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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

‘Chris Must List’ detained for deportation

by

Andrea Perez-Sobers
155 days ago
20240909
 File: Canadian vlogger Christopher “Chris Must List” Hughes is escorted into a waiting Amalgamated Prison Bus outside the Besson Street Police Station after his lawyers failed to secure bail at the Besson Street, Port-of-Spain in July.

File: Canadian vlogger Christopher “Chris Must List” Hughes is escorted into a waiting Amalgamated Prison Bus outside the Besson Street Police Station after his lawyers failed to secure bail at the Besson Street, Port-of-Spain in July.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es was ar­rest­ed for a third time and the high court, yes­ter­day, grant­ed a manda­to­ry in­ter­im or­der per­mit­ting his at­tor­neys to gain ac­cess to him at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre, East­ern Main Road, Aripo.

Hugh­es was ar­rest­ed around 5.30 pm on Sat­ur­day at the Diego Mar­tin res­i­dence where he stays when in the coun­try.

One of his at­tor­neys, Ger­ald Ramdeen, told Guardian Me­dia that of­fi­cers of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ar­rest­ed and de­tained Hugh­es for de­por­ta­tion.

Ramdeen said a pre-ac­tion let­ter was sent to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, as well as the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice yes­ter­day morn­ing, giv­ing no­tice of a chal­lenge to the de­ten­tion of Hugh­es.

Up to late yes­ter­day evening, the at­tor­ney said the le­gal team had not re­ceived a re­ply to that pre-ac­tion let­ter.  

“The le­gal team then went to the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre and were (sic) re­fused ac­cess. In those cir­cum­stances, an emer­gency ap­pli­ca­tion was made to the High Court un­der Sec­tion 14 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. The at­tor­neys then filed an in­junc­tion af­ter they were re­fused to meet with their client,” Ramdeen ex­plained.

He said at 5.12 pm, High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran grant­ed the or­der, with­out hear­ing, per­mit­ting the le­gal team of Hugh­es to have un­lim­it­ed ac­cess to him to take in­struc­tions to com­mence fur­ther pro­ceed­ings.  

“I can give no­tice to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that by this morn­ing, an ac­tion will be filed un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Ju­di­cial Re­view Act to chal­lenge the de­ten­tion of our client and to quash the de­por­ta­tion or­der that was pur­port­ed­ly made. In ad­di­tion to that claim, I would like to put the ex­ec­u­tive on no­tice that a pre-ac­tion let­ter will be dis­patched this morn­ing seek­ing the re­turn of all of the items that were seized from Hugh­es last week,” Ramdeen de­tailed.

In ad­di­tion to that, the at­tor­ney said, a le­gal chal­lenge will be mount­ed al­leg­ing false im­pris­on­ment over Hugh­es’ de­ten­tion.  

“What has tran­spired in this sce­nario and the ac­tion of the ex­ec­u­tive is very un­for­tu­nate, and it gives a re­al good ex­am­ple to the coun­try of the lev­el of un­law­ful­ness that this gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to per­pe­trate, not on­ly against the cit­i­zens of this coun­try but the cit­i­zens of an­oth­er coun­try, a for­eign coun­try,” Ramdeen charged.

Last week Huges was de­tained in con­nec­tion with al­le­ga­tions of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

Po­lice said his Ap­ple lap­top, iPhone, portable hard dri­ve, Go­Pro cam­era, and oth­er de­vices were seized by in­ves­ti­ga­tors as part of an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to mon­ey laun­der­ing.

The 45-year-old is cur­rent­ly charged with mak­ing a sedi­tious pub­li­ca­tion and has plead­ed not guilty to the of­fence, which goes to tri­al in Jan­u­ary. He was first ar­rest­ed in Ju­ly.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia re­ceived a let­ter from some­one pur­port­ing to be a fam­i­ly mem­ber, of Hugh­es.

The let­ter was ad­dressed to the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer.

“He was al­ready mak­ing ef­forts to book his tick­et to leave as soon as his pass­port was re­turned to him. You are very much aware that the im­mi­gra­tion act af­fords the fa­cil­i­ty of vol­un­tary de­par­ture. Why is this pro­ce­dure frus­trat­ed,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The let­ter went on to state that in T&T the Im­mi­gra­tion Act (Chap­ter 18:01) gov­erns the en­try and stay of non-cit­i­zens.

How­ev­er, it said the act doesn’t ex­plic­it­ly clas­si­fy in­di­vid­u­als en­ter­ing the coun­try for court-man­dat­ed trav­el or bail con­di­tions.  

“This is ju­di­cial busi­ness. When grant­i­ng bail, the ju­di­cial sys­tem rea­son­ably ex­pects that Chris’ en­try in­to Trinidad is for le­gal pur­pos­es, not tourism or im­mi­gra­tion. His pres­ence is specif­i­cal­ly to meet his le­gal oblig­a­tions by ap­pear­ing in court. While the Im­mi­gra­tion Act lacks a clear clas­si­fi­ca­tion for this type of en­try, Chris’ right to be in the coun­try is root­ed in his fun­da­men­tal right to a fair tri­al,” the let­ter added.


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