Derek Achong

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing six mi­grant chil­dren, who were among a group of 25 Venezue­lan chil­dren and adults that re­turned to this coun­try af­ter be­ing repa­tri­at­ed last month, have suc­cess­ful­ly pe­ti­tioned the In­ter Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights (IACHR) over a po­ten­tial move to de­port them with lit­i­ga­tion pend­ing.

In a press re­lease is­sued, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the IACHR stat­ed that it had grant­ed pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures against the move in re­la­tion to six chil­dren of the group of 16 chil­dren and nine adults, who did not re­ceive or­ders from lo­cal judges.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the group’s le­gal team were on­ly able to file cas­es for 22 of the group as three chil­dren were un­ac­com­pa­nied and did not have close rel­a­tives liv­ing lo­cal­ly.

Of the 22 cas­es that were filed, one ap­pli­ca­tion for in­ter­im re­lief for an 11-year-old girl was dis­missed by High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad, while the State gave an un­der­tak­ing in re­la­tion to two mi­nors and their moth­er.

Seep­er­sad’s de­ci­sion was ap­pealed this week, with the case ex­pect­ed to be heard lat­er this month.

“Ac­cord­ing to the re­quest, the pro­posed ben­e­fi­cia­ries are at risk of be­ing de­port­ed to Venezuela with­out due analy­sis of their par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tions, where they al­leged­ly face risk to their rights to life and per­son­al in­tegri­ty,” the IACHR said.

“More­over, the Com­mis­sion high­light­ed that lack of the re­ferred as­sess­ment en­com­pass­es fur­ther risks of ir­repara­ble harm in light of their spe­cif­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties as chil­dren, and pre­vents an analy­sis on their best in­ter­est and the par­tic­u­lar pro­tec­tion needs of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries who are un­ac­com­pa­nied,” it added.

The IACHR al­so made note of state­ments made by Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials on the mi­grants’ sit­u­a­tion as it made men­tion of the fact that they were ini­tial­ly de­port­ed with lit­i­ga­tion pend­ing and with­out in­di­vid­ual as­sess­ments.

“The Com­mis­sion notes, with great con­cern, that the de­por­ta­tion was car­ried out by plac­ing chil­dren and oth­er adults on pirogues in­to in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, which by its own na­ture, en­tails a se­ri­ous risk to their lives,” it said.

The IACHR al­so ex­press dis­ap­point­ment that it did not re­ceive a re­sponse from the State even re­but­ting the mi­grants’ al­le­ga­tions.

“Con­se­quent­ly, pur­suant to Ar­ti­cle 25 of its Rules of Pro­ce­dure, the Com­mis­sion re­quest­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go adopt the nec­es­sary mea­sures to guar­an­tee the rights to life and per­son­al in­tegri­ty of V.A.L.F.; M.A.C.F.; J.A.C.F.; M.S.C.F.; M.V.V.C. and J.A.R.M. In par­tic­u­lar, by re­frain­ing from de­port­ing or ex­pelling them to Venezuela un­til the do­mes­tic au­thor­i­ties have du­ly as­sessed, in ac­cor­dance with ap­plic­a­ble in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, the al­leged risks faced,” it said.

It was care­ful to note that the mea­sures would not pre­judge any po­ten­tial case, which may even­tu­al­ly be brought be­fore it.

The group was de­tained short­ly af­ter ar­riv­ing in Chatam, on No­vem­ber 17.

The mi­grants, the youngest of which is four-months-old, were test­ed for COVID-19 and were all found to be neg­a­tive. They were then held in cus­tody at sev­er­al po­lice sta­tions un­til their de­por­ta­tion.

The mi­grants were placed on two civil­ian ves­sels and es­cort­ed out of T&T wa­ters by the Coast Guard.

Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams or­dered that the group be brought be­fore as she was told that they were near the mar­itime bor­der.

How­ev­er, she was forced to dis­miss the case af­ter the De­fence Force said that they had al­ready ar­rived in Venezuela.

A few days lat­er the group land­ed in Los Iros and was im­me­di­ate­ly de­tained by po­lice and tak­en for a med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion. They were held at the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion be­fore be­ing placed in quar­an­tine at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port.