(Barbados Nation) A Bridgetown magistrate has thrown his support behind immigration officers who attend court, saying lurid stories about treatment by officers of Guyanese do not apply to them.

Magistrate Christopher Birch made the comments as he dealt with an out-of-status non-national in the Bridge-town Traffic Court on Friday.

“There have been many stories appearing about immigration officers in the press recently,” the magistrate said.
“But I can speak for these immigration officers in court. These immigration officers have taken people to the bank, allowed them to close out their accounts, and allowed them to pack their bags,” the magistrate said.
He was speaking after attorney Desmond Sands asked the court to allow Guyanese Haslyn Harlynton Haynes to buy his ticket back to Guyana.

Haynes, 34, of Mount Friendship, St Barnabas, St Michael, was charged with assaulting Paulette Ingleton, occasioning her actual bodily harm on Wednesday. He appeared on Thursday and was remanded until Friday when Ingleton told the court that in the wake of making a report to police she no longer wanted to give any evidence against Haynes.

Sands then admitted that since Haynes was an illegal immigrant, “the only option is for him to go home.”
“I’m asking the court that Immigration allows him to purchase his own ticket,” Sands added.

Magistrate Birch noted that was his usual stance when he ordered that an illegal immigrant be put out of the island.
He dismissed the assault charge and turned Haynes over to immigration officials “for appropriate action.”

On Thursday, an immigration officer told the court that Haynes, a Guyanese, arrived here in 2008 and was granted temporary status.

When that status expired, said the immigration officer, Haynes did nothing to regularise it, so he no longer had any legal status here.