Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Of the 17 de­por­tees who ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day, 15 were al­lowed to go free, while two were tak­en in­to cus­tody.

Sources con­firmed that the two men were ar­rest­ed for out­stand­ing war­rants re­lat­ed to “decades-old” crimes com­mit­ted be­fore they mi­grat­ed.

Po­lice said the men would be ques­tioned in re­la­tion to the crimes.

The group of peo­ple, con­sist­ing of 15 men and two women, was de­port­ed from the Unit­ed States and re­ceived by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) and of­fi­cials from the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Vi­sion on Mis­sion.

While he did not di­vulge the de­tails of how the de­por­tees would be mon­i­tored, one se­nior of­fi­cer con­firmed that the SIU would work close­ly with all di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders to en­sure they were reg­u­lat­ed.

“The po­lice have mech­a­nisms in place, and we will con­tin­ue to look at it. The Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the SIU, to­geth­er with oth­er com­man­ders, will be mon­i­tor­ing their move­ments.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, po­lice of­fi­cers were seen en­ter­ing the build­ing to con­duct in­ter­views and be­gin the process of record­ing the da­ta and in­for­ma­tion from the de­por­tees.

An Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre (IDC) bus was al­so seen near the Ar­rivals Ter­mi­nal of the air­port; how­ev­er, sources could not con­firm if it was used to trans­port any of the de­por­tees.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, pro­gramme man­ag­er for Vi­sion on Mis­sion Oluye­mi Mashama said the de­por­tees were in “good spir­its” and were grate­ful for the re­cep­tion ex­tend­ed to them at the air­port.

Mashama and oth­er of­fi­cials from Vi­sion on Mis­sion briefed the de­por­tees on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hous­ing, skills train­ing, and em­ploy­ment.

“They were re­al­ly im­pressed by the way it was done. The CEO start­ed by wel­com­ing them back home, and they start­ed to cheer and clap be­cause they didn’t ex­pect to have that kind of treat­ment com­ing back.

“A lot of them came with blocks in their mind as to what they will be met with.

“By the time the po­lice and every­one in­ter­act­ed with them, they let down their guard a bit be­cause they re­alised they weren’t at­tacked as soon as they reached to be bad­gered in­to an in­ter­view or any­thing.”

Mashama said of the 15 de­por­tees, three would be housed at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Waller­field cen­tre, while the re­main­ing 12 would be ac­com­mo­dat­ed by rel­a­tives.

De­spite this, he said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was pre­pared to house them lat­er on if nec­es­sary.

“Some­times they may go with the fam­i­ly for now, but some­times the fam­i­ly might not be able to fa­cil­i­tate them for the en­tire­ty of the time they are here. We have had ex­pe­ri­ences where they came and went with the fam­i­lies, and they came in af­ter a few days where they stayed.”

He said the de­por­tees were giv­en a care pack­age by the or­gan­i­sa­tion. They al­so in­tend to re­turn to join some of the vo­ca­tion­al train­ing pro­grammes to­mor­row.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge re­port­ed that 21 de­por­tees were ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T ear­ly on Fri­day morn­ing.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the re­main­ing four de­por­tees did not ar­rive in this batch due to is­sues re­lat­ing to their trav­el doc­u­ments but were told they were ex­pect­ed to re­turn “soon”.