Who is popular today?

AN 11-year-old Venezuelan girl at risk of being deported because of a judge’s ruling, has received a temporary reprieve as the Court of Appeal ruled on Tuesday that she must remain in TT until her constitutional challenge against the deportation order, is heard and determined in court.
In an oral decision at a virtual hearing, Justices of Appeal Ronnie Boodoosingh and James Aboud both agreed that the December 1 decision of Justice Frank Seepersad to refuse an injunction application against the State’s plan to deport the child, was “plainly wrong.”
They set aside Seepersad’s orders which paved the way for the child to be sent back to Venezuela, possibly with her mother, for various breaches to immigration laws and covid19 regulations, and instead granted an injunction restraining the State from repatriating her pending the court’s determination of her claim.
They also removed Seepersad from hearing the child’s substantive claim, meaning another judge will have to be assigned to the case. Seepersad’s order that the mother’s affidavit, filed in support of her daughter’s claim, be sent to the police commissioner and Director of Public Prosecutions for action, since it was possible she had committed criminal offences, was also quashed.
Both Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi and National Security Minister Stuart Young welcomed Justice Seepersad’s initial ruling. Al-Rawi, according to a report in Newsday dated December 2, said Seepersad’s ruling was “A very important judicial pronouncement, which is simply clarifying a very large issue.”
He said where children are concerned, “There are very strong, heartfelt issues that pop into the equation.”
But from a government perspective, he continued, “We have to be bound first of all what the rules of law is, what the terms of engagement are and how we manage the very large issue of separating out, the concept of economic migration over genuinely refugee or asylum seeker status.”
For his part, Young according to the same report in Newsday, said, “I remain very concerned about who may be facilitating human trafficking and smuggling. I am pleased to see the application of the laws of TT.” At the hearing on Tuesday, Justice Aboud had additional comments to make on Seepersad’s ruling (
SEE PAGE 4).
MATTERS FOR TRIAL
The girl was part of a group of mainly women and children who returned to Trinidad via a beach in Los Iros on November 24, two days after they were escorted out of TT’s maritime waters by the Coast Guard.
Her mother lives in TT and has UNHCR asylum-seeker status, but is not registered in government’s Venezuelan amnesty programme. The child’s application has since been included as part of the mother’s application with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
In her claim for constitutional relief, it was argued that every civilised democracy treats the rights of the child with paramount importance. The child’s attorney Gerald Ramdeen, argued there was nothing to show that the State had disengaged itself from the 1951 UN convention on refugees or the 2014 draft policy to treat with them.
He added that statements the Prime Minister made at a UN general assembly, and to Parliament, on the three-tier process in keeping with the UN convention, gave his client (the child) a legitimate expectation that it would be followed and her asylum-seeker applications processed by the UNHCR’s local implementing partner – the Living Water Community.
He argued that even if there was a change in the policy on refugees and asylum-seekers, a court must determine at trial if the child was entitled to protection afforded by the law under the Constitution, having engaged it, despite recent statements by the Prime Minister and the National Security Minister on the 2014 draft policy.
Boodoosingh said the issues raised in the child’s application on legitimate expectation, if there was an adoption of the 2014 draft policy, or change from it, and TT’s continued co-operation, at the time (Dr Rowley announced a change to this process last week) with the UNHCR for the processing of applications, were all matters “suitable to be interrogated at a trial.”
On December 17, at a post-Cabinet press briefing, Rowley said Government will assume the role of handling asylum seekers now undertaken by the UNHCR and the Living Water Community.
Boodoosingh said whose word is to be accepted, was for a trial judge to determine and could not be resolved at an interim injunction hearing, which he added, was not a mini trial.
[caption id="attachment_864049" align="alignnone" width="541"] Appeal Court judge Ronnie Boodoosingh who gave an oral ruling on Tuesday, overturning a High Court order for the deportation of an 11-year-old girl to Venezuela.FILE PHOTOS -[/caption]
He said other representations which were before Seepersad, which also included arguments on non-refoulement; whether TT was not divorced from its international obligations, even if conventions and polices are not incorporated in domestic law; and if there was a breach to the child’s rights to protection of the law, are also serious issues to be tried. The State, in resisting the appeal, had pointed to several breaches of immigration laws and covid19 regulations by the child.
CHILD CAN’T BE BLAMED
In his December 1 ruling, Justice Seepersad was critical of the child’s mother for arranging for her child to enter TT illegally and thus “subjecting her to the terrors of the sea and flagrant flouting of local laws.” He also said it appeared the mother’s decision to come to TT was “driven primarily by self-centred socio-economic considerations.”
Justice Boodoosingh said on Tuesday that Seepersad appeared to conflate the migrant problem and blurred his focus on the balance of justice.
He said the starting point was that the application was made by a child, 11, who was not the author of her own destiny, “So she could not be held entirely responsible for entering (TT) the way she did.” He said the judge, by focusing on the mother’s conduct, had fallen into error.
“Children cannot be blamed for decisions that are not in their remit to make,” he said. He said a child’s best interest is usually tied to being with a parent, and the authorities speak to the preservation of the family unit.
Boodoosingh said the effect of refusing the injunction would have been to separate the child or put her in danger of being separated from her mother and these were factors that appeared not to be considered by Seepersad who also did not consider what the likely consequences were for the child.
The State had argued that the child had no right to claim asylum or refugee status in TT as she was part of a group of economic migrants and there was no domestic law that said they had protection here.
In pronouncing on the State’s attorney Fyard Hosein’s “floodgate” arguments on the dangers of opening borders to migrants and not having robust policy for entry of people into the country, Boodoosingh pointed out this was one particular child.
“There is no evidence she is a threat to national security…or was covid19 positive. Each case has to be taken on its own factual context,” he said, adding that the mother’s acts could not be ascribed to the child.
Boodoosingh admitted that the pandemic and its effect on TT should not be discounted, but equally so, covid19 had not suspended all rights afforded under the Constitution nor did it change the courts’ role to do justice in individual cases.
So far, of the group that returned to TT on November 23, applications for interim relief were granted for 19 of them, while the State assured it would not deport three others, making it 22 of the migrants protected for now, from deportation until their claims are determined in court.
The Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) – an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS) – has granted protection measures to six of the children who were part of the group.
The IACHR said it was “deeply concerned” in the way the group was removed from TT and also being labelled “undesirables” by Government.
Rowley has said TT will remain a member of the OAS but would not act like sheep. TT, he said, would not vote on resolutions while the OAS included a so-called Venezuelan representative even as that country’s government withdrew from the organisation.
Also representing the child were attorneys Dayadai Harripaul, Umesh Maharaj and Nerisa Bala, while attorneys Amirah Rahaman also appeared for the State.
 
The post JUDGE GOT IT WRONG appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.