RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Nine­ty Venezue­lans cur­rent­ly de­tained at the He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas are de­mand­ing they be re­leased im­me­di­ate­ly. They say they are not crim­i­nals and do not de­serve to be locked up.

On Tues­day, the group staged a noisy protest in­side the He­li­port call­ing for their re­lease. The dis­tur­bance caused Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers to be dis­patched to the fa­cil­i­ty. How­ev­er, up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, noth­ing was al­leged­ly done to main­tain law and or­der.

Venezue­lan ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon con­demned the lat­est de­ten­tion, claim­ing all those be­ing held were Venezue­lans who are reg­is­tered.

“Why do you de­tain them? Have you ever found out if they are crim­i­nals? Why do you keep them in the He­li­port? Ei­ther you should re­lease them or de­port them. Why haven’t they been de­port­ed? Why have these peo­ple suf­fer?” Figueroa-Leon asked.

“It’s in­hu­mane and I re­al­ly do not know what else to say. If this Gov­ern­ment treat us the way, us Trinida­di­ans, the way they are treat­ing us, what do we ex­pect as to how they treat for­eign­ers, es­pe­cial­ly those who can­not stand up for them­selves ei­ther be­cause of their lan­guage bar­ri­er and lack of at­tor­neys.”

“So, I mean look at the con­di­tion of our hos­pi­tals, of our roads, we can’t ex­pect bet­ter, like the poor Venezue­lans who are leav­ing their coun­try of ori­gin run­ning from lack of food, med­ica­tion and per­se­cu­tion be treat­ed bet­ter here, that is what we have turned in­to T&T?” she added.

Figueroa-Leon sug­gest­ed that maybe it was time for the Venezue­lans to leave Trinidad and To­ba­go once and for all.

“It is time for us to run. We will run to a coun­try that will ac­cept us, that will al­low us to work, that will al­low us to do every­thing. Why, why are we sink­ing so low?

“Venezue­lans, Cubans, Nige­ri­ans, they are hu­mans too. I mean we once came to Trinidad and To­ba­go, our fore­fa­thers came to T&T many, many moons ago and were re­ceived with open arms. What is hap­pen­ing, will this con­tin­ue?

“I mean it looks bad on us the cit­i­zens of T&T. It looks bad on the coun­try. It’s hor­ri­ble, some­thing needs to be done. Ei­ther you let them go or you de­port them one time, why keep them de­tained for so long.”

Dur­ing the protest, the Venezue­lans were heard by ac­tivists shout­ing in­side the He­li­port: “We have been kid­napped, to­day in Oc­to­ber 24, 2023. We are ask­ing hu­man rights at­tor­neys to come ur­gent­ly, they are deny­ing us our rights, we can’t even phone our fam­i­lies, they don’t give us in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing our sit­u­a­tion ei­ther. The food is not ed­i­ble, it’s ter­ri­ble. We are kid­napped.”

Ef­forts to reach of­fi­cials from the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion to find out the sta­tus of the Venezue­lans and if they will be de­port­ed were all un­suc­cess­ful up to late yes­ter­day evening.

In Au­gust, close to 100 mi­grants were de­port­ed to Venezuela. In Ju­ly, close to 200 mi­grant were held at a night­club in St James. The de­ten­tion prompt­ed court ac­tion.

On­ly last month a sev­en-month-old ba­by was among 12 mi­grant chil­dren tak­en back to Venezuela.