DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne has ad­vised the pub­lic to re­main calm fol­low­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s an­nounce­ment that fund­ing will be cut to the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID).

US­AID, es­tab­lished in 1961, ad­min­is­ters hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid pro­grammes world­wide on be­half of the US Gov­ern­ment. The agency opened a per­ma­nent of­fice in T&T in 2022. How­ev­er, on his first day in of­fice, Trump halt­ed for­eign aid fund­ing for at least 90 days to al­low his ad­min­is­tra­tion time to re­view the pro­gramme’s align­ment with his “Amer­i­ca First” pol­i­cy.

Like many oth­er na­tions, T&T could lose ac­cess to US­AID-fund­ed pro­grammes un­der Trump’s pol­i­cy, which may im­pact tech­ni­cal sup­port grants, agri­cul­tur­al pro­grammes, and more.

De­spite this, Min­is­ter Browne re­as­sured the pub­lic that T&T is strength­en­ing its re­gion­al ties and ex­pand­ing part­ner­ships with or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS).

He made the com­ment while speak­ing with mem­bers of the me­dia dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ni­al sign­ing be­tween the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF), the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU), and the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion for a €3M grant, stat­ing, “We are re­fin­ing our con­nec­tions with­in the re­gion and lever­ag­ing all avail­able chan­nels to in­flu­ence and ad­vo­cate for Trinidad and To­ba­go with the new US ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

Browne al­so men­tioned that Cari­com lead­ers would ad­dress these is­sues at an up­com­ing Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in Bar­ba­dos.

“I as­sure you these mat­ters will be heav­i­ly placed on the agen­da and the Cari­com com­mu­ni­ty will ben­e­fit from the in­tro­spec­tion, dis­cus­sions, analy­sis, and out­put of our re­gion’s lead­er­ship,” he said.

“There’s no rea­son for pan­ic, but there is rea­son for us to re­dou­ble our ef­forts to en­sure that we can ad­vance the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go at this time of change,” Browne em­pha­sised.

Browne al­so com­ment­ed on the US ap­point­ment of an Am­bas­sador to T&T, stat­ing that while there is no cur­rent in­for­ma­tion on the time­line, the Gov­ern­ment would warm­ly wel­come the new ap­pointee when they ar­rived. (See page 15)

Re­gard­ing T&T’s pre­pared­ness to ac­cept de­por­tees from the Unit­ed States, Browne reaf­firmed that the coun­try had al­ways re­ceived na­tion­als. He said this was done through col­lab­o­ra­tion with Wash­ing­ton, the US em­bassy, the im­mi­gra­tion di­vi­sion, and the Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and For­eign Af­fairs.

“We’ve re­ceived no of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion to sug­gest that that rou­tine, that col­lab­o­ra­tion, will change in any re­spect. So, we will man­age the process re­spon­si­bly,” he as­sured.

Asked about re­ports sug­gest­ing 1,197 T&T na­tion­als were set to be de­port­ed from the US, Browne said there were ac­tive dis­cus­sions tak­ing place to bring clar­i­ty to the claims. How­ev­er, he said he was not the pri­ma­ry min­is­ter to speak on the sub­ject.

“Our col­lab­o­ra­tion with the USA is on­go­ing on this mat­ter, but we have not re­ceived any of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­vey­ing the fig­ures that have been ref­er­enced in the me­dia. Ad­di­tion­al de­tails and com­ments on our col­lab­o­ra­tion on im­mi­gra­tion and de­por­ta­tion is­sues should be sought from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty which is the line min­istry with di­rect over­sight.”

Last week, it was re­port­ed that close to 1,200 cit­i­zens were among 1.4 mil­lion for­eign­ers to be de­port­ed from the US per an un­con­firmed doc­u­ment from the US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment and En­force­ment Re­moval Op­er­a­tions cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia.