Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs has con­firmed that the Unit­ed States made re­quests for its mil­i­tary to op­er­ate with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­space and mar­itime zones last year, but is re­fus­ing to dis­close what Wash­ing­ton re­quest­ed, when the re­quests were made or how they were han­dled.

De­spite a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quest seek­ing even par­tial de­tails, the min­istry is re­fus­ing to say what the US asked for, when it asked, or what the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered be­fore grant­i­ng per­mis­sion.

The dis­clo­sure comes as Guardian Me­dia con­tin­ues its months-long ef­fort to es­tab­lish the ex­tent of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­volve­ment with US mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in the re­gion last year, in­clud­ing the op­er­a­tion that led to the ar­rest and ex­tra­di­tion of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro on Jan­u­ary 3 this year.

Be­fore his cap­ture, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro ac­cused the Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment of al­low­ing US forces to use T&T as an “air­craft car­ri­er” against Venezuela.

The Gov­ern­ment said at the time T&T was not a par­tic­i­pant in the mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions on Jan­u­ary 3 but it nev­er said it didn’t lend as­sis­tance to any of the mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty pri­or.

The min­istry’s re­sponse to a FOIA re­quest dat­ed Au­gust 11, 2026 said it has records of the Unit­ed States re­quest­ing clear­ance to use our air­space and mar­itime zones.

“The min­istry ad­vis­es that it has lo­cat­ed diplo­mat­ic notes, in­ter­nal mem­o­ran­da, clear­ance records and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive records re­spon­sive to this Item of your re­quest.”

“The min­istry ad­vis­es that re­quests were made by the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States dur­ing the pe­ri­od spec­i­fied in your re­quest,” the Min­istry said in its re­ply.

But the Gov­ern­ment will not re­lease them.

The FOIA re­quest­ed diplo­mat­ic notes, for­mal re­quests or cor­re­spon­dence from the US Em­bassy or US Gov­ern­ment from April 28, 2025. It fur­ther re­quest­ed records show­ing when the re­quests were re­ceived, and in­ter­nal mem­o­ran­da, clear­ance records or ad­min­is­tra­tive records show­ing how the re­quests were processed.

The min­istry replied, “Hav­ing re­gard to the na­ture and scope of the records lo­cat­ed, the min­istry ad­vis­es that they con­tain sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­cat­ed in con­fi­dence by the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States con­cern­ing the pro­posed move­ment of Unit­ed States mil­i­tary air­craft and naval ves­sels, in­clud­ing the as­so­ci­at­ed op­er­a­tional and lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments.”

The min­istry said dis­clo­sure “would be in­con­sis­tent with the con­fi­den­tial ba­sis on which in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing the move­ment of for­eign mil­i­tary air­craft and naval ves­sels is ex­changed” and could prej­u­dice re­la­tions be­tween T&T and the US.

It al­so said dis­clo­sure would re­veal el­e­ments of the min­istry’s in­ter­nal con­sul­ta­tions and de­lib­er­a­tive process­es, po­ten­tial­ly un­der­min­ing the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of the in­ter-agency process through which such re­quests are as­sessed.

Un­der the Con­ven­tion on In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion (Chica­go Con­ven­tion, 1944), every state “en­joys com­plete and ex­clu­sive sov­er­eign­ty over the air­space above its ter­ri­to­ry.” This means no mil­i­tary air­craft of an­oth­er coun­try may fly over or land with­in the ter­ri­to­ry of an­oth­er State with­out its pri­or au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

The is­sue takes on added sig­nif­i­cance fol­low­ing com­ments made by US Sen­a­tor Jim Risch, chair­man of the Sen­ate For­eign Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee.

Dur­ing a Ju­ly 30 hear­ing con­sid­er­ing Jen­nifer John­son-Car­roll’s nom­i­na­tion to be­come US am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Risch de­scribed T&T as a “key US eco­nom­ic, diplo­mat­ic, and se­cu­ri­ty part­ner in the Caribbean”.

He then went fur­ther, say­ing Trinidad had “played an ac­tive role in sup­port of US law en­force­ment ef­forts in the re­gion, in­clud­ing the ar­rest and ex­tra­di­tion of Nico­las Maduro in Venezuela.”

“We are very grate­ful for this work,” Risch said.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers trav­elled to Venezuela on Sep­tem­ber 3 for high-lev­el bi­lat­er­al talks with the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment for the first time.

What about oth­er coun­tries?

Guardian Me­dia al­so asked for records of re­quests for ac­cess to our air­space from for­eign gov­ern­ments oth­er than the US.

Again, the min­istry said it had lo­cat­ed diplo­mat­ic notes but said dis­clo­sure could un­der­mine the con­fi­dence nec­es­sary for con­tin­ued diplo­mat­ic and de­fence co­op­er­a­tion.

The min­istry did, how­ev­er, agree to dis­close the iden­ti­ties of coun­tries oth­er than the US that made re­quests dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

The re­port list­ed 17 coun­tries, which in­clud­ed:

Ar­genti­na, Bar­ba­dos, Brazil, Cana­da, Colom­bia, Ecuador, France, Ghana, Guyana, In­dia, Italy, Japan, Paraguay, Qatar, South Ko­rea, Spain and Türkiye.

Se­ries of de­nials

In Jan­u­ary, Guardian Me­dia asked the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion for records on for­eign mil­i­tary air­craft op­er­at­ing in T&T be­tween Oc­to­ber 2025 and Jan­u­ary 2026, in­clud­ing US re­quests to use T&T’s air­space, air­ports or fa­cil­i­ties. The min­istry re­fused, and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der lat­er is­sued a Cer­tifi­cate of Ex­emp­tion. The Om­buds­man up­held that de­ci­sion.

The USS Grave­ly vis­it­ed from Oc­to­ber 26–30, 2025, for joint se­cu­ri­ty ex­er­cis­es in­volv­ing the US Marines and TTDF. The 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit re­turned for train­ing from No­vem­ber 16–21. Yet nei­ther was specif­i­cal­ly con­firmed in the FOIA re­sponse.