The UN­HCR has ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure the pro­tec­tion of Venezue­lan mi­grants in this coun­try and has called for them not to be forcibly re­turned to their home­land, from which they fled.

The state­ment from the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees came af­ter a group of mi­grants protest­ed yes­ter­day out­side the UN­HCR’s Build­ing at Princes Court in Port-of-Spain, over what they claimed was the agency’s si­lence and fail­ure to stand up for refugees and asy­lum seek­ers in T&T.

It was on­ly on Thurs­day that High Court Judge Prakash Moo­sai grant­ed a stay of ex­e­cu­tion of the or­der of Jus­tice Ricky Rahim, de­liv­ered on Tues­day, that no longer re­strains Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds from de­port­ing 64 Venezue­lan mi­grants—some of whom cur­rent­ly re­main de­tained at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port.

On Tues­day, Jus­tice Rahim had or­dered the group of mi­grants be re­leased on or­ders of su­per­vi­sion and ef­fec­tive­ly barred their im­me­di­ate de­por­ta­tion, pend­ing the out­come of the mi­grants’ ju­di­cial re­view hear­ing.

Some mi­grants were re­leased mere hours af­ter that rul­ing was hand­ed down. How­ev­er, the re­lease of the re­main­ing mi­grants on Wednes­day morn­ing was halt­ed due to the State’s ap­peal.

This prompt­ed tears from rel­a­tives, ac­tivists and the mi­grants them­selves, who begged the Gov­ern­ment for le­nien­cy.

But yes­ter­day, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the protest out­side its doors, the UN­HCR’s se­nior re­port­ing as­so­ciate Kali­fa Clyne said the

“UN­HCR is very con­cerned about the im­pli­ca­tions of the 10 Au­gust Court of Ap­peal rul­ing for all asy­lum-seek­ers and refugees in Trinidad and To­ba­go and ap­peals to the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure their pro­tec­tion from forced re­turn.”

Clyne not­ed that the “UN­HCR con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate for the right to in­ter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion for refugees and asy­lum-seek­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go and main­tains its com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a na­tion­al asy­lum sys­tem, which cur­rent­ly does not ex­ist un­der do­mes­tic leg­is­la­tion.”

Venezue­lan mi­grant Yilleimis Ri­vaswe, who was part of the protest, said, “We want to know what hap­pen to the peo­ple that they held in the He­li­port be­cause they hu­man. They don’t have wa­ter and things like food and if we bring some­thing for my fam­i­ly they not give them.”

San­dra Perez, who holds dual cit­i­zen­ship—Trinida­di­an and Venezue­lan—called for com­pas­sion, as she said many of the mi­grants de­tained had chil­dren and el­der­ly rel­a­tives in this coun­try.

“They are not giv­ing us an­swers. We are com­ing over here to get an­swers for the prob­lem ... they want to know the an­swers to tell the peo­ple,” she said.

On the week­end of Ju­ly 9, close to 200 mi­grants were de­tained by law en­force­ment of­fi­cials at St James bar and tak­en to the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port, where they were de­tained.