One day af­ter the repa­tri­a­tion of 35 Venezue­lans who were on a ves­sel in­volved in an in­ci­dent in which a ba­by was killed, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty repa­tri­at­ed 38 more who had en­tered the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

The sec­ond ex­er­cise was car­ried out on Fri­day af­ter­noon in keep­ing with es­tab­lished pro­to­cols be­tween the T&T Coast Guard and Venezuela’s Guardia Na­cional.

A re­lease from the min­istry stat­ed that “all per­sons were screened by com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ties of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Em­bassy of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela. This was to en­sure, among oth­er things, that there were no vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing amongst them. Co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the Venezue­lan Au­thor­i­ties, both civ­il and mil­i­tary, was main­tained through­out this ex­er­cise. This was to en­sure the preser­va­tion of the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the na­tion­als of both na­tions.”

On Thurs­day, the first group of repa­tri­at­ed mi­grants was tak­en to Guiria, Venezuela, where they were to meet with fam­i­ly mem­bers and re­turn to Tu­cu­pi­ta.

The repa­tri­a­tions have been crit­i­cised in Venezuela by pro-mi­grant ac­tivists who said the ac­tions of the T&T au­thor­i­ties have put chil­dren and adults at risk by sub­ject­ing them to ac­tions that threat­en their lives and fun­da­men­tal rights.

Venezue­lan at­tor­ney Car­los Tra­pani said the ac­tion was part of a “sys­tem­at­ic pat­tern of crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, xeno­pho­bia and per­se­cu­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants.”

He added: “A fa­ther or moth­er does not go to the high seas for plea­sure or tourism to get to know Trinidad and To­ba­go. It is a sur­vival op­tion in the face of very harsh and pre­car­i­ous liv­ing con­di­tions in Venezuela.”

Mi­gra­tion is not a crime and can­not be crim­i­nalised, said Tra­pani, who point­ed out that the use of po­lice or mil­i­tary of­fi­cers not spe­cialised in the treat­ment of mi­grants for bor­der con­trol caus­es in­ci­dents like the one last Sat­ur­day in which one-year-old Ya Elvis San­toyo was killed.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports in Venezue­lan news me­dia, Leopol­do López Gil, a mem­ber of the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment, has asked the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) to con­demn the killing of the Venezue­lan child. The Pop­u­lar Par­ty MEP said he wants to know what ac­tions the EU am­bas­sador in T&T will take to con­demn the in­ci­dent and to pre­vent sim­i­lar tragedies as this coun­try is a re­cip­i­ent of EU funds, un­der the frame­work of the Coto­nou Agree­ment which pro­motes hu­man rights and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples.

Yer­mi San­toyo, 28, fa­ther of Ya Elvis, who has been liv­ing in T&T along with sev­er­al mem­bers of his wife’s fam­i­ly, is de­bat­ing whether to stay in this coun­try, Venezuela news out­let Tal Cual re­port­ed.

“I came to en­sure a fu­ture for my chil­dren and look what hap­pened to us,” he said.

Jean Gouh, UNICEF di­rec­tor for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, said two out of three Venezue­lans on the move are women and chil­dren and the death of the mi­grant ba­by is a “clear re­minder that they are the most vul­ner­a­ble of the vul­ner­a­ble. They de­serve spe­cial at­ten­tion, pro­tec­tion and se­cu­ri­ty, any­where and at any time.”

Ac­cord­ing to UN­HCR fig­ures for Jan­u­ary, there are 21,611 peo­ple reg­is­tered in T&T. Of these, 18,694 peo­ple are Venezue­lan, 15,413 are asy­lum seek­ers and 3,182 are refugees.