Sev­en­ty-eight Cuban asy­lum seek­ers ac­cused of en­gag­ing in an il­le­gal protest in front of the Unit­ed Na­tions build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day are ex­pect­ed to spend the week­end on re­mand.

While they were each grant­ed $5,000 bail when they ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Sa­nara Toon-Mc­Quilkin in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court last evening, none were able to ac­cess it as court staff had al­ready left work by the time their ap­pear­ance was com­plet­ed af­ter 5 pm.

Even if they had been grant­ed bail ear­li­er yes­ter­day, it would have still been dif­fi­cult for them to ac­cess bail as each re­quires a sep­a­rate T&T cit­i­zen to agree to stand as sure­ty for their bail.

The group, which in­clud­ed al­most two dozen women, were thus even­tu­al­ly de­tained at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo.

The large group’s court ap­pear­ance caused chaos at the cour­t­house yes­ter­day, as po­lice of­fi­cers on­ly took them there around 3 pm. It took well over an hour be­fore they were processed and tak­en be­fore Toon-Mc­Qulkin.

Each was charged un­der Sec­tion 64 of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act with ob­struct­ing the free pas­sage­way along Chancery Lane in Port-of-Spain. The of­fence car­ries a $200 fine and up to a month in prison. They all plead­ed not guilty.

With the aid of a Span­ish trans­la­tor, Toon-Mc­Quilkin was able to ex­pe­dite the hear­ing by read­ing the charges to the batch­es of them and then tak­ing their not guilty pleas, as op­posed to read­ing the charges in­di­vid­u­al­ly as is tra­di­tion­al­ly done in cas­es with mul­ti­ple ac­cused per­sons.

At the start of the hear­ing, po­lice pros­e­cu­tors made a re­quest to amend a cler­i­cal er­ror on the charge doc­u­ments. It was not op­posed by the group’s lawyers and was al­lowed by Toon-Mc­Quilkin, who not­ed that it would not prej­u­dice them.

Po­lice pros­e­cu­tors al­so ob­ject­ed to bail as they point­ed out that they were all for­eign­ers who were not em­ployed and did not have fixed places of abode.

In his bail ap­pli­ca­tion, the group’s lawyer Wen­dell Louis not­ed that the charge was mi­nor.

“The po­si­tion of these peo­ple is well known. They are run­ning from po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and op­pres­sion,” he said, as he claimed that his clients in­tend to chal­lenge the charge.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Toon-Mc­Quilkin al­so in­struct­ed pros­e­cu­tors to en­sure that they are ready to be­gin the case by the end of No­vem­ber.

In Sep­tem­ber, Toon-Mc­Quilkin dis­missed sim­i­lar charges against eight of the asy­lum seek­ers af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers were not ready to pro­ceed when the case was list­ed for tri­al.

Some of that group, who were charged for a protest last year, were al­so ar­rest­ed and charged for yes­ter­day’s protest.

Yes­ter­day’s group was ar­rest­ed dur­ing a po­lice op­er­a­tion af­ter dawn, tak­en to Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion, in­ter­viewed, fin­ger­print­ed and charged around 2 pm. The num­ber of de­tainees was too many to con­tain in­side the po­lice sta­tion and many of them were seen on the bal­cony of the sta­tion ear­li­er in the day smok­ing cig­a­rettes and chat­ting on their cell­phones.

The asy­lum seek­ers were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ka­t­ri­na Bharath and Satesh Em­rit.