RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Ten Venezue­lan women who have been de­tained at the He­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas for more than two months are plead­ing to be re­leased so they can take care of their chil­dren, some of whom are sick.

In a video re­leased ear­li­er this week, the women claimed they were promised they would be re­leased on Au­gust 12. They said they do not know whether they will be re­leased or repa­tri­at­ed to Venezuela.

“Mr Min­is­ter, Em­bassy and Im­mi­gra­tion, how long will you have us here?” one of the women asks in the video.

“We want our case re­solved. You ei­ther send us home to our chil­dren, or you send us to Venezuela. Our chil­dren are suf­fer­ing with­out their moth­ers. We do not have a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive re­ply from the au­thor­i­ties.”

An­oth­er woman begged for com­pas­sion: “I got a call to­day on­ly to find out that my nine-month-old son is sick, he has bron­chi­tis. Please get me out of here. Please, my son is sick.”

Mi­grant ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon said it was “ab­solute­ly ap­palling that ten moth­ers are still in the He­li­port af­ter two months. They have not been de­port­ed, they have not been re­leased to their homes in Trinidad, they have not been repa­tri­at­ed, they have not been told what is go­ing to hap­pen to them.”

She added: “Chil­dren are sup­posed to be with their moth­ers. Even in a di­vorce, chil­dren are with their moth­ers, un­less the moth­er is a dan­ger to the child, but, in this case, I re­al­ly don’t know what is go­ing on. I find it is a very large breach of hu­man rights of those women.”

Figueroa-Leon de­scribed con­di­tions at the He­li­port as in­hu­mane. She al­so ex­pressed con­cern for the wel­fare of the chil­dren.

“I as­sure you, be­cause I work with ther­a­pists and with chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties, those chil­dren at this point in time are go­ing to need ther­a­py be­cause of the trau­ma caused by sep­a­rat­ing them from their moth­ers,” she said.