Ja­maican na­tion­al who was detained after being re­fused en­try has escaped from Trinidad airport

(Trinidad Guardian) A Ja­maican na­tion­al who was re­fused en­try in­to Trinidad on Fri­day night and was de­tained by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers lat­er es­caped from the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Sources told the Sun­day Guardian that the Ja­maican man in his ear­ly 20s had ar­rived in Trinidad aboard a Caribbean Air­lines flight from Kingston, Ja­maica, on Fri­day night.

The man who has sev­er­al pend­ing drug-re­lat­ed mat­ters in Ja­maica had at­tempt­ed to en­ter Trinidad three times be­fore, but was stopped and placed on a flight back to Ja­maica.

Sources said the man—who once lived here and has chil­dren re­sid­ing here—again tried to reen­ter the coun­try.

Sun­day Guardian was in­formed that the man was stopped by im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties and lat­er placed in an im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion hold­ing room at the air­port. “They were plan­ning to send him back on a Sat­ur­day flight to Kingston,” a source ex­plained.

How­ev­er, when im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers went to check on the man around 3:30 am on Sat­ur­day, he could not be found.

The of­fi­cers lat­er dis­cov­ered that the man had re­moved a ceil­ing tile in the roof of the room and climbed in­side the area.

Sources said they be­lieve the man crawled through the air ducts and was able to gain ac­cess to a pub­lic area where he lat­er jumped down and es­caped from the air­port.

Im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties swept the air­port for sev­er­al hours look­ing for the run­away sus­pect but he could not be found.

A few months ago a Pak­istani na­tion­al who had been re­fused en­try in­to this coun­try had at­tempt­ed to run pass im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers to meet his lawyer out­side the air­port. His dash was cap­tured on the air­port’s CCTV cam­eras and he was held mo­ments lat­er.

AATT re­sponds

The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) in a stat­ment last night con­firmed that the Ja­maican na­tion­al had es­caped from Im­mi­gra­tion and air­line se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials and left the air­port.

The au­thor­i­ty ad­vis­es that by law, peo­ple who were re­fused en­try by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion be­come the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the air­line. The AATT said that it was not in a po­si­tion to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures be­ing put in place to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of this sit­u­a­tion.

The au­thor­i­ty said such ques­tions could be di­rect­ed to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion or the air­line’s se­cu­ri­ty.

The mat­ter was re­port­ed to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and is cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.