A RED CARPET will be rolled out today, May 23, for dignitaries attending the ceremonial sitting of Parliament. But a wildly different welcome is planned for 21 deported nationals expected to touch down at the Piarco International Airport from the US.
Few are excited by this homecoming. Amid a crime wave, there is little sympathy for convicts. People who live near to a safe-house which has been identified as one venue where returnees might be housed are anxious and apprehensive.
This repatriation has also taken on an unusual dimension.
Its backdrop is a constitutional crisis in the US: the Trump administration has overseen a shocking deportation programme. Government lawyers have told Supreme Court justices that state officials do not have to obey court orders; people have been condemned to gulags in El Salvador and Guantanamo Bay, including US nationals. The notion of birthright citizenship is being dismantled. Those granted amnesty are now subject to removal.
The flight coming this week, which follows a similar flight in March, will not be the last.
Which is why the government, NGOs and civil society need to confront this issue head on.
Whether there is adequate capacity to deal with higher levels of deportation and to ensure rehabilitation and reintegration is questionable.
In fact, the high rate of recidivism locally – in 2019, it was suggested that more than half of all prisoners end up back in jail – suggests a wider gap in capability.
It is not just a matter of how to attend to the difficulty of the arrival of more and more deportees. The deeper issue is the need to put stronger systems in place to ensure convicts in this country, both at home and from abroad, are not left socially isolated.
That social isolation is unfortunate. Not all who are deported are criminals who have committed offences. Some are accused people without convictions. Others have not been charged with any crime at all: they are merely people who have overstayed their welcome.
Yet, the public perception of deportees has been shaped by overly broad culture-war brushstrokes, revealing the clear need, also, to tackle stigma, as noted by Giselle Chance, the widow of Wayne Chance, who helms Vision on a Mission and who spoke with this newspaper on May 21 about that NGO’s sterling work in supporting the formerly incarcerated.
While there is ministerial oversight and involvement, there is no single state entity with specialist responsibility for rehabilitation. That should not be. The high crime rates in this country have long suggested the need for stronger measures to help people get back on their feet, whatever their past. The arrival of this flight, thus, is an opportunity to kick start broader change. Let’s not squander the chance.
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