Gail Alexan­der

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is mov­ing on sev­er­al re­ports of sus­pect­ed il­le­gal for­eign­ers housed in parts of the coun­try, in­clud­ing South Trinidad­—and he’s re­in­forced that any T&T na­tion­al as­sist­ing such sit­u­a­tions will al­so be charged.

Grif­fith con­firmed this yes­ter­day af­ter in­for­ma­tion from cer­tain ar­eas, in­clud­ing South, was re­ceived.

This af­ter Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on Sat­ur­day an­nounced a crack­down on il­le­gal im­mi­grants en­ter­ing T&T and, not­ing the re­cent spike in lo­calised COVID-19 cas­es, moves to pe­nalise boat­men, dri­vers, land­lords, busi­ness­men and le­gal Venezue­lans who are fa­cil­i­tat­ing il­le­gal im­mi­grants. The lat­ter puts the pub­lic at COVID-19 risk.

Last Wednes­day 66 peo­ple—dis­em­bark­ing ves­sels, hid­ing in bush­es and found in guest­hous­es —were ar­rest­ed in South and To­ba­go. Sev­er­al T&T na­tion­als were al­so charged in con­nec­tion with that ac­tiv­i­ty.

Af­ter Young spoke about the is­sue dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s COVID-19 vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing, mem­bers of the pub­lic reached out to au­thor­i­ties. Up to yes­ter­day, po­lice were con­tact­ing res­i­dents in var­i­ous ar­eas over sus­pect­ed “new” for­eign­ers.

Last Sat­ur­day, res­i­dents of sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties cit­ed prob­lems with il­le­gal mi­grants and com­plaints were al­so made about cer­tain “ac­tiv­i­ties” at premis­es.

Grif­fith yes­ter­day said they re­ceived re­ports on sus­pect­ed for­eign­ers be­ing housed in cer­tain ar­eas, adding some peo­ple had very re­li­able in­for­ma­tion. He said po­lice would pur­sue all leads, “and any T&T na­tion­als as­sist­ing, sup­port­ing or di­rect­ing such ac­tiv­i­ties will al­so be charged.” He urged the pub­lic to con­tin­ue sub­mit­ting in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing via the 482-GARY hot­line.

There are al­so re­ports that peo­ple in Venezuela are ad­ver­tis­ing ser­vices to bring Venezue­lans to T&T.

T&T na­tion­als al­so ex­pressed con­cern about see­ing Venezue­lan ves­sels land­ing in Ch­aguara­mas to “sell fish” but bring­ing be­tween sev­en and 12 peo­ple—none of whom were seen wear­ing masks. In a so­cial me­dia post­ing, a man not­ed up to three boats in one morn­ing, query­ing how they were al­lowed to op­er­ate.

Grif­fith has al­so been ap­prised of in­for­ma­tion where cer­tain com­ments on a Span­ish so­cial me­dia site had con­demned—in ex­treme terms—T&T po­lice who are hold­ing il­le­gal mi­grants.

In­clud­ed was a rant hop­ing that T&T po­lice “die”. The writer ar­gued that peo­ple were com­ing to T&T to save their fam­i­lies and il­le­gals shouldn’t be de­port­ed. An­oth­er com­plained of “no pro­tec­tion.”

Grif­fith ac­knowl­edged some peo­ple have al­ways passed neg­a­tive com­ments on T&T po­lice, but de­clared, “We do our work - we press on.”

Al­so, the op­er­a­tors of a Venezue­lan so­cial me­dia site have not­ed T&T na­tion­als who’ve been com­ment­ing against the pres­ence of Venezue­lans in T&T, cit­ing the need to pro­tect this coun­try.

The site lat­er car­ried in­for­ma­tion—in Span­ish—to its ad­min­is­tra­tors that T&T na­tion­als were “among” them on the web­site, watch­ing their steps. It was ad­vised that sus­pi­cious pro­files be purged, that T&T groups should be blocked, per­sons should be ver­i­fied and pho­tos of par­tic­i­pants be tak­en. Venezue­lan par­tic­i­pants were warned to ‘’take care of them­selves.’’

The amount of “chat­ter” on Venezue­lan so­cial me­dia about T&T has prompt­ed cer­tain lo­cal con­cern on whether some flee­ing the Nico­las Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion may pose a threat to T&T’s safe­ty. On­ly those with­out crim­i­nal records were al­lowed un­der T&T’s amnesty. Con­cerns have al­so been raised on whether the amnesty cards can be du­pli­cat­ed. Cards car­ry spe­cial se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures.

Young didn’t re­spond to queries on the is­sue yes­ter­day.

But Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal said with lo­calised cas­es of COVID-19, there was a gen­uine con­cern that some Venezue­lans may be car­ry­ing the virus.

“We’re now in com­mu­ni­ty spread of COVID. Gov­ern­ment has failed with mar­gin­al test­ing when we’d called for wider test­ing,” he said.

Mooni­lal blamed Gov­ern­ment for the con­tin­ued in­flux of Venezue­lans.

“We’d ad­vo­cat­ed a mix­ture of po­lice, in­volv­ing po­lice and Coast Guard and in­ter­na­tion­al help, but in Par­lia­ment Young was ar­ro­gant, dis­dain­ful and dis­mis­sive.”

He said peo­ple from many ar­eas have com­plained about il­le­gal Venezue­lans.

“We alert po­lice ... Po­lice are try­ing their best but you have to pre­vent en­try via sea. The Coast Guard is Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty—they’ve failed.”

NGO con­cerned over Stu­art's com­ments

The TTV Sol­net Coali­tion for Venezuela says Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young’s call to de­nounce land­lords and peo­ple har­bour­ing il­le­gal im­mi­grants is caus­ing it deep con­cern at the pos­si­ble im­pact against all Venezue­lan im­mi­grants, es­pe­cial­ly those who have the min­istry’s T&T per­mit and Unit­ed Na­tions refugee sta­tus.

In a state­ment, the group stat­ed both are cat­e­gories are legal­ly pro­tect­ed by na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al laws that in­clude free­dom of move­ment and from dis­crim­i­na­to­ry per­se­cu­tion.

The group urged that “clar­i­fi­ca­tion or clear dis­tinc­tion on il­le­gal and le­gal” mi­grants be made to en­sure the safe­ty of all mi­grants in the T&T un­der these le­gal mi­gra­to­ry sta­tus­es.

“Cur­rent­ly, it’s es­ti­mat­ed 24,000 Venezue­lans are in T&T that are hold­ers of one or both of these mi­gra­to­ry con­di­tions, un­for­tu­nate­ly gov­ern­men­tal sources don’t count for Venezue­lans with­out a reg­u­lar sta­tus so this num­ber can be high­er,” the group said.

“We’d like to com­mend the Gov­ern­ment for tak­ing firm mea­sures to stop and com­bat il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties in­volv­ing the smug­gling and traf­fick­ing of Venezue­lans in­to T&T by lo­cal crim­i­nal gangs and crim­i­nal busi­ness­men. We praise the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 555 hot­line as an of­fi­cial re­port­ing chan­nel, to bring to jus­tice all or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als sus­pect­ed of traf­fick­ing and smug­gling of in­no­cent peo­ple. This is in­deed a step in the right di­rec­tion, which we hope con­tributes to re­duc­ing the amount of hu­man traf­fick­ing in CARI­COM.”

The group urged the UN Com­mis­sion on Refugees and oth­er agen­cies to guar­an­tee the pro­tec­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic, and be guar­an­tors for the han­dling of de­ten­tions, quar­an­tines, re­turns and pos­si­ble de­por­ta­tions of Venezue­lan mi­grants.