The il­le­gal in­flux of Venezue­lans has shift­ed from Ica­cos and Ce­dros on the South West­ern Penin­su­la as se­cu­ri­ty has been tight­ened in the area. The ma­jor­i­ty of Venezue­lans are now said to be en­ter­ing sev­er­al oth­er in­lets along the south­ern coast in­clud­ing Puer­to Grande, Erin, Los Iros, Quinam, and as far as Moru­ga. Oth­er in­lets used by smug­glers were iden­ti­fied along the coast­line at Guapo, Chatham, San Fer­nan­do, Vista­bel­la, and Mara­bel­la.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the coastal vil­lages last week, Guardian Me­dia was told that many Venezue­lans who en­ter in­to T&T il­le­gal­ly via pirogues pay be­tween US$200 to US$300. Most of the pirogue op­er­a­tors are said to be Span­ish-speak­ing men, al­so be­lieved to be Venezue­lans.

Lo­cal fish­er­men al­so ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that they some­times fall vic­tims to “the trans­porters” since their boats which are left an­chored on shore are stolen and while they are on sea, they run the risk of be­ing hi­jacked and thrown over­board while their boats or en­gines are tak­en away from them.

An Erin fish­er­man, on­ly iden­ti­fied as “Eli”, claimed that just last week his 28-foot pirogue val­ued over $100,000 was stolen. He be­lieves the boat­men who smug­gle Venezue­lans to T&T stole it.

He al­so re­lat­ed a sto­ry where a fel­low fish­er­man in his 30s was at­tacked and thrown over­board: “The men take his boat with the two en­gines and left him and three oth­ers who were fish­ing with him in the wa­ters for four days. Luck­i­ly they sur­vived but it was a fright­en­ing thing. They man­aged to swim to a rock and stayed there un­til they were saved by a pass­ing boat who alert­ed the Coast Guard.”

An­oth­er fish­er­man, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, claimed that they are made to suf­fer by the hands of these trans­porters, some of whom are per­son­nel of the Guardia Na­cional.

“Lis­ten, no­body cares about what we go through when we are out there. I am not say­ing that some of our fish­er­men do not do wrong to earn ex­tra mon­ey in his pock­et whether it be by trans­port­ing the Venezue­lans here or run­ning drugs or guns for them, but the Guardian Na­cional take us while we fish­ing in our wa­ters and de­mand US$10,000 for our re­lease…this is not fair but what can we do?”

Asked where they get the US dol­lars, the fish­er­man replied: “Lis­ten, is all kind of things go­ing on out there, you know. When peo­ple buy fish from us we get paid in US dol­lars some­times, es­pe­cial­ly from boats out there who ap­proach us to buy.”

Re­cent­ly, po­lice ar­rest­ed 15 il­le­gal im­mi­grants in Erin and Los Iros beach. The Venezue­lans have been flock­ing to Trinidad "seek­ing a bet­ter life" as their coun­try con­tin­ues to suf­fer eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal tur­moil.

A Ce­dros busi­ness­man, who did not want to be named as he ex­pressed con­cerns for his safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, said there are two types of op­er­a­tions that go on with re­spect to the “im­port­ing” of Venezue­lans and oth­er for­eign na­tion­als.

The main op­er­a­tion, he said, is with re­spect to the sex trade and labour. “So, what hap­pens is that you find that busi­ness peo­ple from South, Ch­agua­nas and wher­ev­er else make con­tact with the peo­ple who bring in these im­mi­grants and when they reach is just to come in­to the area, pick them up one time and leave.

“Some of them go straight to the ho­tels for the pros­ti­tu­tion busi­ness or go straight to apart­ments or rent­ed hous­es where they take up work at bars, restau­rants, stores." Some men, he said, are tak­en to con­struc­tion sites or es­tates or farms to work.

The oth­ers are those who take “chances" hop­ing for a bet­ter life. “Those are the ones who come in via fish­ing boats to any­where along the coast and when they are dropped off they trav­el out or look for a place for a night or two be­fore they go wher­ev­er. In most cas­es, they are the ones who the po­lice may catch wan­der­ing and have them ar­rest­ed and hand­ed over to Im­mi­gra­tion.”

A mem­ber of the Coast Guard, speak­ing un­der con­di­tions of anonymi­ty, said sev­er­al months ago a Coast Guard ves­sel was “sta­tioned” just off the wa­ters of Ce­dros, “Where they are po­si­tioned is that they can see Ce­dros and Ica­cos, who is en­ter­ing and leav­ing, so the Ce­dros and Ica­cos area is on a lock­down. The po­lice are al­so out there pa­trolling heav­i­ly in those ar­eas.

“So, I would guess that the run­ners and boats who are bring­ing in peo­ple from the Venezuela main­land run where they can’t be spot­ted and that would be to the oth­er side of Puer­to Grande, Erin, and Los Iros.”

Ica­cos res­i­dent An­cil Lemessy said, “Noth­ing is new with Venezue­lans com­ing to Trinidad for two or three days to buy goods and go back. This has been hap­pen­ing here for over one hun­dred years. They come here to buy goods and the same goes for some Trinida­di­ans as well, who go across to Venezuela il­le­gal­ly and just spend two or three days and re­turn…so, noth­ing strange.”

Many re­la­tion­ships have de­rived from this as well in­volv­ing chil­dren, who ei­ther live here in T&T or in Venezuela.

Ef­forts to reach Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Coro­mo­to Godoy for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful as all calls went straight to voice­mail.

Young promis­es in­creased bor­der se­cu­ri­ty

On Thurs­day, dur­ing the Post Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that the T&T Coast Guard will re­gain use of more in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels for in­creased bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, which will in­volve get­ting 14 Coast Guard in­ter­cep­tor ves­sels back up and run­ning in the short­est time.

Dur­ing a re­cent vis­it by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to the Coast Guard’s head­quar­ters, he was told that 25 in­ter­cep­tors were not work­ing. The cost of get­ting the 14 boats back in­to ser­vice is $6 mil­lion. They will bring to 19 the to­tal num­ber of work­ing in­ter­cep­tors.

Young said they would be strate­gi­cal­ly placed along T&T’s coast on the ba­sis of in­tel­li­gence re­ports, among plans to de­fend the porous bor­ders.