An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es have writ­ten to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, for­mal­ly re­quest­ing the lift­ing of an Or­der of De­por­ta­tion which is pre­vent­ing him from re­turn­ing to T&T for his tri­al, which is due to get un­der­way next month.

Hugh­es is a con­tent cre­ator who cur­rent­ly re­sides in On­tario, Cana­da. He ar­rived in Trinidad on April 26, 2024, and trav­elled through­out var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties, con­duct­ing in­ter­views with res­i­dents and oth­er in­di­vid­u­als as part of his es­tab­lished prac­tice of pro­duc­ing trav­el and doc­u­men­tary con­tent for pub­li­ca­tion on dig­i­tal me­dia plat­forms.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of cer­tain con­tent record­ed with the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in T&T, crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings were in­sti­tut­ed against Hugh­es, and he was sub­se­quent­ly charged with the of­fence of sedi­tion con­trary to Sec­tion 4(1)(c) of the Sedi­tion Act, Chap­ter 11:04.

Hugh­es has been present for pre­vi­ous court pro­ceed­ings and has been rep­re­sent­ed by lo­cal at­tor­neys. He was grant­ed $100,000 bail with sure­ty or a cash bail in the sum of $10,000 on June 3, 2024, sub­ject to con­di­tions, in­clud­ing the sur­ren­der of his pass­port.

Hugh­es com­plied with all con­di­tions im­posed, fol­low­ing which a de­por­ta­tion or­der was is­sued against him on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2024. His bail con­di­tions were var­ied on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2024, where pro­vi­sions were made for the re­turn and man­age­ment of his pass­port, in­clud­ing per­mis­sion to leave the ju­ris­dic­tion.

Hugh­es was in­formed that con­tin­u­ing oblig­a­tions re­quired his at­ten­dance be­fore the court.

At­tor­neys act­ing on his be­half wrote to the then Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (MNS) on Feb­ru­ary 11, 2025, re­quest­ing as­sis­tance to fa­cil­i­tate Hugh­es’ re-en­try in­to T&T to at­tend the on­go­ing court mat­ter.

By re­sponse dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 14, 2025, the MNS said con­sid­er­a­tion of Hugh­es’ re-en­try would re­quire the sub­mis­sion of an ap­pli­ca­tion for a Min­is­ter’s Per­mit—a process which is sep­a­rate and dis­tinct from the de­por­ta­tion or­der.

Hugh­es’ tri­al is set to be­gin on Ju­ly 22.

The ba­sis for the de­por­ta­tion or­der was that Hugh­es was nei­ther a cit­i­zen nor a res­i­dent of T&T, while the ba­sis for the lat­est re­quest was that the con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion of the or­der made it dif­fi­cult for him to par­tic­i­pate in the mat­ter.

At­tor­neys Criston Williams, Aaron Lewis and Blaine So­bri­an ar­gued that Hugh­es was not seek­ing per­ma­nent res­i­dence, cit­i­zen­ship or any broad­er im­mi­gra­tion ben­e­fit.

“The re­quest is con­fined sole­ly to per­mis­sion to re-en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go for the lim­it­ed pur­pose of at­tend­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the tri­al of the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings is­sued against him,” they stat­ed.

The le­gal team said while Hugh­es ful­ly recog­nised the sov­er­eign au­thor­i­ty of the State to reg­u­late im­mi­gra­tion con­trol and the ad­mis­sion of non-na­tion­als, the re­quest in­vites a bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise in which the prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions of the de­por­ta­tion or­der may be weighed along­side Hugh­es’ will­ing­ness to com­ply with all court re­quire­ments.

They ar­gued that per­mit­ting Hugh­es tem­po­rary en­try in­to T&T would as­sist in en­sur­ing the pro­gres­sion and de­ter­mi­na­tion of the pro­ceed­ings and avoid po­ten­tial pro­ce­dur­al dif­fi­cul­ties aris­ing from his in­abil­i­ty to be present when re­quired.

Hugh­es’ at­tor­neys not­ed that the Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate had said there may be ad­verse con­se­quences if Hugh­es is not al­lowed to re­turn for his tri­al.

The au­thor­i­ty to lift a de­por­ta­tion or­der rests sole­ly with Alexan­der.

Call for Alexan­der to re­cuse him­self from mat­ter

The at­tor­neys ex­pressed con­cern, though, that Alexan­der had been pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Hugh­es’ stream­ing plat­form in con­tent pub­lished on May 24, 2024.

They wrote, “Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we are aware of fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween your good self and the ap­pli­cant (Hugh­es) re­gard­ing mat­ters which touch and con­cern the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against the ap­pli­cant.”

The at­tor­neys added, “We have cho­sen not to dis­close same at this time to avoid any com­pro­mise to your of­fice and to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of all in­volved.”

But they added, “In these cir­cum­stances, there aris­es a le­git­i­mate con­cern that a fair-mind­ed and in­formed ob­serv­er may con­clude that there ex­ists a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of bias in any de­ci­sion tak­en by your good self in re­la­tion to the lift­ing of the de­por­ta­tion or­der.”

Hav­ing copied De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge on the re­quest, the at­tor­neys said they al­so in­tend to copy Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

In­sist­ing their at­ten­tion and over­sight were cru­cial to en­sur­ing the pro­pri­ety of this mat­ter, they called on Alexan­der to re­cuse him­self.

“It is our re­spect­ful po­si­tion that you ought not to par­tic­i­pate in any de­ci­sion-mak­ing process re­gard­ing this mat­ter. Giv­en that you are the sole statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ty vest­ed with the rel­e­vant pow­er, any re­cusal would nec­es­sar­i­ly re­quire Cab­i­net in­ter­ven­tion to ap­point an al­ter­na­tive de­ci­sion-mak­er,” they said.

Cog­nizant that such a step may re­sult in fur­ther de­lays, the le­gal team al­leged that a con­flict of in­ter­est could lead to a com­pro­mise in Alexan­der’s de­ci­sion re­gard­ing Hugh­es’ re­quest to lift the de­por­ta­tion or­der.

As an al­ter­na­tive, they sug­gest­ed Sturge ren­der a de­ci­sion on Hugh­es’ re­quest.

“In the event that the de­ci­sion is tak­en not to ac­cede to this re­quest, it is re­quest­ed that the ap­pli­cant (Hugh­es) be pro­vid­ed with a sub­stan­tive writ­ten ex­pla­na­tion set­ting out the rea­sons for the re­fusal and/or in­abil­i­ty to grant the re­quest­ed re­lief,” the lawyers ar­gued.

“The ap­pli­cant re­spect­ful­ly in­di­cates that any such writ­ten rea­sons would be of as­sis­tance in en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy and may be placed be­fore the court in the pend­ing pro­ceed­ings, as may be nec­es­sary.”

Alexan­der has been giv­en un­til 4 pm on Ju­ly 3 to re­spond.