Sascha Wil­son

An at­tor­ney is call­ing for a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cum­stances in which 16 Venezue­lan chil­dren and nine women were de­port­ed mere hours be­fore their habeas cor­pus hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing.

They were de­port­ed some­time af­ter 11 am while a yel­low lev­el ad­verse weath­er alert was in ef­fect for a large part of the coun­try.

At­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed ex­pressed con­cern for the wel­fare of the de­por­tees, es­pe­cial­ly the chil­dren whose ages range from four months to 14 years old. She said the ac­tions of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers were in breach of all in­ter­na­tion­al prin­ci­ples and showed dis­re­spect for the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

Late yes­ter­day a judge stood down the hear­ing so that the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer could be joined as a par­ty to the pro­ceed­ings. Up un­til then, nei­ther the at­tor­neys nor the chil­dren’s and women’s rel­a­tives knew their where­abouts. Some of the chil­dren’s moth­ers were de­port­ed while their fa­thers are legal­ly re­sid­ing in Trinidad.

Mo­hammed said the women and chil­dren were ar­rest­ed in the Chatham area on Tues­day and tak­en to the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion. She claimed they were kept in a cell where at least one of the chil­dren fell ill.

She said on Fri­day she wrote to the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer ask­ing for di­a­logue on the sta­tus of the women and chil­dren. Lat­er that day, they gath­ered all the doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence show­ing the fam­i­ly ties, the chil­dren’s birth cer­tifi­cates and oth­er the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments and sub­mit­ted to them to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion in Port of Spain. How­ev­er, the im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials re­fused to ac­cept the doc­u­ments.

Mo­hammed said hen she found out that the women and chil­dren were go­ing to be moved to the Ce­dros Po­lice Sta­tion on Sat­ur­day, she filed a writ of habeas cor­pus in the High Court. The mat­ter was sched­uled for 2 pm yes­ter­day. Mo­hammed sent emails and What­sApp mes­sages in­form­ing the var­i­ous law en­force­ment heads of the mat­ter but yes­ter­day morn­ing she got word that the women and chil­dren were be­ing de­port­ed from the Ce­dros jet­ty where the Coast Guard base is lo­cat­ed.

The court was im­me­di­ate­ly in­formed and the hear­ing was moved up to 12.30 pm.

“Be­fore that time could have ar­rived I re­ceived pho­tos of two pirogues tak­ing those chil­dren and women away from Trinidad. That was some­time af­ter 11 am,” Mo­hammed said.

She said she was told that the Coast Guard es­cort­ed the boats to a cer­tain point and then re­turned to Trinidad.

“It is re­al­ly stun­ning to know that such ac­tions would be tak­en by per­sons rep­re­sent­ing the state. This is in breach of all our oblig­a­tions in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and of course lo­cal­ly be­cause the fact is they knew that court pro­ceed­ings had com­menced and in­stead of re­spect­ing the court, in fact, this writ of habeas cor­pus was prompt­ly is­sued, they whisked them away on a boat.”

She said rel­a­tives of the de­por­tees in Trinidad are wor­ried about their safe­ty.

“At the end of the day when it comes to chil­dren, there are spe­cial cir­cum­stances that the law recog­nis­es and of most of these chil­dren’s fa­thers are here in Trinidad. This re­quired a hu­man­i­tar­i­an and hu­man rights ap­proach not a law en­force­ment ap­proach,” she said.

While their where­abouts are not known, Mo­hammed said there is un­con­firmed in­for­ma­tion that they were tak­en an aban­doned is­land called La Bar­ra about two hours away from the Venezue­lan main­land.

“To get on­to the is­land you would have to swim from the boat,” she said.”What about pi­rates and hu­man traf­fick­ers who could take these chil­dren?”

Mo­hammed, who re­signed as the deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tions, called for a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine who sanc­tioned the de­por­ta­tions.

“This re­quires a gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion at the high­est lev­el for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what hap­pened and who gave the in­struc­tions for these chil­dren to be sent back. These are chil­dren. Spe­cial cir­cum­stances war­rant a dif­fer­ent ap­proach and the high hand­ed­ness that has been dis­played in cer­tain quar­ters and the dis­re­spect that has been shown for our ju­di­cial and le­gal sys­tem it reeks of a break­down in our in­sti­tu­tions and dis­re­spect for the rule of law,” she said.

Ef­forts to con­tact Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer were un­suc­cess­ful. Con­tact­ed via What­sapp, Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fice at the T&T Coast Guard Lieu­tenant Khadi­ja Lamy said she would get back to us, but up to press time, no re­sponse was forth­com­ing.