Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A bill for Trinidad and To­ba­go to work with the Unit­ed States for more ef­fec­tive bor­der se­cu­ri­ty is ex­pect­ed to be pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

The bill is ex­pect­ed to be­come one of the ma­jor tools, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing transna­tion­al crime, ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives leader Bar­ry Padarath.

Padarath in­di­cat­ed this at last week’s Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing af­ter be­ing asked about the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent an­nounce­ment about work­ing with the US to roll out bor­der se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

He said the House will meet on Fri­day on the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion for this.

“That bill will bring in­to ef­fect a greater de­gree of bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and man­age­ment for T&T. We’ve of­ten spo­ken about T&T’s porous bor­ders and the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion, or lack there­of, with oth­er coun­tries. This (bill) will now be one of the ma­jor tools in our ar­se­nal, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to transna­tion­al crime.”

Padarath said the Min­is­ters of For­eign Af­fairs (Sean Sobers), De­fence (Wayne Sturge) and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (Roger Alexan­der) are ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in de­bate on the bill, and this will de­tail what the ex­pect­ed ben­e­fits are.

“You’ve seen it work in so many oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions. T&T is a bit on the back foot—not out of this Gov­ern­ment’s do­ing—but this is an is­sue we’ve been rais­ing for quite a while when we served in Op­po­si­tion. There­fore, I think this is one of those tools we can utilise in the fight against crime in a more force­ful way, par­tic­u­lar­ly the is­sue of transna­tion­al crime, in terms of our part­ner­ship with sev­er­al oth­er na­tions, in­clu­sive of the US and UK, where the fo­cus has been on for quite a while,” he added.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment on this bill yes­ter­day, Padarath, Alexan­der, Sobers and Sturge did not re­spond.

Data­base to track cul­prits trav­el­ling

Gov­ern­ment le­gal sources stat­ed that the bill is the Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion (API) and Pas­sen­ger Name Record (PNR) bill 2026.

The bill’s ex­plana­to­ry notes states its key ef­fect is the de­vel­op­ment of data­bas­es and process­es which will aid in track­ing the move­ment of high-risk in­di­vid­u­als to de­tect po­ten­tial threats and to curb crime and ter­ror­ism.

The notes stat­ed that such sys­tems have been im­ple­ment­ed in avi­a­tion and mar­itime sys­tems world­wide as a mech­a­nism to fa­cil­i­tate ef­fec­tive bor­der con­trol and to in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy of bor­der man­age­ment of­fi­cers.

The bill has 46 claus­es.

It will re­peal the Im­mi­gra­tion (Ad­vanced Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion) Act) and es­tab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive frame­work for the col­lec­tion, stor­age, reg­u­la­tion, shar­ing and trans­mis­sion of ad­vance pas­sen­ger in­for­ma­tion - stream­lin­ing da­ta col­lec­tion.

The Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer will be in charge of es­tab­lish­ing a frame­work for the pro­cess­ing of the da­ta and the shar­ing of this in­for­ma­tion with ex­ter­nal au­thor­i­ties from oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

Padarath and the oth­er Min­is­ters didn’t re­ply on whether such ju­ris­dic­tions in­clude the US.

The bill will al­so ex­pand the scope of the per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of pas­sen­gers and crew mem­bers that is col­lect­ed, processed and stored; and will op­er­a­tionalise the Cari­com Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (APIS).

The APIS be­came ef­fec­tive in Feb­ru­ary 2007 in 12 Cari­com states. T&T is not among them.

Un­der APIS, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al air­craft and ves­sels are re­quired to sub­mit Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion pri­or to ar­rival in and up­on de­par­ture from any of the 12 Cari­com States.

The bill will in­tro­duce a Per­son­al In­for­ma­tion Unit (PIU) op­er­at­ing 24 hours un­der the Im­mi­gra­tion de­part­ment.

This will re­ceive, store, process, analyse and man­age API and PNR da­ta for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.

Risk as­sess­ments and da­ta analy­sis by PIU will be sub­mit­ted to law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties.

A Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Of­fi­cer will be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent. The bill has been de­scribed as es­tab­lish­ing more safe­guards “to pro­tect the pri­va­cy rights of in­di­vid­u­als and their sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion.”

It is pro­posed that the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer (CIO) will co­or­di­nate with na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, in­clud­ing Cari­com’s Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS), to process risk alerts, de­ter­mine ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty in­to T&T, fa­cil­i­tate pas­sen­ger ac­cess to their per­son­al da­ta where ap­pro­pri­ate and take en­force­ment or bor­der se­cu­ri­ty ac­tions when nec­es­sary.

The bill al­so al­lows the CIO to with­hold de­par­ture clear­ance where re­quired da­ta has not been sub­mit­ted and to mon­i­tor the ac­cu­ra­cy and qual­i­ty of da­ta trans­mis­sions.

Op­po­si­tion PNM front­lin­ers couldn’t com­ment on the bill.

How­ev­er, some cit­i­zens have queried what con­di­tions, if any, the US might re­quest of T&T in ex­change for any as­sis­tance on the bor­der or oth­er se­cu­ri­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s queries on the lat­est that T&T may be ob­tain­ing in terms of as­sis­tance af­ter its re­cent­ly ce­ment­ed Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion part­ner­ship, and if the up­com­ing bill is part of the AC­CC out­come, and what else may be in the works for T&T from the US.

OTH­ER CLAUS­ES IN­CLUDE

• Pas­sen­gers and crew ar­riv­ing in­to, de­part­ing from or tran­sit­ing through T&T or trav­el­ling with­in Cari­com may be screened against ap­proved Watch Lists and na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al data­bas­es ap­proved by the Min­is­ter.

• In­for­ma­tion may be shared with IN­TER­POL and oth­er au­tho­rised in­tel­li­gence or law en­force­ment agen­cies in the in­ter­est of main­tain­ing na­tion­al, re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, da­ta use is lim­it­ed to the pur­pos­es of the Act and for na­tion­al sta­tis­tics

• API and PNR da­ta may be processed by the Unit (PIU) to as­sess risk and iden­ti­fy pas­sen­gers or crew po­ten­tial­ly in­volved in ter­ror­ist of­fences or se­ri­ous crimes; to re­spond to re­quests from com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ties or gov­ern­ment agen­cies for spe­cif­ic cas­es; and analyse da­ta to de­vel­op or up­date cri­te­ria for these risk as­sess­ments.

• Cre­at­ing an of­fence for a cap­tain, mas­ter, agent, pas­sen­ger or crew of an air­craft to refuse to pro­vide an­swers or know­ing­ly give false an­swers to ques­tions posed by the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer (CIO). A per­son who com­mits this of­fence is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $35,000 in the first in­stance, and up­on the com­mis­sion of a sec­ond or sub­se­quent of­fence to a fine of $140,000 and six months’ jail.

• The Min­is­ter can waive the re­quire­ment of mas­ters, cap­tains or agents of an air­craft or ves­sel to pro­vide de­tails of the flight or voy­age, re­spec­tive­ly, where such flight or voy­age is for mil­i­tary or law en­force­ment pur­pos­es, of­fi­cial Gov­ern­ment busi­ness or the busi­ness of a hu­man­i­tar­i­an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

• The CIO can share PNR da­ta with a Par­tic­i­pat­ing State’s com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ty for law­ful pur­pos­es such as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, pub­lic safe­ty, im­mi­gra­tion con­trol and com­bat­ing ter­ror­ist of­fences or se­ri­ous crimes- but must on­ly trans­fer da­ta when there is a law­ful ba­sis, demon­strat­ed ne­ces­si­ty, and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty.

T&T joins Caribbean part­ners in US-led mil­i­tary drill

Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions per­son­nel re­cent­ly con­clud­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion in “Ex­er­cise Trop­i­cal Dag­ger X111” in­volv­ing troops from oth­er re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries.

The event was co-host­ed by the US Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Com­mand (South), Ja­maican De­fence Force and Cana­di­an Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Com­mand Forces.

The co­or­di­nat­ed mil­i­tary train­ing ex­er­cise was done from Jan­u­ary 30 to March 7 in Ja­maica, ac­cord­ing to the US Pub­lic Af­fairs Di­vi­sion at US South­com in Do­ral, Flori­da.

The di­vi­sion said it was the 13th ex­er­cise in the an­nu­al event con­duct­ed by the US since its in­cep­tion in 2012.

“Ex­er­cise Trop­i­cal Dag­ger has strength­ened in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty, en­hanced re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty co-op­er­a­tions and en­abled Caribbean part­ners to de­vel­op the ca­pa­bil­i­ties nec­es­sary to pre­vent and re­spond to transna­tion­al crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.”

This year’s multi­na­tion­al train­ing ex­er­cise brought to­geth­er mil­i­tary per­son­nel from Ja­maica, T&T, US, Cana­da, Bar­ba­dos, the Ba­hamas, Be­lize and Guyana.

In the ex­er­cise, troops were in­sert­ed in­to Ja­maican ter­rain by foot pa­trol and he­li­copters, con­verg­ing on planned ob­jec­tives “with speed and pre­ci­sion” ac­cord­ing to the US in­for­ma­tion.