Gail Alexan­der

Talk to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

That’s the di­rec­tion from the US Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go on re­ports that US Sen­a­tor Bob Menen­dez said he has con­firmed in­for­ma­tion that the US did “stealth de­por­ta­tions” of Venezue­lans through this coun­try ear­li­er this year.

In re­sponse to queries from the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, the em­bassy’s Pub­lic Af­fairs di­vi­sion replied, “We are aware of the re­ports sug­gest­ing that US de­por­ta­tions to Venezuela may have con­tin­ued via third coun­tries this year. We re­fer you to the US De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (DHS) for any ques­tions con­cern­ing de­por­ta­tions.”

This af­ter Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on Sun­day dis­missed the “stealth de­por­ta­tion” claims by Menen­dez.

Menedez last week said he’d writ­ten to US Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, Trans­port Sec­re­tary Elaine Chao and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty seek­ing more in­for­ma­tion on the is­sue. This af­ter Menen­dez said he re­ceived re­cent writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion from the State De­part­ment that the US de­port­ed Venezue­lans through T&T over Jan­u­ary to March. He said the new doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to his of­fice con­firmed US de­por­ta­tions to Venezuela con­tin­ued via third coun­tries at least un­til March 2020.

Menen­dez said the de­por­ta­tions ap­peared to vi­o­late a 2019 US trav­el ban pro­hibit­ing air trav­el to Venezuela. He ac­cused the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of “sur­rep­ti­tious­ly de­port­ing Venezue­lans through third coun­tries,” though US law pro­hibits forced repa­tri­a­tion of refugees to places where their lives or free­dom could be threat­ened.

But T&T’s Young said as far as he was aware, “there’s no truth to the al­le­ga­tions that the US de­port­ed Venezue­lans through T&T.”

Young said T&T nev­er agreed to any such op­er­a­tion and he’d con­firmed with Im­mi­gra­tion “that we have no knowl­edge of any such in­ci­dent.”

On Menen­dez’s claim that the State De­part­ment had con­firmed de­por­ta­tions oc­curred via T&T, Young said the sit­u­a­tion would have to have the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proval and it did not.

“Nei­ther Im­mi­gra­tion nor me are aware of any such in­ci­dent,” he added.

Yes­ter­day, UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal called for a probe of the sit­u­a­tion and Young’s state­ments, which he not­ed made it clear Young “wasn’t aware.”

“It’s a shame and dis­grace we in T&T must learn of de­por­tee is­sues from a Wash­ing­ton law­mak­er while the Row­ley/Young Gov­ern­ment are un­aware T&T may have been used as a tran­ship­ment point to tran­sit de­por­tees. We need a probe of the min­is­ter’s state­ment, as he seems un­able to pro­tect T&T’s bor­ders from in­com­ing or out­go­ing il­le­gal mi­grants,” Mooni­lal said.

Mooni­lal al­so called on the Prime Min­is­ter to en­sure that to­day’s in­spec­tion vis­it by a T&T team of the dam­aged Venezue­lan oil tanker Nabari­ma does a com­plete risk as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion. He said T&T must al­so have a cross-func­tion­al in­ter­na­tion­al team to pro­duce so­lu­tions to pos­si­ble en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters.