Venezue­lan mi­grants em­barked on the sec­ond day of a hunger strike yes­ter­day, protest­ing their de­ten­tion at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port.

The de­tainees, who be­gan the hunger strike on Tues­day, have promised to keep at it un­til there is a de­ci­sion by the court or the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing their re­lease.

The mi­grants are al­so protest­ing what they have de­scribed as the wors­en­ing con­di­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty, which is manned by mem­bers of the T&T Coast Guard.

Most of the de­tainees were ar­rest­ed on Ju­ly 9 fol­low­ing a raid at a bar in St James where they were at­tend­ing a par­ty. Ini­tial­ly, there were 143 of them, how­ev­er, about 20 of them have since been re­leased.

A let­ter ad­dressed to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds by the law firm Quan­tum Le­gal, whose at­tor­neys are rep­re­sent­ing 70 of the de­tainees, out­lined the con­di­tions at the he­li­port as of Ju­ly 31.

The let­ter was al­so dat­ed that same day.

It stat­ed, “The con­di­tions at the he­li­port have wors­ened. No drink­able wa­ter is pro­vid­ed. The de­tainees have no al­ter­na­tive but to drink the wa­ter from the pipe which is con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. The wa­ter that flows from the pipe is yel­low or brown. The toi­let is leak­ing wa­ter like a riv­er.”

It added, “Peo­ple are not get­ting food ... The food pro­vid­ed by the fa­cil­i­ties is not fit for con­sump­tion and is spoilt.

“The de­tainees would be fed peas and rice and bread and sar­dine, but they are spoilt. The de­tainees would get sick and suf­fer stom­ach pain af­ter eat­ing the food pro­vid­ed at the fa­cil­i­ties. As a re­sult, the de­tainees are re­liant on food pro­vid­ed by their fam­i­lies.”

The law firm al­so stat­ed that ac­cord­ing to com­plaints from their clients, some de­tainees are not even re­ceiv­ing the food sent for them by rel­a­tives.

“On the oc­ca­sions that they do re­ceive the meals pro­vid­ed by their fam­i­lies, the food is in­ter­fered with. For ex­am­ple, the bread and con­tents are re­moved and all that is left is the sal­ad. “On oc­ca­sions, food pro­vid­ed by fam­i­lies would be re­fused de­liv­ery and should fam­i­ly mem­bers per­sist in de­liv­er­ing the food, they would be threat­ened with de­ten­tion and de­por­ta­tion by the of­fi­cers,” the let­ter stat­ed.

Quan­tum Le­gal al­so claimed in its let­ter to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter that toi­letries such as soap, tow­els, and a change of cloth­ing are not be­ing de­liv­ered to the mi­grants de­spite be­ing brought in by rel­a­tives.

It al­so al­leged that there is a par­tic­u­lar coast guard that treats the de­tainees “very bad”, even tak­ing away med­ica­tion meant for a mi­grant who suf­fers from nerve dam­age to her leg leav­ing her in se­vere pain.

The at­tor­neys al­so claimed that oth­er de­tainees with med­ical is­sues are ig­nored and ill-treat­ed.

The let­ter said de­tainees are de­nied ac­cess to doc­tors and are told that there are no doc­tors at the he­li­port. No doc­tor comes to vis­it the fa­cil­i­ties.

It al­so claimed that there are 80 to over 100 peo­ple crammed in one room, with women and men be­ing housed to­geth­er and the women are forced to change their cloth­ing in the pres­ence of men, much to their dis­com­fort.

The law firm added that de­tainees are sick and suf­fer­ing from cough­ing, scratch­ing of the skin and fever.

Ef­forts to con­tact the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter on the mat­ter were un­suc­cess­ful.