From Akash Sama­roo

Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos

As fears linger of mass de­por­ta­tions from the Unit­ed States fol­low­ing the elec­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, this coun­try’s For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter is seek­ing to as­sure the na­tion that there is noth­ing to wor­ry about.

Just re­cent­ly a list claim­ing that al­most 1,200 cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go had been giv­en fi­nal re­moval or­ders sparked alarm.

The list was pur­port­ed to be an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment from the US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE), how­ev­er, checks by Guardian Me­dia saw no ev­i­dence of this doc­u­ment on any of ICE’s of­fi­cial web­sites or so­cial me­dia pages.

But while the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has sig­nalled a se­vere crack­down on il­le­gal im­mi­grants, the scale of this op­er­a­tion is yet to be seen.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the top­ic did come up dur­ing a meet­ing of the Coun­cil for For­eign and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions (COF­COR) in Bar­ba­dos.

The talks took place hours be­fore the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 48th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly with Guardian Me­dia be­fore the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Min­is­ter Browne said mat­ters of US for­eign pol­i­cy were, “cer­tain­ly on the agen­da and ex­ten­sive­ly dis­cussed by for­eign min­is­ters.”

He said de­por­ta­tion was one of the top­ics ad­dressed as it is a top­i­cal mat­ter.

Browne said he would have dealt with this is­sue ex­ten­sive­ly in the past. How­ev­er, when told that it is still of na­tion­al con­cern Browne said, “Un­nec­es­sar­i­ly so, we do not stand to re­ceive the prospect of mass de­por­ta­tions at this time.”

He ex­plained, “We’ve been meet­ing reg­u­lar­ly, con­sis­tent­ly, pro­duc­tive­ly and cor­dial­ly with the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the USA, par­tic­u­lar­ly the chargé and her team at the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, so there’s no prospect of that. We work very well with our US coun­ter­parts, and we en­joy very pro­duc­tive and cor­dial re­la­tions.”

Re­cent­ly St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves ex­pressed con­cern that de­por­tees would be sent back to their home coun­try with­out the nec­es­sary back­ground in­for­ma­tion in­clud­ing their crim­i­nal his­to­ry.

Lo­cal NGO Vi­sion on Mis­sion al­so ad­vised the State that such in­for­ma­tion is para­mount to mon­i­tor­ing those in­di­vid­u­als who may have crim­i­nal ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go in terms of pos­si­ble re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Mean­while, Browne said that COF­COR al­so dealt with is­sues such as Cari­com’s bud­get.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has cer­tain po­si­tions in that re­gard and we are quite sat­is­fied that there’s been a re­sponse which has tak­en our po­si­tion in­to ac­count,” he said.

The 48th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Bridgetown comes to an end to­mor­row. Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said this would be his last as this coun­try’s Prime Min­is­ter. He is ex­pect­ed to step down soon af­ter mak­ing way for Stu­art Young.