Derek Achong

Twen­ty-one Venezue­lan mi­grant adults and chil­dren, who re­turned to this coun­try af­ter be­ing repa­tri­at­ed two Sun­days ago, have ob­tained court or­ders pre­vent­ing their de­por­ta­tion pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion against the State.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that last night, Jus­tice Joan Charles grant­ed or­ders for four of the mi­grant chil­dren.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the group had to file in­di­vid­ual law­suits for the 16 chil­dren and nine adults, who were still quar­an­tined at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port up to yes­ter­day.

Sources said that they were even­tu­al­ly able to file law­suits for 22 of the group, as they could not find rel­a­tives liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ei­ther il­le­gal­ly or il­le­gal­ly, on whose be­half the law­suits could have been filed for the re­main­der of the group.

While the first case brought on be­half of a four-year-old boy, his sis­ter and their moth­er was dealt with by Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams, who served as an emer­gency judge last week, the oth­ers that were filed over the week­end were ran­dom­ly as­signed to oth­er judges.

In the first case, State at­tor­neys gave an un­der­tak­ing not to de­port the fam­i­ly. On Mon­day, Quin­lan-Williams grant­ed a sim­i­lar ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion for a woman and her three chil­dren. Charles al­so dealt with the cas­es of three mi­nors who ar­rived with the group with­out their par­ents and grant­ed sim­i­lar in­ter­im in­junc­tions.

On Tues­day, how­ev­er, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad de­liv­ered a 34-page writ­ten de­ci­sion, in which he de­nied a sim­i­lar or­der for an 11-year-old girl. Seep­er­sad stat­ed that he did not be­lieve that the mi­nor’s case had a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess.

“The court, there­fore, holds the view that it would not be just or con­ve­nient to grant the in­junc­tive re­lief sought so as to re­strain the State from en­forc­ing what on the face of it ap­pears to be the ex­ist­ing do­mes­tic law and the court is not sat­is­fied that hav­ing re­gard to all of the out­lined cir­cum­stances that the re­liefs sought in the sub­stan­tive claim are so clothed with the like­li­hood of suc­cess that the court should adopt the ex­cep­tion­al course of re­strain­ing the State from en­forc­ing what ap­pears to be ap­plic­a­ble do­mes­tic law,” Seep­er­sad said in his rul­ing.

Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed pre­lim­i­nary sub­mis­sions from the child’s le­gal team over the ef­fect of the 2014 Draft Pol­i­cy on Refugees and Asy­lum Seek­ers, which was ap­proved by Cab­i­net but not Par­lia­ment. He said that the Gov­ern­ment was free to change its pol­i­cy due to pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances in­clud­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Re­cent state­ments made by the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed that the gov­ern­ment has de­part­ed from the draft pol­i­cy, in this pan­dem­ic cli­mate, in so far as it re­lates to the process to be ap­plied in re­la­tion to those who en­ter in­to the ju­ris­dic­tion il­le­gal­ly. This does not strike the Court at this stage as an ir­reg­u­lar or un­rea­son­able pol­i­cy shift,” he said.

Seep­er­sad al­so ruled that the child’s moth­er, who is not a reg­is­tered mi­grant, was mo­ti­vat­ed by self-cen­tered so­cio-eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions and did not prop­er­ly con­sid­er her child’s wel­fare, as re­quired in the same UN Con­ven­tions she is re­ly­ing on in the case, when she arranged for her to en­ter this coun­try il­le­gal­ly with strangers.

About the Mi­grants’ Case 

The mi­grant group was de­tained short­ly af­ter ar­riv­ing in Chatam on No­vem­ber 17.

The mi­grants, the youngest of whom is four-months-old, were test­ed for COVID-19 and found to be neg­a­tive. They were then held in cus­tody at sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions un­til their de­por­ta­tion two Sun­days ago.

The mi­grants were placed on two civil­ian ves­sels and es­cort­ed out of T&T wa­ters by the Coast Guard.

Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams or­dered that the group be brought be­fore her dur­ing a hear­ing last Mon­day, as she was in­formed they were float­ing near the mar­itime bor­der. How­ev­er, she was forced to dis­miss the case af­ter the De­fence Force said they had al­ready ar­rived in Venezuela.

Last Tues­day, how­ev­er, the group re­turned and land­ed in Los Iros and was im­me­di­ate­ly de­tained by po­lice and tak­en for med­ical ex­am­i­na­tions. They were held at the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion be­fore be­ing placed in quar­an­tine at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port.

The group is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Nafeesa Mo­hammed, Dayadai Har­ri­paul and Umesh Ma­haraj.