Joshua Seemu­n­gal

With the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­u­ing to re­ceive crit­i­cism for its de­ci­sion to de­port 16 Venezue­lan chil­dren over the week­end, some al­leged­ly with­out their par­ents, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion, say­ing the mi­grants broke laws when they en­tered T&T with­out visas or ex­emp­tions for COVID-19.

How­ev­er, he still claimed he had no ev­i­dence the al­le­ga­tions made by peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing the group were true.

“That par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent, I was not aware of it un­til I was asked to at­tend court that night, and even then, I wasn’t al­lowed to ask ques­tions. Right now, for me, a lot of that is spec­u­la­tion,” Young said at a press con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go, I as­sume, did what it was sup­posed to do in ac­cor­dance with the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the per­sons were re­turned to Venezuela.”

De­spite the con­dem­na­tion of the act from some quar­ters, Young said his un­der­stand­ing of what oc­curred was that a group of Venezue­lan na­tion­als were re-es­cort­ed across the bor­der af­ter ini­tial­ly be­ing held by po­lice and hand­ed over to Coast Guard of­fi­cials. Say­ing he un­der­stood the emo­tion sur­round­ing the sto­ry, Young in­sist­ed he had lit­tle-to-no sub­stan­tial in­for­ma­tion about those de­port­ed last week­end.

“I don’t know if it’s 14, 10, or if it’s 22. It’s on­ly what we see re­port­ed,” he said.

“I have a con­cern about all chil­dren, re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty, but it doesn’t mean you can break the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go and we should not fall in­to the trap of fa­cil­i­tat­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing.”

Any time chil­dren are brought in­to the coun­try with­out their par­ents, he said, it’s a red flag of hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Asked whether he had au­tho­rised the re­moval of the chil­dren, he claimed he did not. Young not­ed that not all il­le­gal mi­grants are re­moved through de­por­ta­tion, be­fore adding he didn’t know the process that was used in this par­tic­u­lar case.

Pressed fur­ther by re­porters, he in­sist­ed he did not have the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion but added Gov­ern­ment has a man­date to pro­tect the na­tion’s bor­ders for the ben­e­fit of its cit­i­zens.

On Mon­day, Guardian Me­dia in­ter­viewed Venezue­lan mi­grant Gre­go­ria Figuere­do, who claimed her 11-year-old daugh­ter was one of the chil­dren aboard the boat that took the mi­grants back over the week­end. Asked if he could pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion as to where the child and the group had end­ed up yes­ter­day, Young said he could not.

“As the min­is­ter, now I am be­ing asked what has hap­pened with her. Where is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of that moth­er, is that a sit­u­a­tion you should put your child in­to? That’s not for me to judge,” he said.

“I can’t even give a guar­an­tee as to who was on that ves­sel, where, any­thing like that. I was not there. I don’t know any­thing more than what I’ve seen and read,” Young said of the de­por­ta­tion ear­li­er.

The is­sue was yes­ter­day raised by head of Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion-con­trolled Na­tion­al As­sem­bly (AN) Juan Guaidó, who called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the de­por­ta­tion.

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Young al­so raised ques­tions about the in­volve­ment of some lawyers in im­mi­gra­tion mat­ters. The ques­tions were raised in the con­text of hu­man traf­fick­ing, which he ad­mit­ted was go­ing on in T&T.

Young, who said he was un­aware the mi­grants had re­turned to the coun­try yes­ter­day when asked at the press con­fer­ence, won­dered how it was pos­si­ble for cer­tain lawyers to get sub­stan­tial in­for­ma­tion about Venezue­lan mi­grants seek­ing to en­ter the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

“We have se­ri­ous ques­tions about that. How are lawyers get­ting in­struc­tions in these in­stances? Who is pro­vid­ing the in­for­ma­tion and the de­tails?” he asked.

A warn­ing was al­so sent out to Venezue­lan mi­grants reg­is­tered in the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­gramme who are mak­ing arrange­ments to bring over rel­a­tives and friends il­le­gal­ly. He said the min­istry will start in­ves­ti­gat­ing peo­ple who are do­ing so and if found guilty, their reg­is­tra­tion will be re­scind­ed and they will be de­port­ed.

“You can’t have it one way and not the oth­er. You can’t say close the bor­ders, pro­tect the bor­ders but al­low this one in, but not that one, or to choose that one. That’s not how this Gov­ern­ment op­er­ates, there’s one law for every­one,” he said.

Sorce: Guardian T&T