Tears of joy flowed out­side the He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas late yes­ter­day evening, as some of the de­tained Venezue­lan mi­grants were re­leased fol­low­ing the High Court or­der hand­ed down by Jus­tice Ricky Rahim.

Rel­a­tives of the mi­grants be­gan gath­er­ing out­side the He­li­port from just af­ter 4 pm in the hope of see­ing their loved ones walk out to their free­dom.

First, there was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing news for them, as they were ini­tial­ly told that Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers would not be able to process the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments un­til to­day. How­ev­er, with the pres­ence of at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed and ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­lez, news came that some mi­grants would be al­lowed to leave the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, since a team of Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers was in­struct­ed to go to the He­li­port to process the doc­u­ments.

At about 5.58 pm, the first group of Venezue­lan mi­grants was seen emerg­ing from the de­ten­tion cen­tre. The rel­a­tives who were anx­ious­ly wait­ing shout­ed for joy at their first glimpse of them, as they held their be­long­ings walk­ing quick­ly to the main gate where they ex­it­ed the com­pound. In their hands were their re­spec­tive forms “Or­der of Su­per­vi­sion.”

Short­ly be­fore 7 pm, three groups were al­lowed to leave, to­talling about on­ly 30 of the 64 mi­grants or­dered re­leased.

At­tor­ney Mo­hammed called on the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, who she said has the pow­er to or­der the re­lease of all the mi­grants who are de­tained at the He­li­port and not on­ly the ones who were rep­re­sent­ed in the High Court pro­ceed­ings, to do so im­me­di­ate­ly.

Mo­hammed ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in Hinds’ han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion from its in­cep­tion.

“It did not have to reach so far as to High Court pro­ceed­ings. Where is the leg­is­la­tion to back the UN Con­ven­tion to pro­tect these peo­ple who are refugees and asy­lum seek­ers? These peo­ple are hu­mans, they have their chil­dren and loved ones here.”

Venezue­lan Fre­di­an­nys Sanchez was seen in tears as she left the cen­tre and crossed the road to meet her four small chil­dren. She hugged them and thanked God for be­ing able to be freed

On spot­ting her boyfriend, Jo­han­na Gon­za­lez ran across the main road, jumped on Luis Jose Ramos and over­whelmed him with kiss­es.

“I am so hap­py that Luis is al­lowed to be free with me and his fam­i­ly. It was a night­mare in there for them and now he is able to re­turn home and eat good food,” Gon­za­lez said.

Maiveilin Car­reno was al­so ex­cit­ed to be re­unit­ed with her moth­er Reina Mon­tano.

“I missed my moth­er so much. She did no wrong and had to be in­side there in bad con­di­tions. I am glad to see her walk out the gate,” Car­reno said.

How­ev­er, there was not good news for some wait­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers.

One rel­a­tive, who was seen stand­ing all alone when ap­proached, said he was very sad, as his fam­i­ly mem­ber had not been re­leased.

“Don’t know what hap­pened but my fa­mil­ia did not come out. Maybe to­mor­row I don’t know but I want to know why. They not crim­i­nals.”

The mi­grants were de­tained on Ju­ly 19 while at­tend­ing a par­ty at a bar in St James. Ini­tial­ly, there were 143 of them but 20 of them were re­leased with­in a week be­fore yes­ter­day’s court or­der.