Venezuelans claim Trinidad Immigration officers in racket

(Trinidad Guardian) Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is chal­leng­ing ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­les and oth­er Venezue­lan na­tion­als to bring ev­i­dence they have against Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers they al­lege are tak­ing bribes from Venezue­lan na­tion­als seek­ing to gain en­try in­to T&T and to stay here af­ter their time has elapsed.

Young made the call yes­ter­day, hours af­ter Gon­za­les made the claim on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew and some of her com­pa­tri­ots backed up the al­le­ga­tion.

“A par­tic­u­lar per­son of Venezue­lan her­itage…let’s call her that…was mak­ing a whole host of al­le­ga­tions…I am call­ing on Ms Gon­za­les, if she has ev­i­dence of any of those ac­tiv­i­ties, to come for­ward to the TTPS and give the in­for­ma­tion to them,” Young said af­ter at­tend­ing a pass­ing out pa­rade for po­lice of­fi­cers at the St James Train­ing Acad­e­my.

He added that the po­lice would bear the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of in­ves­ti­gat­ing if there are any al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Young al­so clar­i­fied one of the things he said in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, say­ing while he knows al­le­ga­tions of in­tim­i­da­tion of Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers are be­ing made against Venezue­lan na­tion­als, there were al­so T&T na­tion­als who were do­ing so as well.

“We are work­ing with the TTPS to hold these per­sons,” Young said.

The is­sue arose af­ter Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers claimed they were in­tim­i­dat­ed by rel­a­tives of a group of Venezue­lan na­tion­als who were re­fused en­try in­to the coun­try af­ter ar­riv­ing on a flight from Venezuela last week. Young ad­dressed the mat­ter in the Sen­ate on Tues­day and said po­lice would now set up sting op­er­a­tions at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and oth­er ports of en­try to ar­rest any in­di­vid­u­als who may en­gage in this ac­tiv­i­ty.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Venezue­lan na­tion­als liv­ing in T&T, Gon­za­les among them, scoffed at the claims.

“That is (a) big joke. Every­body laugh­ing at the state­ment that the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (made) and he has to be very care­ful about,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les said con­trary to what Young was say­ing, she felt it was the oth­er way around as many Venezue­lans felt they were be­ing vic­timised and ex­ploit­ed by the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers, with many who were al­ready here forced to make pay­ments to stay in the coun­try.

“It is the Im­mi­gra­tion (of­fi­cer) who has a lot of the pow­er. They are the ones who are de­port­ing them and per­se­cut­ing them and ask­ing them for mon­ey from peo­ple who don’t even have mon­ey and they say they are il­le­gal. A lot of com­pli­cat­ed things, a lot of neg­a­tive things go­ing on with the Venezue­lans here, who look­ing for­ward for a safe place or some­thing like that and the im­mi­gra­tion just tak­ing ad­van­tage of that,” Gon­za­lez said.

Gon­za­lez said she be­lieved it was more like­ly that per­sons who were in­volved in bring­ing Venezue­lans and oth­er na­tion­als in­to the coun­try il­le­gal­ly were the ones threat­en­ing Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers.

“The per­sons who bring peo­ple here and do­ing all sorts of thing to Venezue­lans, they are prob­a­bly the ones do­ing that to Im­mi­gra­tion, not the Venezue­lans. The Venezue­lans don’t have any­body here, they don’t speak the lan­guage,” said Gon­za­lez.

“The Im­mi­gra­tion seem to have more pow­er than the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

Venezue­lan refugee and hu­man rights lawyer Kar­la Hen­riquez al­so said there were nu­mer­ous in­stances of Venezue­lans and oth­er refugees be­ing asked to pay im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers se­cu­ri­ty bonds for their con­tin­ued stay in this coun­try. In­ter­est­ing­ly, the cost of the se­cu­ri­ty bond would vary based on the na­tion­al­i­ty of the asy­lum seek­er, she said.

“When your time is up, you get a bond to ap­ply to stay and then the Im­mi­gra­tion tell you you’re gonna get back the mon­ey when you leave,” said Hen­riquez via a trans­la­tor.

“Colom­bians, Cubans and oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties pay a dif­fer­ent amount.”

She said the price was al­so in­creased based on if the asy­lum seek­ers came in us­ing le­gal pa­pers or not.

“If you have le­gal pa­pers and you ask for the bond it’s $2,100, but if you came via an il­le­gal act it’s more mon­ey that you have to pay,” Hen­riquez said.

Guardian Me­dia re­ceived pho­tographs of the bonds, stamped by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials, in­di­cat­ing the var­i­ous forms of pay­ment. How­ev­er, Hen­riquez said these pay­ments should not be le­gal based on treaties Trinidad and To­ba­go had signed with the Unit­ed Na­tions.

In Jan­u­ary, sev­er­al refugees protest­ing out­side the Par­lia­ment al­so claimed Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers were ask­ing them for mon­ey in or­der for them to see their fam­i­lies at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre. When Guardian Me­dia asked about that prac­tice then, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials de­nied there was any such prac­tice.