OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of the Venezue­lan mi­grants de­tained at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port are de­mand­ing that the Gov­ern­ment take im­me­di­ate steps to show com­pas­sion to­wards them.

Armed with refugee peace flags, the rel­a­tives showed strong sup­port for their loved ones out­side their at­tor­neys’ Keate Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice, on Fi­day.

Just over 20 of them pas­sion­ate­ly called on Gov­ern­ment to demon­strate com­pas­sion as the court heard sub­mis­sions re­gard­ing an in­junc­tion by at­tor­neys for 64 mi­grants de­tained since Ju­ly 9.

The in­junc­tion was heard be­fore Jus­tice Ricky Rahim, who re­served judg­ment to next week.

At­tor­ney Blaine So­brien pro­vid­ed an up­date to the mi­grants’ rel­a­tives on the sit­u­a­tion.

“We are seek­ing leave to re­view the de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue de­tain­ing the mi­grants pend­ing their ap­pli­ca­tions for UN­HCR sta­tus. The court has heard us and the re­spon­dent, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Jus­tice Rahim will ren­der his de­ci­sion on Tues­day. In the mean­time, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has un­der­tak­en not to de­port any of the mi­grants at the He­li­port un­til that de­ci­sion is ren­dered,” So­brien said.

He said de­spite what has been tak­ing place on the le­gal end, at­tor­neys are con­cerned about what has been oc­cur­ring the He­li­port.

“In the in­ter­im, how­ev­er, we re­main con­cerned about the in­hu­mane and dan­ger­ous con­di­tions at the He­li­port that we have in­for­ma­tion to sus­pect. Fur­ther­more, we have no in­for­ma­tion or ev­i­dence from any third par­ty to sug­gest that these con­di­tions are hu­mane. There is no in­de­pen­dent over­sight,” So­brien said.

On Ju­ly 9, of­fi­cers from sev­er­al arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty raid­ed Apex Bar in St James, re­sult­ing in the de­ten­tion of 193 Venezue­lan mi­grants. Since then, over 50 have been re­leased and some of the re­main­ing mi­grants were giv­en de­por­ta­tion or­ders from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed, who is rep­re­sent­ing one of the mi­grants, em­pha­sised that the is­sue goes be­yond the courts.

“We must re­mem­ber that these are hu­man be­ings. When we see these women and young per­sons in­volved, it be­comes a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. We can on­ly hope and pray that our coun­try con­tin­ues to work to­wards the req­ui­site sys­tems and ca­pac­i­ty to help treat these mi­grants,” she stat­ed.

Mo­hammed said they are all hop­ing for a pos­i­tive end to the sit­u­a­tion for all con­cerned.

“We have faith in our ju­di­cial sys­tem and hope and pray that jus­tice will pre­vail. These peo­ple are be­ing de­tained at the He­li­port un­der ques­tion­able con­di­tions, and we hope for a pos­i­tive out­come. Law en­force­ment and hu­man rights con­sid­er­a­tions need to be bal­anced in the best in­ter­est of all,” she added.