The num­ber of Cuban refugees camp­ing out out­side the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) House at Chancery Lane, Port-of-Spain, has in­creased to over 100.

The refugees are seek­ing an im­me­di­ate meet­ing with UN of­fi­cials to dis­cuss their ap­pli­ca­tions for asy­lum.

Yes­ter­day, many of the refugees tied their hands against the UN House’s iron fenc­ing with black garbage bags, which they said sym­bol­ised them as be­ing “pris­on­ers.”

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian, emo­tion­al refugee Au­mitza Tril­lo said for the past 13 days they had re­sort­ed to gath­er­ing out­side the UN House in the hope of get­ting help im­me­di­ate­ly.

“We are sleep­ing in the street and no­body help­ing us…no­body care for our lives. We are here with rain wet­ting us and no food and no mon­ey. Thank God for some Trinida­di­ans here who bring food for us,” Tril­lo said.

“Our rights are be­ing de­prived and no­body care about our prob­lem,” she added.

The refugee said they ran away from Cu­ba be­cause of a “po­lit­i­cal prob­lem,” but have been en­coun­ter­ing dif­fi­cul­ty be­cause Trinidad and To­ba­go does not have laws cater­ing to asy­lum seek­ers.

“We just want a bet­ter life. We come here and had our pass­ports tak­en away from the Im­mi­gra­tion here and we don’t have work per­mits to work. We need help from the UN be­cause the T&T Gov­ern­ment not help­ing us ei­ther.”

In Sep­tem­ber, eight Cuban asy­lum seek­ers who were ar­rest­ed for il­le­gal­ly camp­ing out­side UN House were re­leased af­ter their case was dis­missed.

A UN of­fi­cial has promised to meet with the refugees to­day.