The fam­i­ly at the cen­tre of the tragedy in which the T&T Coast Guard shot at and killed an in­fant at sea, has now been re­lo­cat­ed to Cana­da.

This was con­firmed by in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia and lo­cal­ly through at­tor­ney Criston Williams.

In Feb­ru­ary, Coast Guard of­fi­cers fired up­on a Venezue­lan mi­grant ves­sel and killed the ba­by, iden­ti­fied as Yaelvis San­toyo Sara­bia. Now, his moth­er, Darielvis Sara­bia, her hus­band and sec­ond son have found a new home.

“To the young la­dy in ques­tion, she has been set­tled. She has been re­set­tled from Cana­da,” Williams told Guardian Me­dia in a phone in­ter­view.

“I would say, where this is an ex­am­ple of the mod­el of the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Mi­gra­tion, how it ought to work once all par­ties con­tribute in keep­ing with the refugee con­ven­tions,” he said.

On the af­ter­noon of Feb­ru­ary 11, 2022, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Coast Guard repa­tri­at­ed 38 Venezue­lan na­tion­als, who, ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, had en­tered Trinidad and To­ba­go il­le­gal­ly over a pe­ri­od of time. Some of those were said to be wit­ness­es to the event.

There has been no up­date on the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion since a ques­tion was raised in Par­lia­ment in June.

Williams said since then, the fam­i­ly has been in the coun­try.

‘She ba­si­cal­ly would have been hid­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, save and ex­cept her re­port­ing con­di­tions, her or­der su­per­vi­sions, she was afraid in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause of what tran­spired,” Williams said.

Williams is al­so ex­pect­ed to launch a pe­ti­tion in the High Court to­day which he hopes will ad­dress fu­ture in­ci­dents like this.

“I do not think that our law firm’s re­quest to as­sist this young la­dy, as well as our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, to have a res­o­lu­tion to this is­sue. I do not think that process was sat­is­fied. So, we have in­struc­tions to file an ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore the High Court on her be­half.”

Ac­cord­ing to the UN­HCR, re­set­tle­ment is not a right of refugees; there­fore, a refugee can­not ap­ply for re­set­tle­ment. The fact that a refugee has been recog­nised as a refugee in T&T does not mean the case will be con­sid­ered for re­set­tle­ment.