Trinidad PM accuses US of hypocrisy on migrant policy

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley delivers the feature address during the opening ceremony of the Chaguanas Traffic Alleviation Project, on Friday.

(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).