Trinidad PM accuses US of hypocrisy on migrant policy

(Trinidad Guardian) Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley slammed the US State De­part­ment for T&T’s rank­ing in their 2019 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port which placed the coun­try at Tier 2.

He ac­cused the US of hypocrisy, giv­en their own strug­gles with mi­grants. He was speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the last leg of phase one of the Ch­agua­nas Traf­fic Al­le­vi­a­tion Project on Fri­day.

 
“If I was mark­ing their pa­per, what would I give them? They have the same prob­lem that we have. Thou­sands of mi­grants rush­ing your bor­der want­i­ng to come in­to your coun­try be­cause they see green­er grass on your side than on their side. That is the num­ber one po­lit­i­cal is­sue in Amer­i­ca.”

Row­ley con­tin­ued, “…their own peo­ple are telling you that those peo­ple, some of them are treat­ed like dogs and cat­tle, chil­dren are dy­ing at the bor­der. Some of them are in cages. A hun­dred peo­ple in a room that was made for ten.”

He cit­ed the fact that the US is bet­ter re­sourced than T&T with a larg­er mil­i­tary and trea­sury but asks: “…how have they han­dled their sit­u­a­tion bet­ter than ours?”

Row­ley ex­plained that T&T main­tained an open bor­der with Venezuela up un­til Mon­day, al­low­ing the mi­grants to come in­to the coun­try for up to 90 days be­fore re­turn­ing to their coun­try. A new visa pol­i­cy went in­to ef­fect but the de­tails have not yet been made pub­lic.

The Prime Min­is­ter drew ref­er­ence to the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed two-week reg­is­tra­tion of the Venezue­lan mi­grants say­ing that we have treat­ed them in the best way pos­si­ble.

“A lit­tle Caribbean na­tion like Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have 15,000 Venezue­lans au­tho­rised now to be with­in our bor­ders and we treat them like hu­man be­ings with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“We get an ‘F’. Well God alone knows what we have to do to get an ‘A’. Maybe we have to put a plac­ard in the mid­dle of Cara­cas say­ing ‘Come to Trinidad, land of milk and hon­ey’,” he said in what ap­peared to be a di­rect re­sponse to an Ex­press news­pa­per re­port that this coun­try had been giv­en an ‘F’ grade on the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons re­port.

He told the mem­bers of the au­di­ence not to feel beat­en by coun­tries who grade us with an ‘F’ be­cause “we have done more than oth­er coun­tries to man­age mi­gra­tions in­to their bor­ders.”

He said that “we mark our own pa­per. This Trinidad and To­ba­go stands on its own strength, our own prin­ci­ples…”

In the re­port, the US recog­nised that there was in­creased an­ti-traf­fick­ing train­ing for its of­fi­cials with in­ves­ti­ga­tions launched against three po­ten­tial­ly com­plic­it of­fi­cials.

They al­so took note that a new in­tel­li­gence task force was start­ed to im­prove in­ves­ti­ga­tions, while a new mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing be­tween its chil­dren’s au­thor­i­ty and an an­ti-traf­fick­ing unit was put in place to bet­ter pro­tect child vic­tims.

How­ev­er, the US al­so not­ed the T&T Gov­ern­ment had not se­cured a con­vic­tion un­der its 2011 an­ti-traf­fick­ing law while con­cern over re­ports of po­ten­tial gov­ern­ment com­plic­i­ty in traf­fick­ing cas­es was met with in­suf­fi­cient gov­ern­ment at­ten­tion.

But while the Prime Min­is­ter ap­peared un­du­ly up­set at the State De­part­ment re­port, his Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young did not ap­pear to have as many con­cerns or reser­va­tions.

Young is­sued a state­ment ex­plain­ing that the an­nu­al US State De­part­ment re­port “ac­knowl­edges the var­i­ous mea­sures tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to im­prove this coun­try’s counter-traf­fick­ing ef­forts.”

This coun­try he said con­tin­ued to work “as­sid­u­ous­ly” to counter hu­man traf­fick­ing and as a re­sult of its over­all in­creas­ing ef­forts, T&T had main­tained its tier two rank­ing.

The Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port 2019, Young said, recog­nised that this coun­try had in­creased an­ti-traf­fick­ing train­ing for pub­lic of­fi­cials; ini­ti­at­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions against three po­ten­tial­ly com­plic­it of­fi­cials; ini­ti­at­ed more pros­e­cu­tions; es­tab­lished a new in­tel­li­gence task force to im­prove in­ves­ti­ga­tions; and es­tab­lished a new Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween Gov­ern­ment’s Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) and The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty to bet­ter pro­tect child vic­tims.

Young said the Min­istry was “cog­nisant of the rec­om­men­da­tions” made in the re­port spe­cif­ic to T&T with re­gard to ex­pand­ing vic­tim screen­ing and vic­tim ser­vices, in­creas­ing train­ing on traf­fick­ing for Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) and shel­ter staff, and fur­ther in­creas­ing ef­forts to in­ves­ti­gate, pros­e­cute, and con­vict traf­fick­ers, in­clud­ing com­plic­it of­fi­cials.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic who have in­for­ma­tion on sus­pect­ed hu­man traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ty should con­tact the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) toll-free hot­line at 800-4288 (4CTU).