Je­sus Chiri­nos, broth­er of Deysi Mar­cano, the Venezue­lan mi­grant who tried to end her life ear­li­er this month, is call­ing on the T&T Gov­ern­ment to re­lease his sis­ter and her three chil­dren as well as oth­er Venezue­lan mi­grants who are de­tained at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port.

"It was through des­per­a­tion that my sis­ter tried to kill her­self. It can­not be that my fam­i­ly is go­ing through this and T&T’s au­thor­i­ties have not been able to free them. We have ben­e­fits in T&T that our coun­try Venezuela does not have be­cause of the hunger that we are go­ing through there. In the name of God, some chil­dren are los­ing their rights. They are be­ing im­pris­oned as crim­i­nals and drug traf­fick­ers," he said in a state­ment is­sued by Mar­cano’s at­tor­ney, Criston J Williams, man­ag­ing part­ner of the law firm Criston J Williams and Co At­tor­neys-at-Law.

Williams said the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Mar­cano does not come as a sur­prise, giv­en the poor and stress­ful con­di­tions un­der which mi­grants at the he­li­port are forced to live.

Attorney Criston J Williams.

The at­tor­ney be­lieves there must be an ur­gent re­view of the op­er­a­tions of the he­li­port.

In May fe­male mi­grants had com­plained that they were the vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse and poor liv­ing con­di­tions at the he­li­port. Apart from hav­ing to give their bod­ies to guards, de­tainees have com­plained of the poor qual­i­ty of food and wa­ter, cramped con­di­tions and in­ad­e­quate med­ical con­di­tions.

At times, de­tainees are un­able to con­tact rel­a­tives.

The he­li­port was cre­at­ed as a buffer zone to deal with the mi­grant cri­sis dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Once a per­son is a non-na­tion­al and deemed to be caught ei­ther on land or at sea in T&T, that in­di­vid­ual is sent there to be quar­an­tined and stays there un­til he or she is de­port­ed.

"It was opened in 2020, is sit­u­at­ed on a mil­i­tary base, and is not sub­ject­ed to any in­de­pen­dent over­sight. This must be a wrong con­struct. What is clear is that there are nu­mer­ous com­plaints as to its op­er­a­tion from in­cep­tion, and it clear­ly does not com­ply with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. I think, very ur­gent­ly, there must be a re­view of its op­er­a­tion," Williams said.

He is call­ing on Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds to meet with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing at­tor­neys, to dis­cuss the op­er­a­tions at the he­li­port fa­cil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the med­ical re­port dat­ed Ju­ly 13, 2022, that the Sun­day Guardian re­ceived, the Med­ical De­part­ment of the T&T De­fence Force Head­quar­ters stat­ed that on Ju­ly 2, 2022, Mar­cano at­tempt­ed "self-harm by slit­ting both up­per limbs with a sharp in­stru­ment".

The re­port stat­ed that she was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, and treat­ed and dis­charged back to the he­li­port with a re­fer­ral to a men­tal health clin­ic.

"As a pre­cau­tion, on re­turn, Miss Mar­cano and the chil­dren were trans­ferred to the Med­ical In­fir­mary for ob­ser­va­tion and su­per­vi­sion. Miss Mar­cano re­mained an in­pa­tient at St Ann's Hos­pi­tal for sev­en days and was sub­se­quent­ly dis­charged to our care on Ju­ly 12," the re­port stat­ed.

"It re­mains my opin­ion, as hav­ing man­aged Miss Mar­cano from in­cep­tion (on ar­rival at he­li­port) that Miss Mar­cano’s men­tal health has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed over her pe­ri­od of con­fine­ment and that she should be re­leased from he­li­port un­der an Or­der of Su­per­vi­sion as her men­tal state is not ex­pect­ed to im­prove since con­fine­ment at the he­li­port is the main un­der­ly­ing stres­sor."

Williams spoke to the Sun­day Guardian about the on­go­ing court case to have the de­tained mi­nors freed.

"The mat­ter came up to­day (Thurs­day) in the Court of Ap­peal for hear­ing, so this is a mat­ter where we have three mi­nors locked up for over a year." Their moth­er, who has been in cus­tody for the same amount of time, at­tempt­ed self-harm, he said. "Even the prison’s doc­tor said that she ought to be re­leased un­der su­per­vi­sion giv­en her state of mind. The mat­ter be­fore the court has now gone to Oc­to­ber.”

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing a group of Vene­z­ue­lan chil­dren cur­rent­ly de­tained at the he­li­port have said that they in­tend to file civ­il pro­ceed­ings against the State for un­law­ful de­ten­tion. Their threat fol­lows Thurs­day’s rul­ing by five law lords at the Privy Coun­cil that the pol­i­cy of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to keep mi­grant chil­dren de­tained with­out is­su­ing de­por­ta­tion or­ders in their names was un­law­ful.

Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad or­dered the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer to make arrange­ments for the lo­cal Unit­ed Na­tions High com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) to meet with the group of five, which in­cludes chil­dren, to con­firm their asy­lum-seek­er sta­tus. Ram­per­sad al­so or­dered im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials to re­lease them on or­ders of su­per­vi­sion pend­ing the out­come of a re­quest for a per­mit from Hinds and their asy­lum claim.

The State ap­pealed the judge’s or­ders, but when it came up for hear­ing on Thurs­day, Jus­tices Gre­go­ry Smith and Vasheist Kokaram re­ferred to the Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing de­liv­ered ear­li­er that day and in­vit­ed sub­mis­sions on the im­pli­ca­tion the rul­ing had on the case be­fore them. They have ad­journed the hear­ing to Oc­to­ber.

Hu­man rights groups: T&T vi­o­lat­ing hu­man rights

Venezue­lan hu­man rights lawyer Damarys Rangel, based in Flori­da, Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, and who is the pres­i­dent of a hu­man rights group, Hu­man Rights DR spoke to the Sun­day Guardian by phone and said that if T&T does not re­spect hu­man rights and free mi­grant adults and chil­dren at the he­li­port then the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will view the coun­try as a vi­o­la­tor of hu­man rights.

Rangel de­nounced the "ar­bi­trary de­ten­tion" of the mi­nors at the he­li­port.

"The re­sults of T&T’s Au­thor­i­ties’ ac­tions against mi­grant chil­dren and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives are iso­la­tion, de­nial of jus­tice, tor­ture, cru­el and in­hu­man treat­ment. They are vi­o­lat­ing their fun­da­men­tal rights as chil­dren. This has al­so been de­nounced by some stake­hold­ers in T&T who un­der­stand that this is il­le­gal de­ten­tion."

She al­so called on the Gov­ern­ments of Venezuela and T&T to do more to safe­guard the rights of mi­grants.

So­cial ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­les wants a meet­ing with Hinds on the is­sue of the al­leged abus­es of mi­grants’ hu­man rights.

"The Gov­ern­ment of T&T is not do­ing enough to deal with the prob­lems that mi­grants face in this coun­try. The Gov­ern­ment knows in­ter­na­tion­al law. The Gov­ern­ment needs to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what is go­ing on at the he­li­port and con­di­tions in gen­er­al for mi­grants in T&T."

The Sun­day Guardian called Hinds for a re­sponse, but he did not an­swer his phone.