Par­ents of Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren staged a silent protest out­side the Red House in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, call­ing on lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to re­lease their chil­dren in­to their care.

The par­ents, who are al­so mi­grants, not­ed the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion’s lack of sen­si­tiv­i­ty in the is­sue af­ter a court rul­ing last week that the mi­nors should be re­leased.

The chil­dren, who were among the 16 who were de­tained by po­lice af­ter they re­turned to Trinidad via boat at a beach in south Trinidad ear­li­er this month, have been held at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port for over five weeks.

Speak­ing about the is­sue at Wood­ford Square, moth­er of one of the chil­dren, Berti­na Her­nan­dez, told the Trinidad Guardian, through an in­ter­preter, “Our chil­dren, they spend about two weeks in quar­an­tine, they ex­tend the quar­an­tine for a sec­ond time and af­ter that, they have to be re­leased but so far we don’t know any­thing about that.”

Her­nan­dez said they have not been get­ting in­for­ma­tion from the au­thor­i­ties, lead­ing them to fear they want to de­port the chil­dren back to Venezuela.

An­oth­er par­ent, Fe­lix Mar­cano, added, “We are here to­day be­cause we need to know fi­nal­ly what is go­ing to hap­pen with our chil­dren. The days has passed and we don’t know any­thing about the fu­ture of our chil­dren.

“I have not spo­ken to my two chil­dren, I don’t know if they are okay, no one is telling us any­thing. Im­mi­gra­tion is not say­ing any­thing to our many re­quests. We have seek le­gal ad­vice but we are still un­cer­tain as to if they will be re­leased in­to our care or they will be de­port­ed.”

He added, “We find it very un­fair, it is the hol­i­days and the chil­dren are away from us and this is very hurt­ful for us and we just want an an­swer as to when, or even some­one to tell us what is the pro­ce­dure so we can an­tic­i­pate what to ex­pect from the au­thor­i­ties.”

Last month, High Court Judge Joan Charles or­dered the im­me­di­ate re­lease of 10 mi­nors and four of their moth­ers from the mi­grant de­ten­tion cen­tre at the T&T Coast Guard’s He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas. Charles or­dered their re­lease as she not­ed this coun­try’s im­mi­gra­tion laws and poli­cies do not pro­vide for the de­ten­tion and de­por­ta­tion of chil­dren. As the mi­nors had to be re­leased in­to the cus­tody of rel­a­tives, Charles al­so had to or­der the re­lease of some of their moth­ers, who were al­so de­tained await­ing de­por­ta­tion.

Ef­forts to con­tact the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion on the is­sue were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.