ATTORNEYS representing a Nigerian national kept at the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in Aripo for the last four years, rushed to court on Saturday evening to get an order stopping his deportation. An injunction was granted by Justice Jacqueline Wilson just before 10 pm, hours before the 3 am scheduled deportation of Onekachi Eke Aka Emmanuel, 37, who came to Trinidad on September 3, 2012 to visit friends.
He was represented by attorneys from Regus Chambers, which included Criston J Williams and Shirvani Ramkissoon. When Emmanuel first arrived in Trinidad he was granted a three-month stay and before the expiration of the entry visa, he applied for and received approval to stay an additional three weeks. According to his lawsuit, in December of 2012, he lost his passport which was found and returned to him the next month.
During that time, however, he was detained by Immigration but later released, placed on an order of supervision and given an opportunity to purchase a ticket to return to Nigeria. In September of that year, one year after he arrived in Trinidad, Emmanuel married his girlfriend Christella La Fortune. He went to the Immigration Unit at the Ministry of National Security and explained to them he could not afford to buy a ticket back to Nigeria.
He was told he could opt to go to any other country but had to leave Trinidad. Emmanuel said he was issued a re-entry visa for $300 and left Trinidad for Grenada on October 13, 2013, on a voluntary departure order. He re-entered the country and was arrest by immigration officers at the Piarco International Airport.
“Immigration Officials concluded that as a result of my wife not arriving in time, my marriage was not genuine.
I was arrested on the grounds that further investigation needed to be done around the validity of my marriage,” he said. He also said his wife was called and threatened with jail for life if she did not show up at the airport. “Due to the life threatening pressure put on her by the Immigration Officials, my wife stayed away from the airport. “
He was detained at the Immigration Detention Centre and was ordered to be deported after a special inquiry was held. “At the Immigration Centre, I have had no access to phone calls both locally and to my family back home. The living conditions are extremely poor. I experience very horrible, poor and inhumane conditions in the Immigration Detention Centre.”
Emmanuel said he has also been taken to the prison facility in Santa Rosa where he has been kept in a container, fed jail food and live in the same condition as other inmates incarcerated for violent crimes.
“I have been detained for approximately four years and six months and five days in these horrible and squalid conditions. I am depressed and desperate for help.
“I miss my friends and family. I am denied my constitutional right to freedom. I have no family ties in my home country.
“I was building a family and life in Trinidad and the actions of the Immigration Authorities have taken that away from me. I do not know how much more I can take.”
He is challenging his illegal detention and is seeking a declaration that his continued detention after the expiration of the sixth month from the date of his detention order, on October 18, 2013, is unconstitutional. Emmanuel also intends to challenge his deportation and this country’s treatment of him at the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.