At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad's rul­ing in a case against an 11-year-old Venezue­lan girl may be a vic­to­ry which he takes no plea­sure in. How­ev­er, he said it was im­por­tant in the con­text of the state be­ing able to up­hold Trinidad and To­ba­go's laws go­ing for­ward.

Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day re­fused to grant an in­junc­tion bar­ring the State from de­port­ing the girl pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a sub­stan­tive le­gal chal­lenge on her right to stay in T&T while seek­ing refugee sta­tus.

The girl, whose moth­er is al­so in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly, was part of a group of mi­grants who re­turned to T&T last week af­ter ini­tial­ly be­ing de­port­ed days be­fore and is cur­rent­ly in quar­an­tine at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing her and 28 oth­er mi­grants are cur­rent­ly chal­leng­ing the state's right to de­port them since they en­tered the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

How­ev­er, Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed sub­mis­sions from the le­gal team over the ef­fect of the 2014 Draft Pol­i­cy on Refugees and Asy­lum Seek­ers, not­ing it was ap­proved by Cab­i­net but not Par­lia­ment. He al­so said the Gov­ern­ment was free to change its pol­i­cy due to pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances, in­clud­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Com­ment­ing hours af­ter the rul­ing, Al-Rawi not­ed that at the end of the day, Seep­er­sad may have had no choice but to rule in that state's favour af­ter weigh­ing the is­sues.

"In set­tling the law, the judge recog­nised that there is a bal­anc­ing act, there is a con­sid­er­a­tion as to the in­ter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive against our lo­cal laws and the su­prema­cy of our Con­si­tu­tion and that in the con­text, there is a need to up­hold the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go and those laws, very im­por­tant­ly are, that you ought not to en­ter this coun­try il­le­gal­ly," Al-Rawi told Guardian Me­dia.

"The judge didn't say this but I'll add this now, par­tic­u­lar­ly when there is a law­ful mech­a­nism of en­ter­ing. It is wide open to any­one seek­ing to en­ter this coun­try, in this case from Venezuela, to ap­ply for a visa to en­ter the coun­try.

"Visas are not de­nied as a mat­ter of course or fact, there is a process by which one can en­gage in this and there­fore the judge­ment is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant in set­tling the fact that we must up­hold the law so that we avoid the dan­gers of il­le­gal­i­ty. Those dan­gers in­clude traf­fick­ing in per­son, ex­pos­ing per­sons to harm or risk in pas­sage and most cer­tain­ly the judge fo­cussed up­on a very clear dis­tinc­tion, the dif­fer­ence be­tween eco­nom­ic mi­gra­tion on the one hand and refugee and asy­lum seek­er sta­tus on the oth­er hand."

Say­ing there was a sig­nif­i­cant risk of traf­fick­ing in per­sons and traf­fick­ing in chil­dren in these cas­es, Al-Rawi said his heart still went out to chil­dren who are placed in jeop­ardy by the ac­tions of adults.

But he said the judge­ment was im­por­tant to set­tling the is­sue of the law as it re­lates to how the state deals with il­le­gal mi­grants.

"All in all, this is an im­por­tant de­ci­sion for set­tling the law in the larg­er con­text," the AG said.

"Whilst it is cer­tain­ly a very clear le­gal vic­to­ry, I take no com­fort in that as­pect of the word vic­to­ry be­cause of the cir­cum­stances of this case and in par­tic­u­lar be­cause of the hu­man fac­tors in­volved in the gen­er­al sit­u­a­tion. But I am du­ty-bound, as is my col­league the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and is the Prime Min­is­ter to up­hold, all of of us, are bound to up­hold the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go."