AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

As U.S. de­por­ta­tions ramp up un­der the cur­rent Trump-ad­min­is­tra­tion, se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah warns that T&T risks a so­cial cri­sis with­out a clear rein­te­gra­tion frame­work for de­por­tees.

This fol­lows the re­cent re­turn of 17 de­por­tees over the past week­end, with more ex­pect­ed to ar­rive soon from the same batch.

While Heer­ah praised the ef­forts of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion char­i­ty NGO Vi­sion on Mis­sion for sup­port­ing some of the de­por­tees, he said the cur­rent state sys­tems re­main frag­ment­ed and ill-equipped to meet the needs of re­turn­ing na­tion­als-- Par­tic­u­lar­ly those in­sti­tu­tion­alised in U.S. cor­rec­tion­al and im­mi­gra­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

“The rein­te­gra­tion process goes be­yond an NGO be­ing avail­able to sup­port. It goes be­yond the im­mi­gra­tion in­ter­view and screen­ing process tak­ing place in the air­port. It is af­ter the fact, the rein­te­gra­tion in­to so­ci­ety,” Heer­ah said dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme on Tues­day.

Heer­ah out­lined a blue­print for a co­or­di­nat­ed pol­i­cy re­sponse and urged the de­vel­op­ment and re­struc­tur­ing of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, along­side a task force to man­age the han­dling of all cat­e­gories of de­por­tees.

He linked this frame­work to the sys­tems used dur­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­sponse to the Ebo­la threat and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“We should be con­cep­tu­al­is­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­tro­duc­ing, for in­stance, a na­tion­al de­por­tee rein­te­gra­tion Task Force op­er­at­ing out of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­ter,” Heer­ah said.

He said that such a task force should do more than man­age lo­gis­tics. It must al­so of­fer cog­ni­tive be­hav­iour­al ther­a­py, skills train­ing, and on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing.

Heer­ah not­ed that a frame­work should al­ready ex­ist to man­age high-risk re­turnees, those de­port­ed for vi­o­lent or non-vi­o­lent in­frac­tions, as well as in­di­vid­u­als with anger man­age­ment or trau­ma-re­lat­ed is­sues.

Heer­ah adds that the Cen­tre would al­so play a key role in rais­ing pub­lic aware­ness and re­duc­ing the mis­in­for­ma­tion and stig­ma sur­round­ing de­por­tees.

Hu­man rights ad­vo­cate Denise Pitch­er echoed this call, stress­ing the im­por­tance of pub­lic em­pa­thy and that the emo­tion­al-well­be­ing of the de­por­tees must al­ways be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

“It's par­tic­u­lar­ly heart­break­ing be­cause they've been up­root­ed from their lives that they've been in the U.S. now for decades…they've been up­root­ed and re­turned to a coun­try that they bare­ly know they may not have re­turned to in years, and that can have a trau­ma­tis­ing ef­fect for the de­por­tees,” Pitch­er added dur­ing an in­ter­view on TMB.

Pitch­er al­so point­ed out that lo­cal fam­i­lies of­ten share the bur­den, fac­ing the emo­tion­al, lo­gis­ti­cal, and fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of sup­port­ing de­port­ed rel­a­tives with­out state as­sis­tance.

“Doc­u­men­ta­tion is very, very im­por­tant to fa­cil­i­tate a smooth tran­si­tion back in­to so­ci­ety…with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion, you can't do any­thing. You can't open a bank ac­count. You can't ap­ply for jobs. You know, em­ploy­ers need doc­u­men­ta­tion to pay NIS, all of these things,” she said.

And while the state has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to fa­cil­i­tate this rein­te­gra­tion, Pitch­er says the trau­ma may still be over­whelm­ing for some.

“Imag­ine you're liv­ing your life as nor­mal… and then you've been pulled away…and then you've been thrust in­to a new life that you're com­plete­ly un­fa­mil­iar with. That has to be a shock for any­one.”