Request to CIO Downes re abuses against Time Kings
Dear Mr. Downes
On behalf of the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad & Tobago I write to you on a matter of immediate and urgent humanitarian concern. Ongoing actions by a few of the officers within the Immigration Department in relation to Nigerian national, Mr. Time Okeodo Kings, amount, in our considered opinion, to cruel and unusual punishment and give the distinct impression of a vendetta against the individual and his family – a wife who is a national of Trinidad and Tobago and four young children. After prolonged efforts to have Mr. Kings released from detention as an undocumented immigrant, he and his family, from the very day of that release, have been forced to live in constant fear and anxiety about his re-arrest, detention and deportation.
Mr. Kings was released on July 14th 2014 on the orders of the Minister in the Ministry of National Security, Senator, the Honourable Embau Moheni, after one year and five months of incarceration at the Immigration Detention Centre. The order for the release of Mr. Kings was given by the Minister on May 9th, 2014 and copied to attorney Mr. Peter A.C. Taylor who shared it with Mr. Kings’ wife. For the sake of brevity I will not reiterate the obstacles placed in the way of his wife for over two months in her efforts to receive forms which would allow her to process a bond for his release and subsequently to stamp the bond, as required by the regulations, and release her husband. However I must record that there were a few officers who took an apparent delight in putting the maximum psychological pressure and further impoverishing the unemployed mother of four by denying her the services which she needed time after time, torturously misleading her and sending her back and forth between different Immigration offices.
Mr. Kings wife became seriously ill during this period and suffered severe headaches due to anxieties about her husband’s release which was being constantly thwarted, the need to be seeking money to make the fruitless trips to Port of Spain and San Fernando and diverting scarce financial resources from basic necessities like food for herself and her children (often she spent most of the day traveling with nothing to eat). This was a shameless abuse of a human being and family living on the margin of the society. Mr. Kings’ wife, Paula, and her children were forced to pay a high price for her having married a national of an African country who was a good husband to her, taking care not only of the three children they had together but the additional one whom she had from a previous relationship. Eventually she was forced to turn to Attorney Fareed Scoon who was moved by the abuse and human rights violations to intervene. Quite “coincidentally” Mrs. Kings was called at her home early on the morning of July 14th, the day before a writ of Habeus Corpus was to be heard in court, and asked to come to the Immigration Investigations Department to receive her husband whom she was told would be released that day.
When Mr. Kings was finally released he was ordered to return to the Immigration Investigations Department on Henry Street in Port of Spain two weeks later with a ticket to Nigeria. This requirement was unusual in the circumstances, it was unnecessary since he had a bond which would cover the cost of his repatriation if he defaulted on the conditions of his release, and it was calculated to cause financial distress and worry to a family which had been deprived of income, driven to seek social welfare in the absence of a breadwinner, and often unable to send the children to school because of dire economic circumstances. When he was unable to fulfill this onerous requirement his time was extended by three days to July 31 when the presence of an attorney may be all that saved him from re-arrest.
Now Mr. Kings is required to return to the Immigration Investigations Department tomorrow, Thursday August 7th , with a letter from the insurance company which facilitated the bond for his release, apparently designed to allow them to cash the bond without due process. This is another unusual request and one that has created great anxiety for the family. I advised Mr. Kings to seek legal advice on the matter, which could potentially impose further financial burdens on the family.
Mr. Downes, the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad & Tobago appeals to you as Chief of Immigration, and to your human instincts, to investigate and put a stop to this grievous wrongdoing on the part of certain officers over whom you have authority, beginning with an order to allow Mr. Kings to enjoy his freedom with his family until there is a proper review of his matter as requested by the Minister. It is part of a pattern of institutionalized abuse of undocumented migrants in this country, with particular regularity and severity against nationals from African countries. We will in fact be drawing your attention to a number of cases which we have raised with your predecessor in office and another current matter which is of the utmost seriousness, but in the immediacy of the situation, we call for your urgent intervention to prevent what could be a travesty of justice and an act of grave cruelty to an innocent family.
Given the implications of this situation for the human rights record of this country and for its foreign policy we are sending copies of this letter to the Prime Minister of this country, Honourable Kamla Persad Bissessar; the President, His Excellency Justice Anthony Carmona; the Minister of National Security, Honourable Gary Griffith; the Minister in the Ministry of National Security, Senator the Honourable Embau Moheni; Honourable Winston Dookeran, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Sir Edwin Carrington, Advisor to the Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs; the Ombudsman, Ms. Lynette Stephenson SC; the IOM; the Representative of the UNHCR and Attorney Fareed Scoon
We thank you for your consideration.