TWO Dominican Republic nationals who, after they were discharged of gun related charges, and were kept detained for one day by the Immigration Department before they were subsequently deported, have each been awarded $7,000 in compensation.
In a High Court ruling, Justice Margaret Mohammed ruled in favour of a constitutional claim filed by Francisco Javier Polanco Valerio and Johan Rodolfo Custodio Santana. The judge ruled
the Immigration Division’s application of section 9(4) ( c) of the Immigration Act was unconstitutional since the two men were arrested and detained because they allegedly ceased to be permitted entrants to this country.
However, there was no evidence that the Minister of National Security, in accordance with that section of the act, had lost their status as permitted entrants to this country.
She said the Immigration Division acted unconstitutionally in its application of section 9(4)(c) when they arrested the two men.
They claimed that they had been retried by the Immigration Division for offences which a criminal court had dismissed.
Their lawyer, Matthew Gayle, also argued that the Immigration Division’s application of section 9(4) 9( c) of the Immigration Act to the two was unconstitutional since they were on a supervision order and had not been convicted of any criminal offence.
“In my opinion, a literal interpretation of section 9(4) (c) includes a person who has
been convicted of an offence for a period of less than one year; a person who is on remand awaiting trial; or a person who may be detained at an institution such as the Youth Training Centre (YTC) or the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital.
“Therefore, section 9(4) (c) permits the minister to make the declaration under this provision
even where the person is awaiting trial and he is presumed to be innocent. As pre-existing
law, this provision is also validated by the section 6 of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago Act. “However, all this in my opinion is academic since there was no evidence of a declaration from the minister which stated that the claimants had ceased to be permitted entrants when they were arrested.”
Valerio and Santana legally entered this country on January 8, 2016, and were allowed to remain until March 8, of that year. During that time, on February 14, they married Trinidadian women they met online.
The two were both arrested on March 3, 2017, on gun charges, which were dismissed one month later in the Siparia Magistrates Court. They said they were willing to leave the country immediately and felt aggrieved that, through no fault of their own, they were forced to stay and were being penalised for doing so.
The Immigration Department argued that they were arrested and detained because they ceased to be entrants as they had become an inmate of a prison.”