SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has slashed the num­ber of work per­mits is­sued to Venezue­lans from 4,275 in 2024 to a mere 757 this year. This re­flects a de­cline of 3,518 per­mits, or an 82 per cent de­crease.

The min­istry’s web­site showed that on­ly two tranch­es of per­mits were ap­proved for re-reg­is­tered Venezue­lan na­tion­als this year. The first tranche of 480 per­mits was due for col­lec­tion from March 25 to 28, fol­lowed by a sec­ond tranche of 277 per­mits that were dis­trib­uted be­tween June 9 and 11. These per­mits will be valid un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2025.

Be­tween Feb­ru­ary and Au­gust 2024, the min­istry ap­proved and dis­trib­uted five tranch­es to­talling 4,275 per­mits. In 2023, 4,247 per­mits were hand­ed out, even though then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds re­vealed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7,000 Venezue­lans had reg­is­tered that year.

For these two years, 8,522 per­mits were re­newed and col­lect­ed by Venezue­lans.

The web­site on­ly had da­ta on the per­mits for 2023, 2024, and 2025.

In 2019, the then Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment opened its doors to Venezue­lans fac­ing civ­il and eco­nom­ic strife in their home­land by es­tab­lish­ing a Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work ex­er­cise. At the end of this ex­er­cise, 16,523 Venezue­lans were grant­ed one-year per­mits to work in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Each year, the min­istry would ap­prove per­mits for re-reg­is­tered Venezue­lans.

Dur­ing the six years Venezue­lans have been liv­ing and work­ing in the coun­try, many have re­port­ed be­ing ex­ploit­ed and dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. Oth­ers were de­port­ed for com­mit­ting crimes.

In the mean­time, scores of Venezue­lans have con­tin­ued to il­le­gal­ly en­ter T&T due to our porous bor­ders and have en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties with lo­cal gang mem­bers. Be­tween 2020 and Au­gust 25 of this year, 55 Venezue­lan na­tion­als were mur­dered in Trinidad, 10 of whom were women. Sev­en of these killings have been clas­si­fied as drug-re­lat­ed.

On Mon­day, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty cir­cu­lat­ed a memo about a mass de­por­ta­tion ex­er­cise of de­tained il­le­gal im­mi­grants with “im­me­di­ate ef­fect”. Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo pushed back against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­por­ta­tion plans, sug­gest­ing that repa­tri­a­tions from T&T were part of a larg­er scheme to send over “un­der­cov­er mer­ce­nar­ies”, amid ris­ing ten­sions be­tween both coun­tries.

The ten­sions es­ca­lat­ed with last Sun­day’s dock­ing of the USS Grave­ly, a de­stroy­er fit­ted with guid­ed mis­siles, in Port-of-Spain. Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties de­scribed Trinidad’s de­ci­sion to host the US ship as a hos­tile provo­ca­tion.

On Mon­day, Venezuela sus­pend­ed en­er­gy agree­ments with T&T. Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro ac­cused Trinidad of act­ing as the “air­craft car­ri­er of the US em­pire” and said that he was left with no choice but to pull out of the treaties signed with T&T ten years ago.

The fol­low­ing day, Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly de­clared Per­sad-Bisses­sar “per­sona non gra­ta” as they con­tin­ued to ac­cuse the T&T Gov­ern­ment of sup­port­ing the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed Maduro’s com­ments as mean­ing­less.

Human Rights Lawyer Criston J Williams speaks with Guardian Media about the Venezuelan migrant crisis.

ROGER JACOB

At­tor­ney urges due process

amid se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns

At­tor­ney Criston J Williams said hav­ing un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants in T&T can pose a se­ri­ous threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, which rais­es deep con­cerns.

“That is some­thing we must pro­tect against.”

Williams was weigh­ing in on the min­istry’s move to de­port de­tained im­mi­grants forth­with.

“So we have to cal­cu­late if, A, there are nar­co-ter­ror­ists in our coun­try that we don’t know about, and B, whether or not there can be a sys­tem to un­der­mine the au­thor­i­ties. Venezuela may just have op­er­a­tives in our coun­try. We just don’t know.” He said T&T must mit­i­gate against Venezue­lan op­er­a­tives and un­marked ter­ror­ists that may be in our coun­try.

“And that may be one of the rea­sons why this pol­i­cy di­rec­tive came about so ur­gent­ly and sud­den­ly. That is why it’s im­por­tant to have doc­u­ment­ed per­sons in your coun­try. I, too, would have con­cerns as to the true na­ture of some­one who may be walk­ing next to me be­cause a lot of them are in­volved in the drug trade, ba­si­cal­ly. So we must be con­cerned. That does not mean you must be xeno­pho­bic.”

As the lead at­tor­ney at Quan­tum Le­gal, Williams has been work­ing with mi­grants and asy­lum seek­ers for years.

Williams said if an im­mi­grant is found guilty of an of­fence that car­ries a penal­ty of over one year, they should be de­port­ed.

He hopes that the Gov­ern­ment will fol­low the due process of the law.

In the 2025 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port, Williams said sev­er­al mat­ters in­volv­ing Venezue­lans were left hang­ing by the PNM gov­ern­ment. The re­port stat­ed there was no re­newed in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of Coast Guard of­fi­cials at a de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ty who sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit­ed and beat a Venezue­lan woman who was a vic­tim of hu­man traf­fick­ing in 2023.

“The Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion found no of­fi­cial wrong­do­ing, and it dropped the crim­i­nal case in Jan­u­ary 2024 for lack of ev­i­dence,” the re­port stat­ed.

The 2024 (R4V) In­ter-Agency Co­or­di­na­tion Plat­form for Refugees and Mi­grants from Venezuela re­port stat­ed that T&T had 29,509 Venezue­lans in T&T.

But Venezue­lan hu­man rights ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­lez feels the fig­ure ex­ceed­ed 29,000, in­sist­ing that there could be thou­sands of il­le­gal Venezue­lans liv­ing amongst us, giv­en their height­ened pres­ence in Cen­tral, South, and east Trinidad.

Of the 16,000 who reg­is­tered in 2019, Gon­za­lez said many fled our coun­try, while oth­ers were jailed and de­port­ed.

Dur­ing her last vis­it to the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo, Gon­za­lez said 160 Venezue­lans were de­tained un­der poor con­di­tions.

“I no longer go to the IDC be­cause the au­thor­i­ties kept giv­ing me a dif­fi­cult time; it was a way to frus­trate me.”

She said sev­er­al of the de­tained Venezue­lans have com­plained of racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“The last ad­min­is­tra­tion did a lot of de­por­ta­tions and vi­o­lat­ed their hu­man rights. Those who had cas­es be­fore the court nev­er cared. They forced them against their will to sign a de­por­ta­tion or­der and sent them back to Venezuela even though they got an or­der of su­per­vi­sion.”

The ac­tivist al­so ac­cused some “cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers” of “tak­ing ad­van­tage”of Venezue­lans who work for min­i­mum wage. Gon­za­lez said she re­ceived sev­er­al re­ports of po­lice tak­ing cell­phones, mon­ey, and jew­ellery from le­gal Venezue­lans.

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber:

Busi­ness own­ers get val­ue for mon­ey when they hire Venezue­lans

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said Venezue­lans make up a large per­cent­age of the bor­ough’s work­ing class. He said in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try in Ch­agua­nas, at least 60 per cent of the work­force are Venezue­lans. Many al­so work in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

“Al­most every restau­rant and bar in Ch­agua­nas has Venezue­lans work­ing.”

They al­so of­fer land­scap­ing and jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices in res­i­den­tial ar­eas.

“But more so, they do jobs that the lo­cals tend not to grav­i­tate to­wards. They are the ones fill­ing all those min­i­mum wage jobs.”

Ma­haraj said busi­ness own­ers get val­ue for mon­ey when they hire Venezue­lans.

“There is that lev­el of com­mit­ment; they give a full day’s work for their pay.”

He said the cham­ber has con­sid­ered that if the Gov­ern­ment re­fus­es to re­new the Venezue­lans’ per­mits, the busi­ness sec­tor would be im­pact­ed.

“There would be a se­vere short­age of that type of labour. It would not be easy to fill, so you will find that the cost of pro­duc­tion in some in­dus­tries would be high­er. When you look at pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, they tend to pro­duce quite a lot com­pared to what we are ac­cus­tomed to.”

San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber: Com­pe­ti­tion for jobs in South

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said the cham­ber has seen a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in Venezue­lans in the South, some of whom could be il­le­gal­ly here.

Singh said the cham­ber has al­so no­ticed an uptick in Venezue­lans work­ing in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try in the last year.

“There is no doubt about that. That tends to take away jobs from our own res­i­dents, as it be­comes com­pet­i­tive from the Venezue­lan as­pect. It has cre­at­ed a com­pet­i­tive na­ture for em­ploy­ment,” Singh said.

“It’s un­for­tu­nate that some of them are so high­ly qual­i­fied, and they have to come here and do the work of trades­men. It pro­vides a bit of a chal­lenge. While we sup­port our neigh­bour­ing coun­try, we have to look at our own un­em­ploy­ment fig­ures and the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, which has been de­clin­ing.”

Singh said the cham­ber al­so heard that some un­scrupu­lous busi­ness­es have not been sat­is­fy­ing the State’s re­quire­ments with tax reg­u­la­tions. “We don’t sub­scribe to that view, our mem­bers es­pe­cial­ly.”

Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion: They are hired to slash labour costs

Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Sudesh Ramkissoon said quite a few busi­ness­es and in­dus­tries in Ari­ma em­ploy Venezue­lans be­cause they are not ob­lig­at­ed to pay NIS con­tri­bu­tions for them.

“A lot of peo­ple (busi­ness own­ers) utilise them to help cut costs. We hire Venezue­lans over our na­tion­als.” A reg­is­tered Venezue­lan who se­cures a job is al­so ex­empt from pay­ing NIS con­tri­bu­tions but must pay tax­es and health sur­charges.

In 2023, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to reg­u­larise Venezue­lans with mi­grant cards and al­low them to con­tribute to the coun­try’s econ­o­my by pay­ing NIS.

Ramkissoon said that while the ma­jor­i­ty of Venezue­lans are pro­duc­tive, the bulk of their salaries is not in­ject­ed in­to the econ­o­my but is re­mit­ted to Venezuela.

“While I un­der­stand the hu­man side of things, we have to look at it from a na­tion-build­ing per­spec­tive. That is the prob­lem in our coun­try.”

State pays out $6 mil­lion for il­le­gal de­ten­tion and ill treat­ment

The State has paid out in ex­cess of $6 mil­lion to Venezue­lans be­tween 2023 and 2024 for il­le­gal de­ten­tion and ill treat­ment. Many of those who were award­ed com­pen­sa­tion were chil­dren.

In No­vem­ber of 2023, more than two dozen Venezue­lan mi­grants who en­tered T&T il­le­gal­ly and were ar­rest­ed in 2020 re­ceived a to­tal of $2.4 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for their il­le­gal de­ten­tion at two po­lice sta­tions by Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in.

Last Au­gust, three Venezue­lan chil­dren re­ceived $1.27 mil­lion for con­di­tions they en­dured dur­ing their two-month de­ten­tion at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port. Mas­ter Shurlanne Pierre made the or­der.

The chil­dren, whose ages were 12, sev­en, and two, were kept in the fa­cil­i­ty that pro­vid­ed no recre­ation­al or ed­u­ca­tion­al wel­fare.

In Pierre’s rul­ing, she or­dered com­pen­sa­tion for the “tor­tious acts com­mit­ted against very young chil­dren”.

In March 2024, Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed award­ed the moth­er of a 15-year-old boy $2.4 mil­lion in dam­ages af­ter he was de­tained at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port as an il­le­gal im­mi­grant for 450 days. The court al­so or­dered the State to pay $169,000, which rep­re­sent­ed the le­gal fees the boy’s moth­er in­curred in pur­su­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al claim on her son’s be­half.

Dozens of chil­dren left out of school

A to­tal of 111 Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren were ap­proved for ac­cep­tance in­to schools out of 187 ap­pli­ca­tions. The oth­er 76 were re­ject­ed as a re­sult of ex­pired doc­u­ments, low rates of lit­er­a­cy, and a lack of trans­la­tors. In 2024, on­ly 23 Venezue­lan chil­dren were placed in schools.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment to de­ter­mine if ad­di­tion­al Venezue­lan chil­dren were placed in their schools for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year in Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, an of­fi­cial stat­ed that 13 chil­dren were placed in Ro­man Catholic pri­ma­ry schools last year but did not dis­close whether there was a new in­take of Venezue­lan chil­dren in 2025.

A Venezuelan mother and her son share their journey after being trafficked across the sea to Trinidad..

ROGER JACOB

From hope to hor­ror: Mi­grant fam­i­ly de­scribes traf­fick­ing or­deal

At the height of Venezuela’s eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal cri­sis, Mia and her 16-year-old son, Elias (names changed to pro­tect their iden­ti­ties), took a risk by flee­ing their home in Venezuela to come to Trinidad in pur­suit of a bet­ter life.

The moth­er and son de­cid­ed to en­ter Trinidad two months af­ter the then PNM gov­ern­ment closed off reg­is­tra­tion in June 2019 for Venezue­lan mi­grants to live and work here.

Elias’s Eng­lish teacher en­ticed them to start a new life in Trinidad due to Venezuela’s col­laps­ing econ­o­my and the un­prece­dent­ed mass ex­o­dus of na­tion­als who could not ac­cess food, med­ical sup­plies, and health care ser­vices.

The teacher who or­gan­ised the trip promised to pro­vide a work per­mit for Mia and get Elias in­to a school.

“It was a last-minute de­ci­sion,” said Elias, who learnt to speak Eng­lish dur­ing the six years he has been il­le­gal­ly liv­ing in Trinidad.

Mia, 42, gave up her job as a gy­nae­col­o­gist, hop­ing for a brighter fu­ture.

She op­er­at­ed a pri­vate clin­ic for women in Ana­co, which is lo­cat­ed east of Venezuela. To sub­stan­ti­ate her claims, Mia pro­duced her med­ical cer­tifi­cate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Carabobo.

“We took a pirogue with five oth­er Venezue­lans one night, which was sup­posed to drop us off in San Fer­nan­do,” re­called Elias. How­ev­er, the boat pulled up on the beach­front in Morne Di­a­blo. This should have raised a red flag, but they ig­nored it. Af­ter dis­em­bark­ing the ves­sel, Mia and Elias were greet­ed by a Trinida­di­an man who took them to a house in Point Fortin.

“That’s when every­thing start­ed to go wrong,” Elias said.

Days lat­er, Mia and Elias al­leged the man said he had pur­chased them for US$1,000. The man paid the Venezue­lan teacher and the boat dri­ver to get them to Trinidad.

Mia was bought for US$700, while the man paid US$300 for Elias. Both moth­er and son said they were set up and sold. “We were fooled,” Elias ad­mit­ted.

The man kept call­ing Mia and Elias his “new fam­i­ly”.

For three weeks, Mia said the man who was al­ways armed locked them in­side the house. “We were told not to open the win­dows and front and back doors. We be­came pris­on­ers,” Elias ad­mit­ted.

Clutch­ing her son’s hands, and with tears stream­ing down her face, Mia said that when she re­fused to sleep in the man’s bed­room, he be­came ag­gres­sive. It was a night­mare she nev­er ex­pect­ed.

“We were vic­tims of traf­fick­ing. The man said my moth­er is his wife and I am his son,” Elias re­vealed, while he com­fort­ed his moth­er, who kept cry­ing un­con­trol­lably. Elias and Mia said they mus­tered enough strength to es­cape short­ly af­ter.

They con­tact­ed Venezue­lan ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­lez, who reg­is­tered Mia and Elias with the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR), “for them to live in Aus­tralia or Cana­da”.

Gon­za­lez said the UN­HCR’s process has been slow, and with the re­cent clo­sure of its lo­cal of­fice, every­thing has come to a stand­still.

“We are not hap­py here,” Mia ad­mit­ted.

“They have been wait­ing and wait­ing. It’s frus­trat­ing them. They want to leave this coun­try,” Gon­za­lez said.

Gon­za­lez said they are al­so fear­ful of be­ing ar­rest­ed and de­tained at the IDC.

Mia said her son has no fu­ture in Venezuela. If they re­turn home, Mia said Elias could be vic­timised for flee­ing Venezuela and sent to the army for train­ing.

Both moth­er and son live in an apart­ment in east Trinidad, which is paid for by friends and fam­i­ly.

Elias said he went job hunt­ing but was picked up by the po­lice, who cut his na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card. In the last six months, Mia suf­fered a stroke on her left side and a heart at­tack. “It’s too much stress.”

Mia went to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex for treat­ment but was turned away be­cause she is il­le­gal in the coun­try.

“The hos­pi­tal say my moth­er is not im­por­tant be­cause she has no pa­pers,” Elias said.