Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says if Venezue­lan mi­grants per­sist in com­mit­ting crimes, should she win the next Gen­er­al Elec­tion, her gov­ern­ment will de­port all il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants back to Venezuela.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said, “If the Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty do not get their act in or­der and de­sist from en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal con­duct, be­gin as­sist­ing the TTPS in iden­ti­fy­ing Venezue­lan crim­i­nals and in­te­grate peace­ful­ly in­to our so­ci­ety, my in­com­ing gov­ern­ment will take ag­gres­sive ac­tion against ALL il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants and de­port every one of them to their home­land by any means nec­es­sary.”

She said she would not stand idly by and al­low more cit­i­zens to be ter­rorised and mur­dered by il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants.

In a state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “Every day for the last year, there were re­ports of vi­o­lent crimes be­ing com­mit­ted by il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants against our cit­i­zens. I will not stand idly by as this cur­rent gov­ern­ment has done and al­low more cit­i­zens like Mr. Win­ston Thomas to be ter­ror­ized and mur­dered by il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants.”

The 69-year-old was found dead in his car along the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way on Thurs­day morn­ing af­ter be­ing beat­en, robbed and kid­napped from his home in Pe­nal.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that T&T cit­i­zens have ac­cept­ed Venezue­lan mi­grants in­to every as­pect of their liveli­hoods while the mi­grants “pay no tax­es on in­come, no na­tion­al in­sur­ance, no health sur­charge and there­fore out com­pete lo­cals for jobs as em­ploy­ers seek to cut labour costs.”

She stat­ed that the UNC has re­peat­ed­ly called for a clear mi­grant pol­i­cy to be im­ple­ment­ed by the state, but none has been put in­to ac­tion by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar stressed that the well-be­ing of Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens must al­ways come first.

She re­it­er­at­ed that “Il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants have a clear choice to make, EI­THER peace­ful law-abid­ing habi­ta­tion in our coun­try OR de­por­ta­tion, there is no mid­dle ground. Their fu­ture with­in our coun­try rests sole­ly in the de­ci­sions they make in the com­ing months.”