Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Even as they strug­gle to cope with be­ing sep­a­rat­ed from their rel­a­tives and the lives they cre­at­ed for them­selves abroad, three de­por­tees from the Unit­ed States say they are op­ti­mistic they can make a fresh start in T&T.

Jude Mar­cano, 33, An­dre Clarke, 61 and Calvert Gar­raway, 62, were among 17 de­por­tees who ar­rived in T&T ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

The trio had jobs and fam­i­lies in the US but said there are few fa­mil­ial or pro­fes­sion­al ties to their coun­try of ori­gin. How­ev­er, they are de­ter­mined to make the most of their cur­rent cir­cum­stances.

The de­por­tees, who were in­ter­viewed at Vi­sion on Mis­sion’s Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Re-In­te­gra­tion Cen­tre in Waller­field yes­ter­day, say they are grate­ful for the work of the or­gan­i­sa­tion in ac­com­mo­dat­ing them as there was some ini­tial un­ease over where they would stay once they ar­rived in T&T.

Gar­raway, who lived in the US for 37 years, re­called his con­cern when he was told he would be de­port­ed to T&T, as he had no sur­viv­ing rel­a­tives here.

He says while he was grate­ful for the sup­port of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, he lament­ed his ex­pe­ri­ences af­ter be­ing de­tained by of­fi­cials from the US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE) agency.

“That’s the way it is, there’s noth­ing we can do about that ... I mean 37 years’ of my life I lived in Amer­i­ca, pay my tax­es, I lost all my ben­e­fits, no so­cial se­cu­ri­ty noth­ing.”

Gar­raway, who worked as a con­trac­tor in New York and At­lanta, said while he has ac­cept­ed his fate and isn’t bit­ter, he is urg­ing oth­er de­por­tees to make peace with their cir­cum­stances and use what­ev­er skills they had learned to make T&T bet­ter.

Re­call­ing his treat­ment at an ICE fa­cil­i­ty where he was kept hand­cuffed, he ad­vised lo­cals seek­ing to mi­grate for work to con­sid­er their op­tions.

“Trinidad is a beau­ti­ful place, find some­thing to do in your coun­try, find some­thing to do here there’s a lot of po­ten­tial.

“Amer­i­ca is not the best place on the plan­et. There are a lot of places we can go, even on our own is­land and have a good life.

“I’m not go­ing to ask what Trinidad can do for me, but what I can do for Trinidad,” he said.

Graph­ic de­sign­er and con­trac­tor Jude Mar­cano said he has al­ready made up his mind to build a new fu­ture for him­self and his fam­i­ly fol­low­ing his de­por­ta­tion.

Mar­cano’s de­por­ta­tion arose from a traf­fic vi­o­la­tion ear­li­er this year. He said be­ing de­port­ed was his lat­est chal­lenge af­ter the moth­er of his chil­dren died dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

His chil­dren, a nine-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, are be­ing cared for by his fa­ther in Flori­da.

Re­call­ing the first batch of de­por­ta­tions car­ried out dur­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s first term in of­fice from 2015 to 2020, Mar­cano said he nev­er thought his fam­i­ly would be af­fect­ed by those poli­cies.

“A lot of the peo­ple it hap­pened to came in il­le­gal­ly, but for some­one who came in legal­ly, went to school, grad­u­at­ed, worked, paid tax­es, has rights in the coun­try and has chil­dren … even me be­ing the sole provider for my chil­dren, I ex­pect­ed them to not sep­a­rate us, but clear­ly they didn’t care about that,” he said.

“I wasn’t able to talk to them too much while I was at the im­mi­gra­tion fa­cil­i­ty, but my chil­dren had a lot of ques­tions, ‘Dad­dy what’s hap­pen­ing,’ ‘Dad­dy can I come with you?’ so it was trau­ma­tis­ing for me and for them.”

Mar­cano, who left T&T in 2006, has not seen much of the coun­try since his re­turn on Sat­ur­day, but he feels it has un­der­gone some ma­jor changes and is op­ti­mistic that he can find op­por­tu­ni­ties to grow and sup­port him­self. He be­lieves his 19 years work­ing in the US was “train­ing” for him to start a new life in T&T.

While he ac­knowl­edged that some peo­ple might not hold de­por­tees in very high es­teem, he is hop­ing that the pub­lic can ac­cept them as peo­ple with skills and a pur­pose to make the coun­try bet­ter.

“All de­por­tees are not bad. As a mat­ter of fact they should ac­tu­al­ly be wel­comed back with open arms and a warm heart be­cause we were able to sup­port our­selves abroad and we have lots of ex­pe­ri­ences and skills in a first world coun­try.

“We can bring back our skills and ac­tu­al­ly help and be of ser­vice here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

But while Mar­cano is hope­ful to meet his fam­i­ly and loved ones, the sit­u­a­tion has been some­what more chal­leng­ing for An­dre Clarke who left T&T in 1978.

Clarke, a grand­fa­ther of 15, said all of his sur­viv­ing rel­a­tives have re­mained in the US and he does not even have T&T doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“When they re­moved me, Trinidad and To­ba­go had no record of me ex­ist­ing, so they had to re­lease me.”

Clarke who is orig­i­nal­ly from Cal­vary Hill, East Port-of-Spain, said the coun­try has un­der­gone ma­jor changes since his child­hood and he is grate­ful for the sup­port of Vi­sion on Mis­sion to help guide him along.

He main­tains con­tact with his fam­i­ly via video calls but said the pain of their sep­a­ra­tion lingers.