Derek Achong

State lawyers could not give in­for­ma­tion on most of the group of Venezue­lan chil­dren and women who re­turned to Trinidad and To­ba­go this week af­ter be­ing repa­tri­at­ed on Sun­day, dur­ing a hear­ing of a law­suit for some of them yes­ter­day.

Af­ter the group re­turned on Tues­day, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing their rel­a­tives, who are reg­is­tered mi­grants, filed a law­suit and in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion on be­half of a four-year-old with a heart con­di­tion, his moth­er and sis­ter, in the hope that their case would de­cide the fate of the oth­ers who are sim­i­lar­ly cir­cum­stanced.

On Wednes­day, State at­tor­neys gave an un­der­tak­ing not to en­force de­por­ta­tion or­ders against the fam­i­ly mem­bers pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case and they were trans­ferred from the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion to the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Le­gal sources said when the case came up be­fore Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams last night, State at­tor­neys could not give any in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of the oth­er mi­grants, as they said they had not re­ceived any in­struc­tions in re­la­tion to them. They al­so could not say if the le­gal un­der­tak­ing ap­plied to them.

At­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, who is lead­ing the le­gal team for the en­tire group, re­port­ed­ly in­di­cat­ed that he would spend the week­end fil­ing sim­i­lar in­di­vid­ual law­suits for the oth­er group mem­bers to en­sure they re­ceive sim­i­lar treat­ment.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Ramdeen al­so com­plained that the fam­i­ly of three who were moved to the quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty at the mi­grant de­ten­tion cen­tre at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port yes­ter­day, were not al­lowed to con­tact their rel­a­tives in Trinidad.

Se­nior Coun­sel Regi­nald Ar­mour, who led the State's le­gal team, re­port­ed­ly in­di­cat­ed that he and Ramdeen should hold fur­ther dis­cus­sion on the con­di­tions of the fam­i­ly's quar­an­tine.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the fam­i­ly's rel­a­tives made asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions for them to the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) and they were ap­proved yes­ter­day.

At the start of the hear­ing, Quin­lan-Williams raised the fact that the case was at­tract­ing me­dia at­ten­tion. While she said that re­ports could be pub­lished, she warned that the names of the chil­dren should not be re­vealed.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi not­ed that this news­pa­per in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed an in­junc­tion block­ing any move to de­port them a sec­ond time had been grant­ed. The un­der­tak­ing grant­ed by his of­fice negat­ed the need for the in­junc­tion, as it achieved the same pur­pose and was in fact not pur­sued.

While Al Rawi crit­i­cised this news­pa­per for fail­ing to prop­er­ly ob­serve the pro­ceed­ings, he did not men­tion that me­dia per­son­nel and ob­servers were re­moved from the vir­tu­al hear­ing at a pre­lim­i­nary stage be­fore the un­der­tak­ing was even raised and dis­cussed. Me­dia per­son­nel were al­so not per­mit­ted ac­cess to yes­ter­day's hear­ing as the case in­volved mi­nors.

Al­though this news­pa­per's re­ports nev­er iden­ti­fied the mem­bers of the group by name, as the same pro­tec­tion for mi­nors lo­cal­ly was af­ford­ed to them, Al-Rawi cit­ed the name of the child on whose be­half the case filed at the start of his re­lease. He al­so in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed that the hear­ing on Wednes­day be­gan at 7 pm, when it fact it com­menced af­ter 8 pm be­cause Quin­lan-Williams was en­gaged with an­oth­er case.

The group is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Nafeesa Mo­hammed, Dayadai Har­ri­paul and Umesh Ma­haraj. Raphael Ad­jod­ha ap­peared along­side Ar­mour for the State.

The case is ex­pect­ed to come up for a next hear­ing on a date to be fixed by Quin­lan-Williams.

How the mi­grants got here

The group of Venezue­lans, which con­sists of 16 chil­dren and 10 adults, was de­tained short­ly af­ter ar­riv­ing in Chatam last Tues­day.

The mi­grants, the youngest of whom 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 repa­tri­a­tion on Sun­day morn­ing. The mi­grants were placed on two civil­ian ves­sels and es­cort­ed out of T&T wa­ters by the Coast Guard.

Al­though Quin­lan-Williams or­dered that the group be brought be­fore her dur­ing a hear­ing on Mon­day, State at­tor­neys in­formed her that they could not com­ply as they were al­ready out of the ju­ris­dic­tion. She dis­missed their habeas cor­pus cas­es.

But the group re­turned to Trinidad and land­ed in Los Iros on Tues­day af­ter­noon and was im­me­di­ate­ly de­tained by po­lice and tak­en for a med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion. They were then held at the Erin Po­lice Sta­tion.

Quar­an­tine or­ders, is­sued to the group and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, stat­ed that their quar­an­tine be­gan on Tues­day (No­vem­ber 24) when they re­turned and con­tin­ued while be­ing de­tained at the po­lice sta­tion.

In the court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the mi­grants' le­gal team claimed that the ac­tions of State of­fi­cials in de­port­ing them on Sun­day breached their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to lib­er­ty, pro­tec­tion of the law and pri­va­cy and fam­i­ly life, which are guar­an­teed to any per­son with­in T&T in­clud­ing il­le­gal mi­grants.

They al­so al­leged that the ac­tion breached sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al treaties and the Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy to ad­dress Refugees and Asy­lum, which was cre­at­ed in 2014 and was not abol­ished.