The State has agreed not to de­port a Venezue­lan woman and her four-year-old daugh­ter pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a law­suit brought by her Trinida­di­an com­pan­ion on their be­half.

State at­tor­neys gave the un­der­tak­ing in a con­sent or­der that was en­tered as an ap­peal against a judge’s de­ci­sion not to grant a stay of their de­por­ta­tions, came up for vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore Ap­pel­late Judges Char­maine Pem­ber­ton and Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, yes­ter­day.

As part of the or­der, which re­sult­ed in the with­draw­al of the ap­peal, the State agreed to re­lease them from the im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion cen­tre at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port af­ter they pay a $3,200 se­cu­ri­ty bond.

Per­mis­sion was al­so grant­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for the woman to work pend­ing the even­tu­al out­come of the case.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the woman, who can­not be named to pro­tect her daugh­ter’s iden­ti­ty, en­tered the coun­try il­le­gal­ly in April 2019 and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Gov­ern­ment’s reg­is­tra­tion scheme.

Last year, she re­turned to Venezuela for her daugh­ter and they were ar­rest­ed with a group of il­le­gal im­mi­grants in Bar­rack­pore, short­ly af­ter ar­riv­ing.

The woman’s min­is­te­r­i­al per­mit was can­celled for the in­frac­tion and they were is­sued with de­por­ta­tion or­ders.

While be­ing de­tained at the fa­cil­i­ty, the woman con­tract­ed COVID-19 but has since re­cov­ered.

In the sub­stan­tive law­suit, the woman’s com­pan­ion, who she has been in a re­la­tion­ship with for over a year, claimed that State of­fi­cials did not fol­low the prop­er pro­ce­dure be­fore is­su­ing her with the de­por­ta­tion or­der.

He claimed that their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were in­fringed as they were not giv­en a fair hear­ing be­fore the de­ci­sion was made.

The trio sought an in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing the de­por­ta­tion, which was de­nied by Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed on De­cem­ber 23, last year.

Mo­hammed stat­ed that they would not suf­fer any prej­u­dice if they were de­port­ed and the woman’s com­pan­ion con­tin­ued their case in their ab­sence.

He al­so stat­ed that their case did not have a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess based on the fact that they ad­mit­ted to en­ter­ing the coun­try, while the bor­ders are closed due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

“In the case at bar, this pub­lic in­ter­est el­e­ment is the sec­ond de­fen­dant’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect our bor­ders and by ex­ten­sion the cit­i­zen­ry of this re­pub­lic from harm or threat of harm, which is now fur­ther com­pound­ed by the pan­dem­ic,” Mo­hammed said.

“Based on facts put for­ward in this mat­ter, the sec­ond claimant test­ed pos­i­tive for Covid19 – which is the very rea­son why our own na­tion­als can­not re­turn home with­out ex­emp­tions and why the en­tire world is in its cur­rent state of cri­sis,” he added.

In the ap­peal, the trio’s lawyers claimed that Mo­hammed’s rul­ing bore strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties with the de­ci­sion of Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing in the re­cent case of an 11-year-old Venezue­lan mi­grant, who was among a group that re­turned to T&T af­ter be­ing sent back, late last year.

Seep­er­sad had re­fused to grant an in­junc­tion bar­ring her de­por­ta­tion pend­ing her law­suit against the State. His de­ci­sion was even­tu­al­ly over­turned by the Court of Ap­peal.

As part of the ap­peal, the trio’s lawyers was seek­ing to have the case trans­ferred from Mo­hammed to an­oth­er judge.

They and their coun­ter­parts for the State had ini­tial­ly agreed to have the case trans­ferred as part of the con­sent or­der be­tween them, but both Pem­ber­ton and Ra­jku­mar ex­pressed dis­qui­et over the pro­pos­al and it was re­moved.

The trio was rep­re­sent­ed by El­ton Prescott, SC, Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai, Antonya Pierre, and Jen­nifer Farah-Tull.

Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, Lin­da Khan and Ryan­ka Rag­bir rep­re­sent­ed the State.