An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter, Gas­ton Browne, has blast­ed Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers, as the search con­tin­ues for 21-year-old Thomas Vasquez.

Vasquez went miss­ing in ear­ly April. His moth­er, Can­dy Jage­shar Vasquez, said her son spent the last nine months trav­el­ling back and forth to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da to work on a mar­i­jua­na farm. She said the last time he re­turned home was on April 6, 2025, be­cause his work per­mit ex­pired but he left one week lat­er, on April 13.

She has is­sued a pub­lic ap­peal to any­one with in­for­ma­tion to speak up.

In a Face­book post on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Browne re­spond­ed to com­ments made by new Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers, con­cern­ing the case.

PM Browne wrote:

"Mr Sobers, with more than 500 in­di­vid­u­als miss­ing in Trinidad & To­ba­go an­nu­al­ly and hun­dreds un­ac­count­ed for; you have no moral au­thor­i­ty to con­demn our beau­ti­ful coun­try. In­stead, you should fo­cus on the ex­po­nen­tial in­crease in crime in your home coun­try."

PM Browne at­tached a link to a News­day ed­i­to­r­i­al to his post, dat­ed May 7, which is ti­tled, "An­tigua an­guish."

He said there is no ev­i­dence that Vasquez went miss­ing in An­tigua.

The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da PM wrote fur­ther:

"He has had a his­to­ry of en­ter­ing the coun­try by plane and leav­ing clan­des­tine­ly by boat, os­ten­si­bly ped­dling mar­i­jua­na from an il­le­gal farm on which he worked here in An­tigua. Where­as we sym­pa­thize and em­pathize with his griev­ing moth­er and trust that he would be found alive, the facts need­ed to be stat­ed."

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Sobers con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day that the Min­istry asked for a sta­tus up­date on the mat­ter and would com­mu­ni­cate with the miss­ing man’s moth­er when more in­for­ma­tion was forth­com­ing.

Mean­while, for­mer For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs min­is­ter, Dr Amery Browne, wrote on his so­cial me­dia page:

"Re­la­tions with our CARI­COM neigh­bours must be man­aged with wis­dom and diplo­ma­cy at all times... It some­times looks easy but it sel­dom is, and there are po­ten­tial im­pli­ca­tions for trade and re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty that should nev­er be tak­en for grant­ed. I wish the best pos­si­ble out­come in this case."