Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says if Cari­com wants to work with this coun­try, then Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty na­tions should work to­geth­er to ad­dress the grow­ing num­ber of Venezue­lan mi­grants in the re­gion and to press Cara­cas to take back its cit­i­zens cur­rent­ly de­tained in T&T.

“Maybe Cari­com coun­tries should get to­geth­er, and each of them could take in some of the il­le­gal Venezue­lans liv­ing here. And they can al­so speak to their friends in Cara­cas to take back the 200 Venezue­lan crim­i­nals in our jails, which they have re­fused to do for over two months,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in re­sponse to ques­tions about the de­por­ta­tion process.

She added, “The Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties are re­fus­ing to take back their peo­ple. We have ful­filled all our oblig­a­tions to repa­tri­ate them to Venezuela. It’s cost­ing us three mil­lion dol­lars a month to keep them de­tained. Mon­ey that can be used else­where to ben­e­fit Trinida­di­ans.”

Her com­ments come amid diplo­mat­ic fric­tion not on­ly with Cara­cas but al­so with­in Cari­com, fol­low­ing crit­i­cism of T&T’s po­si­tion on re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and mi­gra­tion.

On Sun­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed con­cerns that the coun­try could lose re­gion­al back­ing for its bid to sit on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, say­ing she was un­moved by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty states with­draw­ing their sup­port.

“I sim­ply do not care if any­one with­draws their sup­port. That is their choice,” she said, re­spond­ing to a Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion re­port which sug­gest­ed that Port-of-Spain’s de­ci­sion to sup­port the Unit­ed States’ mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean could jeop­ar­dise its 2027–2028 Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil nom­i­na­tion.

The re­port quot­ed re­gion­al sources as say­ing some Cari­com lead­ers were un­hap­py with T&T’s stance, which di­verged from the re­gion­al con­sen­sus reaf­firm­ing the Caribbean as a “Zone of Peace”.

“You should ask Cari­com lead­ers about this. Quite frankly, my on­ly care and con­cern is for the peo­ple of T&T,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said.

She added, “I have made it ex­plic­it­ly clear that Trinidad and To­ba­go will al­ways come first un­der my lead­er­ship. No oth­er coun­try be­sides the US is will­ing to as­sist us to ag­gres­sive­ly fight the drug and arms traf­fick­ers. I am not go­ing to toe Cari­com’s line while our coun­try is go­ing to hell with drugs, out-of-con­trol vi­o­lent crime, and mur­ders for the last 20 years. Added to that, we have tens of thou­sands of il­le­gal Venezue­lan im­mi­grants here who are putting a strain on our ser­vices.”

Last month, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment of stalling the repa­tri­a­tion of around 200 Venezue­lan na­tion­als de­tained for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T. She said co­op­er­a­tion from Cara­cas on repa­tri­a­tions, drugs, arms, and hu­man traf­fick­ing “would be a good place to start” in im­prov­ing re­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), there has been a fall in over­all ar­rests and charges against Venezue­lan na­tion­als this year, even as drug traf­fick­ing-re­lat­ed of­fences have in­creased.

Fig­ures pro­vid­ed un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act show that be­tween Jan­u­ary and Oc­to­ber 2025, 47 Venezue­lans were ar­rest­ed or charged, less than half the 105 record­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2024. Most of the 2025 cas­es in­volved il­le­gal en­try, while drug-re­lat­ed of­fences showed the largest year-on-year rise.

The TTPS said eight Venezue­lans were charged this year for pos­ses­sion of nar­cotics for traf­fick­ing, com­pared with four last year. There were 12 ar­rests for sim­ple pos­ses­sion, al­most match­ing 2024’s fig­ure of 14. Il­le­gal en­try cas­es dropped sharply from 83 to 27. The po­lice re­port­ed no ar­rests this year for hu­man traf­fick­ing or breach­es of de­por­ta­tion or­ders, both of which had two cas­es in 2024.

The fig­ures were pro­vid­ed in re­sponse to a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest sent on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2025, which asked for the num­ber of Venezue­lans ar­rest­ed, charged, and de­port­ed since Jan­u­ary 2024, as well as the num­ber of po­lice ex­er­cis­es that net­ted il­le­gal guns or drugs linked to Venezuela. While the TTPS re­leased sta­tis­tics on ar­rests and charges, it did not sup­ply fig­ures on de­por­ta­tions or in­ter­dic­tion ex­er­cis­es, say­ing the at­tached da­ta ful­filled the scope of the ap­proved re­quest.

The re­lease of the fig­ures fol­lows months of es­ca­lat­ing de­bate over cross-bor­der crime and mi­gra­tion.