
By Renuka Singh (Guardian).

Any Venezue­lan na­tion­al who ar­rives in this coun­try be­fore the end of the two-week reg­is­tra­tion process can ap­ply to live and work here for up to a year.

This con­fir­ma­tion came from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as he gave de­tails for the first time on how the reg­is­tra­tion process will un­fold be­tween May 31 and June 15.

Young gave de­tails of the process on Fri­day at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty head of­fice on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, which was chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter.

In the days be­fore the start of reg­is­tra­tion, Young ad­mit­ted, more Venezue­lan na­tion­als are like­ly to come ashore il­le­gal­ly.

Even as he spoke, po­lice and im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties were search­ing for a group that ar­rived in Ce­dros yes­ter­day. The Unit­ed Na­tions Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights es­ti­mat­ed in April, there are be­tween 40,000 and 60,000 Venezue­lans in T&T. That fig­ure has been grow­ing dai­ly as mi­grants come ashore in the dead of night at se­clud­ed in­lets in sev­er­al ar­eas in the coun­try — more­so in the south­west­ern penin­su­la which lies just sev­en miles away from the South Amer­i­can na­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said on Thurs­day this coun­try can­not be the so­lu­tion to mil­lions of Venezue­lans flee­ing their coun­try due to eco­nom­ic hard­ship nor can this coun­try be con­vert­ed in­to a refugee camp. Venezuela has an es­ti­mat­ed pop­u­la­tion of 33 mil­lion, 25 times Trinidad and To­ba­go's pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 mil­lion.

He said the Gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the in­ter­est of cit­i­zens first.

"The pol­i­cy is now where we are faced with an in­flux threat­en­ing to be over­whelm­ing for us," he ad­mit­ted.

But Young's ad­mis­sion that "no one will be turned away", seemed to con­tra­dict the PM's state­ment.

Young said five reg­is­tra­tion cen­tres had been ini­tial­ly pro­posed but not­ed the Gov­ern­ment would on­ly be able to man­age three: one in Port-of-Spain at the Queen's Park Oval, a sec­ond at the Achiev­ers Ban­quet Hall on Dun­can Street, San Fer­nan­do and a third in at the Car­o­line build­ing, Wil­son Road in Scar­bor­ough.

He is count­ing on the net­work with­in the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in T&T to help get mi­grants to the reg­is­tra­tion cen­tres, and he en­cour­aged the use of a pre-reg­is­tra­tion process on­line.

"From a lo­gis­tics point of view, from a se­cu­ri­ty point of view and just be­ing able to man­age the reg­is­tra­tion cen­tres, we could not go to with more than three," Young said.

Young said the small­er num­ber of reg­is­tra­tion points would not pose an ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial bur­den on the peo­ple com­ing in­to the coun­try.

"At the end of the day, my hon­est be­lief and in lis­ten­ing to im­mi­gra­tion, and they are the ones who are deal­ing with per­sons on the ground for months now, peo­ple will make their way to where they need to be for reg­is­tra­tions," he said.

The min­is­ter em­pha­sised that the reg­is­tra­tion process is manda­to­ry for all Venezue­lan na­tion­als who fled their home­land.

"The con­se­quence of not reg­is­ter­ing, so come June 15, what hap­pens to per­sons who have not tak­en part in this reg­is­tra­tion process, we will re­vert back to the law and the en­force­ment of the law as it cur­rent­ly stands, " he said.

"Even if per­sons have gone through the reg­is­tra­tion process and then en­gage in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, as the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, I will de­port you," he said.

Each in­di­vid­ual over the age of 16 would be grant­ed a reg­is­tra­tion card and a unique num­ber, al­low­ing them to work legal­ly in the coun­try and emer­gency ac­cess to health care.

The reg­is­tra­tion process in­cludes a bio­met­ric por­tion that will use the reg­is­trant's fin­ger­prints and pho­tographs.

Off­i­cals from the Min­istry of Health would al­so be present dur­ing that two-week process to en­sure the health of the per­son reg­is­ter­ing.

At the end of the reg­is­tra­tion process, each per­son would be giv­en a re­ceipt for a reg­is­tra­tion card.

The card al­lows the hold­er to work in the coun­try for one year. They must check in at the six-month mark for a com­par­i­son of records.

He said in the past few weeks, he signed some 10 de­por­ta­tion pa­pers and would sign many more if Venezue­lans com­mit any crimes in the coun­try.

While he said that there would be no soft­en­ing of the im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy at the coun­try's en­try points, he ad­mit­ted that the de­por­ta­tion pol­i­cy would be ramped up on­ly "af­ter" the reg­is­tra­tion process.

"Af­ter, def­i­nite­ly. The de­por­ta­tion comes on the back end of con­vic­tion. Un­der the im­mi­gra­tion law, how­ev­er, there are oth­er method­olo­gies avail­able," he said.

Ques­tions have been raised about the process es­pe­cial­ly as just un­der 100 Venezue­lan na­tion­als en­tered the coun­try last week il­le­gal­ly and were de­tained by po­lice. The group was then grant­ed im­mu­ni­ty un­til Ju­ly.

This group, too, would be al­lowed to reg­is­ter.

Young said the reg­is­tra­tion pro­gramme cost the Gov­ern­ment $5 mil­lion so far.

"It is a flu­id process," he said, adding that the full cost would on­ly be known af­ter the pro­gramme is com­plet­ed.

Young al­so said that the East­ern De­ten­tion Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San­ta Rosa will be out­fit­ted and used as an im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion cen­tre.

While some of the new ar­rivals have been de­tained and lat­er re­leased by im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties and or­dered to re­port with­in 90 days, oth­er have been tak­en to court, charged as much as $3,000 for be­ing in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly, and de­tained at the al­ready over­crowd­ed Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo.

The se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have been stretched try­ing to lim­it the num­ber of new ar­rivals who are hid­ing out in forests along the coast­line and aban­doned build­ings.

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Migrant squatting, prostitution worry MPs
By Gail Alexander (Guardian).

Quat­ting, squab­bles and sex-re­lat­ed prob­lems.

Re­ports of squat­ting in Cen­tral Trinidad by some Venezue­lans and the oc­cu­pan­cy of aban­doned South hous­es are among the mixed bag of is­sues re­sult­ing from the in­flux of mi­grants to T&T in re­cent months.

Oth­er is­sues in­clude cer­tain Clax­ton Bay-based Venezue­lan women be­ing fol­lowed home by T&T men af­ter work—and maxi taxis fer­ry­ing “ar­rivals” out of cer­tain La Brea coastal ar­eas.

Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans on both sides who’ve been track­ing the im­pact on their con­stituen­cies of the ris­ing tide of im­mi­grants have not­ed these and oth­er is­sues as the two cul­tures try to deal with the new ex­pe­ri­ence pre­sent­ed by Venezuela’s in­sta­bil­i­ty and Gov­ern­ment’s up­com­ing bid to as­cer­tain how many Venezue­lans are in T&T dur­ing an amnesty reg­is­tra­tion process start­ing this week.

In the count­down to Fri­day’s start of the Gov­ern­ment’s two-week reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve, while most MPs said yes­ter­day that mi­grants main­ly try to earn their keep, cer­tain Op­po­si­tion MPs were doubt­ful—from what some Venezue­lans tell them—the reg­is­tra­tion will at­tract suf­fi­cient re­sponse to in­form Gov­ern­ment on ex­act­ly how many Venezue­lans are in T&T. That’s the in­tent of the ex­er­cise which will al­low reg­is­trants a one-year work stint and de­port the un­doc­u­ment­ed.

The T&T Guardian com­piled some of the ex­tent of the Venezue­lan in­flux—and ef­fects—in var­i­ous con­stituen­cies from the MPs:

Cou­va North MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al: “There’s a large num­ber of Venezue­lans in my area, main­ly do­ing low-pay­ing jobs and con­se­quent­ly we do have is­sues. There’s com­pe­ti­tion on for jobs and my con­stituents are com­plain­ing. Land­lords rent­ing to them cau­tious about be­ing able to con­trol ten­ants since one or two may rent a place and end up with 10 peo­ple in it. Squab­bles/quar­rel with neigh­bours are al­so be­ing re­port­ed.

“But there’s al­so a lot of squat­ting by Venezue­lans around Brick­field and coastal ar­eas where they’re mix­ing in with squat­ters there. Apart from the hu­man traf­fick­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion con­cerns that are on­go­ing, there are al­so emerg­ing con­cerns, that some fish­ing sec­tors, due to lack of reg­u­lar gas, may be in­clined to turn to ‘trans­porta­tion’ as al­ter­na­tive busi­ness.”

Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald: “Venezue­lans have al­ways been in Wood­brook/Port-of-Spain ar­eas, as some came to learn Span­ish there over the years. But we’ve had an in­flux now as busi­ness­es are em­ploy­ing them. It rais­es many ques­tions when cit­i­zens can’t find work, yet they’re find­ing work, so we have to find ways to han­dle this as­pect. Many con­stituents tell me peo­ple are pass­ing dai­ly ask­ing if they have rentals and some con­stituents feel it’s be­com­ing dan­ger­ous with strangers in their area. Sun­day (yes­ter­day) morn­ing a cou­ple and two young chil­dren rang my bell—in a res­i­den­tial St Joseph area—seek­ing to rent; they’re go­ing door to door. I al­so see Venezue­lans rent­ing in East Port-of-Spain. But our up­com­ing reg­is­tra­tion process will help man­age the sit­u­a­tion.”

Many Venezue­lans rent and work in Port-of-Spain North but some land­lords are now mon­i­tor­ing rentals close­ly, res­i­dents al­so say.


Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee: “There’s quite a lot, in­clud­ing in Mara­bel­la, Clax­ton Bay; em­ployed in car wash­es, clubs, bars. There have been in­ci­dents but many go un­re­port­ed as some of these peo­ple are il­le­gal. Re­cent­ly, some fe­male Venezue­lan bar work­ers were fol­lowed to their Macaulay home by lo­cal cus­tomers. We’ve asked Clax­ton Bay po­lice for more reg­u­lar pa­trols, es­pe­cial­ly around bars’ clos­ing time. With Petrotrin’s clo­sure, we have a lot of aban­doned build­ings on the sea­side and I un­der­stand peo­ple are tak­ing oc­cu­pan­cy. We’re try­ing to as­cer­tain whether lo­cal or for­eign. Con­stituents are al­so con­cerned about job com­pe­ti­tion due to Petrotrin’s ab­sence. Since Gov­ern­ment is so dis­con­nect­ed from peo­ple, I re­al­ly doubt the reg­is­tra­tion in its cur­rent for­mat will at­tain its tar­get.”

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray: “We have a cou­ple hun­dred peo­ple. Those I’ve en­coun­tered say they may not reg­is­ter as they feel they’ll be de­port­ed af­ter a year. They don’t un­der­stand the process and don’t want to re­turn home as they feel the sit­u­a­tion with Maduro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion won’t be re­solved. So they may end up hid­ing. Many are work­ing in bars and oth­er places and there’s the per­cep­tion of pros­ti­tu­tion. I’ve ad­vised groups work­ing with them to let them know to con­duct them­selves bet­ter, as danc­ing half-naked in bars doesn’t as­sist their cause. We’ve all not­ed T&T fe­males are fum­ing on so­cial me­dia about the sit­u­a­tion. From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, mi­grants can as­sist the econ­o­my if their tal­ent’s used in ap­pro­pri­ate chan­nels, but Gov­ern­ment moved on this hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis late.”

Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal: “There’s high con­cen­tra­tion in Pe­nal/Debe. Many work in bars and restau­rants, which has im­pli­ca­tions for so­cial/med­ical ser­vices. But some are un­able to af­ford ac­com­mo­da­tion and live in squalor. Some groups are pro­vid­ing wa­ter and foods but the sit­u­a­tion is strain­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices. The dark­er side is re­port­ed pros­ti­tu­tion and im­pact on T&T fam­i­lies. One la­dy told me four months ago her hus­band vis­its a bar dai­ly - but doesn’t drink al­co­hol. Bar own­ers are tend­ing to hire Venezue­lans to at­tract cus­tomers. If more ar­rive, South­ern con­stituen­cies may buck­le un­der the strain of pro­vid­ing ser­vices, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion since Gov­ern­ment failed to com­plete many schools.”

La Brea MP Nicole Olivierre: “We know they’re there but peo­ple on­ly see one or two Venezue­lans here; one man runs a restau­rant in the area. Con­stituents don’t com­plain but I’ve had re­ports that when peo­ple ar­rive from Venezuela, maxi taxis from out­side our area come to coastal points and take them out and we’re al­so aware of an il­le­gal ‘port’ where they ar­rive. It doesn’t seem they re­main here so it’s not im­pact­ing on con­stituents.”

Ch­agua­nas West MP Gan­ga Singh: “We have a large pres­ence. In places, five or six rent premis­es for $3,500/$4,000. Since Ch­agua­nas is a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty cen­tre, many are en­gaged in tyre shops, sell­ing etc. They’re hard work­ing. But my re­ports con­firm a lev­el of ex­ploita­tion and some re­ceiv­ing less than min­i­mum wage. Many have re­al fear of reg­is­ter­ing since they’re scared Im­mi­gra­tion will know where they are and de­port them. They’re con­fused by Gov­ern­ment’s state­ments and the lan­guage bar­ri­er isn’t help­ing. Giv­en the right ap­proach, the reg­is­tra­tion could work. But is­sues should have been ad­dressed to pre­vent the cur­rent ‘round up’ ap­proach.”


Fyz­abad - MP Lack­ram Bo­doe’s is over­seas but his col­league Su­ruj Ram­bachan, who is at his Fyz­abad prop­er­ty al­most dai­ly, said: “Venezue­lan num­bers have quadru­pled in the last three weeks in Fyz­abad and San­ta Flo­ra es­pe­cial­ly. Dai­ly, five to sev­en peo­ple come job-seek­ing, very humbly, even of­fer­ing to work for as lit­tle as $100 dai­ly. They plead that they have to eat so it’s pos­si­ble they could be open to ex­ploita­tion. They seem in bad shape, some come, hold­ing three-month-old ba­bies who they say come with them ‘on the boat’. It seems in some cas­es they’re oc­cu­py­ing aban­doned hous­es, but some ob­vi­ous­ly don’t have a fixed place of abode.

“Most of the men are be­low 25 and women un­der 25. Gen­er­al­ly, many tell me - via in­ter­preter- they’re ap­pre­hen­sive about reg­is­ter­ing be­cause they seem to think a yel­low pa­per they get from Im­mi­gra­tion - for the 90-day stay- al­lows them to stay here in­def­i­nite­ly. They keep that with them con­tin­u­ous­ly. One man was ar­rest­ed in Fyz­abad for not hav­ing it. They know lit­tle about min­i­mum wage but those I met are hard­work­ing and skilled, some even uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates. This cri­sis could strain south Trinidad’s re­sources. We should par­tic­u­lar­ly have a med­ical camp to en­sure they’re healthy, es­pe­cial­ly those liv­ing in for­est camps. While T&T peo­ple are very gen­er­ous, the pres­ence of so many Venezue­lans has seen so­cial ten­sions de­vel­op­ing with lo­cals un­able to get work. But it must be con­sid­ered it takes much courage to bring ba­bies on the high seas, so clear­ly, some of them sin­cere­ly want to earn a liv­ing.”

Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles: “ Ten per cent in my area are for­eign­ers and po­lice say a 10 per cent in­crease in crime is due to that. They’re hid­ing un­der the radar but you can see in­creas­es as they work in bars with con­trac­tors and oth­er places. The biggest sign of their pres­ence is women com­plain­ing to me that their fam­i­lies are be­ing bro­ken up by their pres­ence but we lack da­ta. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter’s even failed to ex­plain how they de­cid­ed on the num­ber of reg­is­tra­tion cen­tres which Venezue­lans are say­ing are in­suf­fi­cient.”

Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Bhoe Tewarie: “Their sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence is seen in apart­ment rentals where there are more peo­ple per room than nor­mal. The num­ber of con­stituen­cy com­pa­nies hir­ing al­so means ei­ther lo­cals aren’t get­ting jobs or don’t want to work. My in­for­ma­tion is the Venezue­lans are gen­er­al­ly un­der­paid and work long hours. While reg­is­tra­tion’s de­sir­able, it’s in a con­text where it’s hard to en­force, we seem un­able to man­age bor­der in­flux and there’s the ques­tion of how many peo­ple can T&T ab­sorb to sup­port all hu­mane­ly and deal with in­te­gra­tion.”

Ca­roni East MP Tim Gopeesingh: “ There are scores in St He­le­na/Kel­ly I en­coun­tered dur­ing flood­ing. Con­stituents help and ac­com­mo­date them, in­clud­ing find­ing them jobs. While there’s the sus­pi­cion of pros­ti­tu­tion, in­ci­dents are un­con­firmed.”

Point Fortin may­or Ab­don Ma­son: “We’d want to en­sure no neg­a­tives - crime, pros­ti­tu­tion, etcetera - in our area from any un­con­trolled in­flux. We have our own chal­lenges so we’d not want peo­ple in their quest to han­dle their own, add neg­a­tives to ours.”

Laven­tille West MP Fitzger­ald Hinds: "I haven't re­ceived com­plaints from con­stituents but at the na­tion­al lev­el we're deal­ing with the Venezue­lan pres­ence and the ef­fects on our porous bor­ders via our reg­is­tra­tion process and se­cu­ri­ty frame­work - there are 135 il­le­gal ports of en­try. But once our reg­is­tra­tion is done, we'll know who's pro­tect­ed eco­nom­ic mi­grant and who isn't."

Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath: “We've seen over 18 months Venezue­lans set­tling in St Ju­lian Vil­lage, Matil­da, Craig­nish and not­ed an equal num­ber of them mar­ry­ing lo­cal men and women, in­te­grat­ing ap­par­ent­ly to get res­i­den­cy. Dur­ing our Christ­mas Toy Dri­ve, we vis­it­ed homes and saw where they’ve set­tled and have chil­dren. What’s wor­ry­ing is there’s been sev­er­al al­ter­ca­tions in­volv­ing Venezue­lans in the area in the last six months and peo­ple who’ve em­ployed some as do­mes­tics have re­port­ed thefts."

Tabaquite- While MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan not­ed an in­flux in Gas­par­il­lo, Re­form and oth­er ar­eas, a dis­trict church has been en­sur­ing some Venezue­lans have a dai­ly meal. Cou­va/Tabqauite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Hen­ry Awong, added, “Con­stituents have two con­cerns - en­sur­ing they get jobs in this com­pet­i­tive at­mos­phere with Venezue­lans ar­riv­ing in batch­es and where some busi­ness­men are glad for the very cheap labour. Al­so, peo­ple are wor­ried health fa­cil­i­ties won’t hold up as some rur­al health cen­tres al­ready rou­tine­ly lack drugs.”

Ari­ma MP An­tho­ny Gar­cia: “Ari­ma has a high num­ber but I haven’t re­ceived com­plaints. Groups help them, in­clud­ing with food.”

San Juan-Barataria MP Fuad Khan: "My area has many judg­ing from high rental lev­els. Some have been robbed but didn't re­port it. Per­haps if they reg­is­ter, they'll re­port it. They work hard I've seen. Some mea­sure should be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure they get min­i­mum wage af­ter reg­is­tra­tion. My con­stituents recog­nise once they mas­ter Eng­lish, Venezue­lans will be a force to be reck­oned with in T&T and our de­mo­graph­ics can change. So cit­i­zens should learn from them be­cause they'll be com­pe­ti­tion."

[Flex]

Venezuelans afraid of persecution following line of questioning
By Radhica De Silva (Guardian).

Some of the 115 Venezue­lans who com­plet­ed reg­is­tra­tion at Achiev­ers Ban­quet Hall in San Fer­nan­do on Fri­day say they are sur­prised at the line of ques­tions they were asked dur­ing their brief in­ter­views by Im­mi­gra­tion.

Some ex­pressed fear of be­ing per­se­cut­ed po­lit­i­cal­ly if the in­for­ma­tion they di­vulged was shared.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia through our trans­la­tor Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, Venezue­lan Juan Fer­nan­des said the ques­tions were lim­it­ed and did not take in­to ac­count their med­ical prob­lems or their med­ical needs.

An­oth­er Venezue­lan Jhoselys Fuentes said, "They main­ly want­ed to know how we got here, legal­ly or il­le­gal­ly. By boat or by plane? Whether we were work­ing now. Noth­ing about our med­ical his­to­ry or our needs," she said.

She not­ed that the ques­tion­naire giv­en to them when they were in­ter­viewed by Liv­ing Wa­ters was more de­tailed.

Liv­ing Wa­ters is the agency af­fil­i­at­ed with the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion for Refugees (UN­HCR).

Fuentes said most peo­ple be­lieved that the Venezue­lans who live in Trinidad were wealthy be­cause of their groom­ing. How­ev­er, she said it was part of their cul­ture to be well groomed.

Act­ing Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds who vis­it­ed says the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the Venezue­lans will be strict­ly con­fi­den­tial.

He not­ed that in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty back­ground checks will have to be done us­ing In­ter­pol re­sources.

He al­so said all Venezue­lans had a med­ical form to fill out which will pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on their med­ical his­to­ry.

Hinds added that in­struc­tions were giv­en to pro­vide print­ing and copy­ing ser­vices to the Venezue­lans who did not have hard copies of their re­spec­tive forms.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, all Venezue­lans were ad­vised be­fore­hand to walk with pass­port sized pho­tographs.

He said the process is flow­ing smooth­ly and will get bet­ter as the day pro­gress­es.

[Flex]

Tobago love for migrants.
By Casandra Thompson-Forbes (Guardian).

There has been out­pour­ing sup­port for Venezue­lan mi­grants who jour­neyed to To­ba­go to be reg­is­tered at the Car­o­line Build­ing, Scar­bor­ough.

Sev­er­al church­es, youth or­gan­i­sa­tions, pri­vate cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es pro­vid­ed blan­kets, wa­ter, break­fast, lunch and snacks, as they braved the hot sun, wait­ing in line on Tues­day.

Many of the mi­grants slept on the pave­ments in Scar­bor­ough, on the steps of busi­ness, as well as aban­doned build­ings, makeshift tents, some even get­ting soaked by the overnight rain­fall on Mon­day.

The To­ba­go Mis­sion of Sev­enth Days Ad­ven­tist Wel­fare de­part­ment, Del­Tech Dis­trib­u­tors, the Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Youth Club, were some of the or­gan­i­sa­tions which pro­vid­ed meals for more than 400 mi­grants, as they wait­ed their turn.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that some of the Venezue­lans were ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the Har­mon SDA school at Rock­ley Vale, where some of them slept and took show­ers.

Al­though the cen­tre has been op­er­at­ing on a first come, first serve ba­sis, the mi­grants cre­at­ed their own sys­tem us­ing a pri­or­i­ty list­ing, en­ter­ing the cen­tre in batch­es, which al­lowed a free flow.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, co-own­er of Del­Tech Dis­trib­u­tors Kelvon Mor­ris said their team has been close­ly fol­low­ing the sit­u­a­tion with the mi­grants com­ing to To­ba­go and was moved by the num­ber of chil­dren hav­ing to en­dure the el­e­ments.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as un­for­tu­nate, he said, they were on­ly do­ing what they would have liked for them­selves if they were in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion.

"The num­ber of To­bag­o­ni­ans com­ing over to To­ba­go over the last week has in­creased dras­ti­cal­ly and see­ing so much young peo­ple, so many kids in the hot sun and all that, we re­al­ly felt the need to reach out and as­sist the Venezue­lan mi­grants, be­cause at the end of the day this kind of un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion in a coun­try could hap­pen to any­body and if we were in the same po­si­tion and we had to flee our coun­try for sur­vival, then we would hope wher­ev­er we run to we would be wel­comed. So it is in that con­text we re­al­ly came to­geth­er as friends, as young peo­ple in busi­ness and stuff to lend sup­port to the Venezue­lans, whom we know are go­ing through a tough time," he said.

He said that they plan to con­tin­ue their hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­forts un­til the reg­is­tra­tion dead­line on Fri­day. He al­so urged oth­er To­bag­o­ni­ans to lend sup­port.

"We are en­cour­ag­ing every­body to do what they can in their own way, in their own space. We plan to go back, be­cause there are al­so many oth­er peo­ple who have al­ready in­di­cat­ed they will sup­port what­ev­er ad­di­tion­al re­sources we plan to put in­to it, some hope that in dif­fer­ent ways we will go back un­til the cul­mi­na­tion on Fri­day and do as much as we can and en­cour­age oth­ers to do as well," Mor­ris said.

Up late Tues­day, arrange­ments were be­ing made by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to pro­vide a Mul­ti­pur­pose Cen­tre to house those who had nowhere to stay.

Venezue­lan mi­grants jour­neyed to To­ba­go af­ter sev­er­al at­tempts to reg­is­ter at the two Trinidad lo­ca­tions failed. Some ar­rived via the Cabo Star, the Galleons Pas­sage, the T&T Spir­it, as well as Caribbean Air­lines.

At the clos­ing of the cen­tre on Tues­day over 200 mi­grants were seen by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials, leav­ing hun­dreds to re­turn on Wednes­day.

[asylumseeker]

Tobago love for migrants.
By Casandra Thompson-Forbes (Guardian).

There has been out­pour­ing sup­port for Venezue­lan mi­grants who jour­neyed to To­ba­go to be reg­is­tered at the Car­o­line Build­ing, Scar­bor­ough.

Sev­er­al church­es, youth or­gan­i­sa­tions, pri­vate cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es pro­vid­ed blan­kets, wa­ter, break­fast, lunch and snacks, as they braved the hot sun, wait­ing in line on Tues­day.

Many of the mi­grants slept on the pave­ments in Scar­bor­ough, on the steps of busi­ness, as well as aban­doned build­ings, makeshift tents, some even get­ting soaked by the overnight rain­fall on Mon­day.

The To­ba­go Mis­sion of Sev­enth Days Ad­ven­tist Wel­fare de­part­ment, Del­Tech Dis­trib­u­tors, the Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Youth Club, were some of the or­gan­i­sa­tions which pro­vid­ed meals for more than 400 mi­grants, as they wait­ed their turn.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that some of the Venezue­lans were ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the Har­mon SDA school at Rock­ley Vale, where some of them slept and took show­ers.

Al­though the cen­tre has been op­er­at­ing on a first come, first serve ba­sis, the mi­grants cre­at­ed their own sys­tem us­ing a pri­or­i­ty list­ing, en­ter­ing the cen­tre in batch­es, which al­lowed a free flow.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, co-own­er of Del­Tech Dis­trib­u­tors Kelvon Mor­ris said their team has been close­ly fol­low­ing the sit­u­a­tion with the mi­grants com­ing to To­ba­go and was moved by the num­ber of chil­dren hav­ing to en­dure the el­e­ments.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as un­for­tu­nate, he said, they were on­ly do­ing what they would have liked for them­selves if they were in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion.

"The num­ber of To­bag­o­ni­ans com­ing over to To­ba­go over the last week has in­creased dras­ti­cal­ly and see­ing so much young peo­ple, so many kids in the hot sun and all that, we re­al­ly felt the need to reach out and as­sist the Venezue­lan mi­grants, be­cause at the end of the day this kind of un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion in a coun­try could hap­pen to any­body and if we were in the same po­si­tion and we had to flee our coun­try for sur­vival, then we would hope wher­ev­er we run to we would be wel­comed. So it is in that con­text we re­al­ly came to­geth­er as friends, as young peo­ple in busi­ness and stuff to lend sup­port to the Venezue­lans, whom we know are go­ing through a tough time," he said.

He said that they plan to con­tin­ue their hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­forts un­til the reg­is­tra­tion dead­line on Fri­day. He al­so urged oth­er To­bag­o­ni­ans to lend sup­port.

"We are en­cour­ag­ing every­body to do what they can in their own way, in their own space. We plan to go back, be­cause there are al­so many oth­er peo­ple who have al­ready in­di­cat­ed they will sup­port what­ev­er ad­di­tion­al re­sources we plan to put in­to it, some hope that in dif­fer­ent ways we will go back un­til the cul­mi­na­tion on Fri­day and do as much as we can and en­cour­age oth­ers to do as well," Mor­ris said.

Up late Tues­day, arrange­ments were be­ing made by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to pro­vide a Mul­ti­pur­pose Cen­tre to house those who had nowhere to stay.

Venezue­lan mi­grants jour­neyed to To­ba­go af­ter sev­er­al at­tempts to reg­is­ter at the two Trinidad lo­ca­tions failed. Some ar­rived via the Cabo Star, the Galleons Pas­sage, the T&T Spir­it, as well as Caribbean Air­lines.

At the clos­ing of the cen­tre on Tues­day over 200 mi­grants were seen by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials, leav­ing hun­dreds to re­turn on Wednes­day.

These comments from Kelvon Morris of DelTech are among the most sensible comments presented in the public sphere regarding how to treat with the circumstance of the Venezuelan presence in T&T. There have been relatively few comments that fall into the category of being sensible articulations of how to engage with an intractable issue.

More broadly, kudos to Tobagonians for embracing the challenge.

[Flex]

New visa policy for Venezuelans
By Anna-Lisa Paul, Sascha Wilson and Casandra Thompson Forbes

From Mon­day, Venezue­lans seek­ing to en­ter T&T will have to get a visa as the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced the new mea­sure to pre­vent the free flow of im­mi­grants in­to this coun­try.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young made the an­nounce­ment at a me­dia brief­ing at the close of the two-week reg­is­tra­tion process which end­ed at 5 pm on Fri­day.

He said over 15,000 Venezue­lans were reg­is­tered at three cen­tres—Queen’s Park Oval, in Port-of-Spain, Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall, in San Fer­nan­do and Car­o­line Build­ing, in To­ba­go.

The Min­ster said from his in­for­ma­tion all the peo­ple wait­ing to be reg­is­tered were ac­com­mo­dat­ed but the sit­u­a­tion in San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go was in to­tal con­trast to his state­ments. Told by re­porters that the sit­u­a­tion was not as he de­scribed, the Min­is­ter said that was the in­for­ma­tion he had.

“We have com­plet­ed the reg­is­tra­tion process as we had said we would, we stuck to it. There were ab­solute­ly no in­ci­dents or in­juries to any­one dur­ing the two-week process.”

Young claimed there no crowds of mi­grants wait­ing to be reg­is­tered by the cut-off time, but rather per­sons who were “ring-fenced” and would have been processed last night.

He said, “The sig­nif­i­cance of that is it shows the suc­cess of this reg­is­tra­tion process and the ac­cu­ra­cy of it.”

“This reg­is­tra­tion process was a well thought out and im­ple­ment­ed process that is now a suc­cess, al­so al­lowed to gath­er in­tel­li­gence,” he added.

In San Fer­nan­do, hun­dreds were turned away out­side Achie­vors Ban­quet Hall af­ter po­lice cor­doned off the line short­ly af­ter 5 pm. Those with on­line reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments they were lat­er told by an of­fi­cial from the reg­is­tra­tion cen­tre to vis­it the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion next week to com­plete the process.

By night­fall, the group dis­persed, many of them miss­ing out the chance of ben­e­fit­ing from the amnesty which would have al­lowed them to live and work in this coun­try. Ear­li­er, the at­mos­phere was chaot­ic and tense as Venezue­lans were not sure what was hap­pen­ing and were try­ing to get in­for­ma­tion as what was go­ing to hap­pen to them as the cut off time was al­most up­on them.

Cal­iz Puer­to said they had or­gan­ised about five lists among them­selves which they were pass­ing on to the of­fi­cials to try to en­sure or­der and dis­ci­pline in the line.

She said each list had about 2,000 plus names. How­ev­er, that col­lapsed when the cut off time was ex­tend­ed by an hour and im­mi­grants be­gan rush­ing, hop­ing to get a place.

Po­lice of­fi­cers, sol­diers and mem­bers of the Air Guard stood guard to en­sure law and or­der. There were sev­er­al at­tempts to jump the line, caus­ing some to protest.

Around 6 pm law en­force­ment of­fi­cers stopped any­one else from join­ing the line. An of­fi­cial in­volved in the reg­is­tra­tion process came out about 15 min­utes lat­er and of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced that reg­is­tra­tion was closed.

Speak­ing in Span­ish, she in­formed them that those with the on­line reg­is­tra­tion forms to vis­it the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion from Mon­day to com­plete the process. When asked about the peo­ple who have no forms, the of­fi­cial said she was not giv­en any in­for­ma­tion about them. This left many im­mi­grants in fear that the po­lice would ar­rest them.

In To­ba­go close to 600 im­mi­grants were ush­ered to Port Mall where they were lat­er told that they would have to spend the night and will be processed on Sat­ur­day.

In Port-of-Spain, there were no im­mi­grants wait­ing in the line when the venue closed reg­is­tra­tion at 5 pm but there were about 300 in­side the venue still to be processed.

Speak­ing at a brief­ing at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, in Port-of-Spain, the Min­is­ter said he had signed an or­der giv­ing ef­fect to the new visa re­quire­ment.

“Those visas will be is­sued out of Port-of-Spain via an ap­pli­ca­tion process that will take place out of our func­tion­ing em­bassy in Cara­cas.”

“On­ly Venezue­lans who will be al­lowed to en­ter our ports of en­try legal­ly are those to whom we is­sue visas,” he said.

Young said ad­di­tion­al dis­cus­sions are to held re­lat­ing to this lat­est pol­i­cy de­ci­sion—which pre­vi­ous­ly al­lowed per­sons to en­ter T&T and re­main for a 90-day pe­ri­od.

He warned that those who did not come for­ward to reg­is­ter will now be sub­ject to the laws of T&T when they are held and will be de­port­ed.

The Min­is­ter said de­tails on the num­ber of im­mi­grants who were processed dur­ing the two-week reg­is­tra­tion will be pro­vid­ed at a lat­er date.

The Min­is­ter said dur­ing the ex­er­cise the Po­lice Ser­vice was able to in­ter­ro­gate im­mi­grants and gath­er valu­able in­for­ma­tion to as­sist of­fi­cials mov­ing for­ward.

Young de­nounced the crit­i­cisms and mis­in­for­ma­tion he said had been cir­cu­lat­ed to, “mis­lead the world at large about our bor­der sit­u­a­tion.”

He de­nounced state­ments by the Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who claimed that T&T coast­line was be­ing in­vad­ed by Venezue­lan im­mi­grants, adding that the Coast Guard had been able to turn back sev­er­al boat­loads of mi­grants in the past two weeks.

He al­so ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of in­cit­ing peo­ple to protest the pres­ence of the Venezue­lan mi­grants, re­fer­ring to a protest ac­tion out­side the Oval on Thurs­day night.