The Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights (CCHR) is re­ject­ing the re­cent de­por­ta­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants, asy­lum seek­ers and refugees.

It said the lat­est de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise was a vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights law and the com­mit­ments this coun­try made as a par­ty to the Refugee Con­ven­tion.

“This lat­est round of de­por­ta­tions must be con­demned at all lev­els since it en­dan­gers those who fled per­se­cu­tion in their coun­try of ori­gin and sends them back to a sit­u­a­tion where risks to their safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty pre­vail,” the CCHR said in a re­lease.

Last Sat­ur­day, 97 Venezue­lans were de­port­ed back to their home­land af­ter spend­ing a month in de­ten­tion at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port.

The CCHR said the treat­ment of asy­lum seek­ers and refugees by the state con­tin­ues to be ar­bi­trary, in­con­sis­tent and ad hoc.
The or­gan­i­sa­tion said this is why the con­ven­tion need­ed to be re­flect­ed in this coun­try’s leg­is­la­tion.

It added that a refugee pol­i­cy is al­so need­ed to en­sure that the rights of refugees and asy­lum-seek­ers are guar­an­teed and that the ma­jor­i­ty of de­port­ed in­di­vid­u­als were asy­lum-seek­ers reg­is­tered with the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR), adding the de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise de­nied them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have their claims for refugee sta­tus processed.

“Alarm­ing­ly, fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion is re­port­ed to have oc­curred, as a moth­er was de­port­ed while her Trinidad and To­ba­go-born chil­dren were left be­hind. This con­tra­venes the prin­ci­ple of fam­i­ly uni­ty and the best in­ter­est of the child prin­ci­ple. Oth­er women still in de­ten­tion face im­mi­nent de­por­ta­tion once arrange­ments are made for their chil­dren, who are not in de­ten­tion, to join them,” the re­lease said.

The CCHR be­lieves that these chil­dren will face unimag­in­able trau­ma be­cause of the de­por­ta­tion of their par­ents.

“This de­por­ta­tion se­vere­ly com­pro­mis­es their re­set­tle­ment process and ef­fec­tive­ly de­nied them of the pro­tec­tions owed,” CCHR not­ed

The re­lease al­so said in­ter­na­tion­al law pro­hibits col­lec­tive ex­pul­sion be­cause it is ar­bi­trary and does not re­spect due process.

The CCHR once again called on the Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a refugee pol­i­cy to avoid the in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly cru­el and in­hu­mane out­comes as­so­ci­at­ed with sit­u­a­tions such as these.