Concern Over Criminal Deportees:
By Tameka Lundy -
Nassau, Bahamas:

Often overlooked by the wider society, though never fully discounted by the police, criminal deportees to The Bahamas are said to be committing a small fraction of crimes.

However, the crimes that they are committing are the most serious infractions of the law, according to a senior police official.

"From what I have seen there is a low percentage [of criminal deportees here committing crimes] but they are involved in very serious types of crimes," said Chief Superintendent of Police Glen Miller, head of the Central Detective Unit.

"They have been involved in major drug trafficking, firearms trafficking and homicides and in some instances serious armed robberies, but that’s been at a very low percentage."

Chief Supt. Miller could not give specific figures.

The grave worry for The Bahamas and countries in this region is as these countries continue to accept more and more people who are expelled from countries like the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, there is little effort made to provide for their proper reintegration into the society that is forced to accept them.

"It’s something the government could consider," Chief Supt. Miller said.

"We have experienced cases where someone has been in the US for 20 years, served five or 10 years in prison and was deported…That person is essentially homeless…The fellow doesn’t know anybody and he has to live, so it is definitely something worth considering."

The matter was grave enough for CARICOM leaders to raise with US President George W. Bush when they were in Washington, DC for the Conference on the Caribbean in late June and politically expedient enough for the president to make it quite clear that his country will continue to expel criminal deportees.

Both President Bush and his counterpart leaders in the Caribbean have acknowledged the need to work more closely on immigration security issues in a manner that is respectful of national laws and government services capacity, and sensitive to the effects of human displacement.

In a joint statement that was issued at the conclusion of multilateral discussions in the US capital, both sides also vowed to work toward the expansion of the pilot reintegration programme for deportees in Haiti to include other CARICOM member states.

Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo reported following the meeting with President Bush and US congressmen that the issue is a political one and they would find it very difficult to reverse the policy on criminal deportees.

"I think in the region we have been realistic enough to realize that will not happen because it is not politically feasible for them to do it," he said.

"So we have almost uniformly moved away from early calls years ago that this should not happen to now some support in rehabilitation and resettlement and there was a commitment that that will be examined, but no commitment that we will receive support just that it will be one of the issues that [the US] will follow up on."

The issue of criminal deportees had been a source of tension between the US and Guyana years ago. Guyana’s refusal to accept criminal deportees led the United States to ban the issuance of visas to Guyanese government officials and their families in late 2001. That ban was lifted once Guyana agreed to accept 100 deportees.

REPORT TACKLES DILEMMA

A report on crime and violence in the Caribbean region that was compiled through the efforts of the World Bank found that although the average Caribbean deportee is not involved in criminal activity, a minority may be causing serious problems, both by direct involvement in crime and by providing a perverse role model for youth.

The report, which was released recently, recommended that more services be offered to reintegrate deportees, with deporting countries contributing to the cost of these programmes.

The point was made that in general, there is an over-reliance on the criminal justice system to reduce crime in the region. At the same time, analysts pointed out that some types of crime such as organized crime, drug and firearms trafficking are generally impervious to prevention initiatives and their control requires an efficient criminal justice system.

"Assisting in the reintegration efforts for deported offenders could be a cost cutting effective way for deportee-sending countries to promote development and weaken international crime networks," the report said.

For a while the US Government bluntly made the point that its Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has no mandate or funds to resettle criminal deportees in the Caribbean or anywhere elsewhere. The matter was raised again at a meeting of Caribbean foreign ministers in New Providence several years ago when Jamaica on behalf of CARICOM made the suggestion to then US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In response to the proposal seeking financial help to resettle immigrants the Bush Administration made it clear that it could not use seized assets in the way that CARICOM had suggested.

HAITI AS A PILOT

Each year the US, UK and Canada deport thousands of people convicted of various crimes to their countries of citizenship in the Caribbean. Between 1998 and 2004, the US alone deported 31,000 convicted criminals to the Caribbean.

Since the early 1980s, the US was deporting non-citizens to their home countries if a judge ordered deportation based on the severity of one’s conviction. This happened in the most serious of cases.

Haiti received its repatriated citizens and processed them quickly through their police and immigration offices letting them free within a day or so.

For a time, those repatriated to Haiti were held in police station holding cells throughout the country for an indefinite period of time. The country later set up a Commission, based in the Ministry of Interior, to oversee who would be released and when.

However, years later there was a new procedure to direct all newly arriving criminal deportees to be held for an indefinite period of time at Haiti’s National Penitentiary and the Commission continued to be in force.

The Bush administration provides $1 million for a programme in Haiti that helps Caribbean criminal deportees from the US readjust to life in their native land. The programme emphasizes that those deported to Haiti are not security risks. Tom Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said he hopes the programme can be expanded to Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and other Caribbean countries.

THE WAY FORWARD

The prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis Denzil Douglas called the matter of criminal deportees to the Caribbean a "hot issue."

"This is posing a very big problem for the Caribbean," he said recently, "and the need to collaborate on the deportees issue on a programme to support the reintegration of deportees is a very necessary step for the immediate future."

The CARICOM Regional Task Force on Crime and Security recommended in 2002 that member countries establish offices for the resettlement of deportee modeled after a programme in St. Kitts and Nevis where the Returning Nationals Secretariat is charged with facilitating reintegration of deportees. The Secretariat provides counseling and offers assistance in finding jobs, locating housing and using social services.

In Jamaica, a church-based group called the Land of My Birth Association recently started to offer similar services to some deportees.

Chief Supt. Miller, the head of the Central Detective Unit in the Royal Bahamas Police Force, told the Bahama Journal that once the force is notified of an incoming deportee, that individual is met at the airport and an investigation is conducted to determine whether that person is wanted by local authorities before they are released into the public.

"Persons who spend most of their lives abroad and are being deported, we have seen several of those cases in Nassau and in Grand Bahama and we have seen persons turn to crime for survival…" he said.

"In some instances that is all he knows and I think we can put together some kind of programme to sensitize the public to these individuals as to what they are faced with."

A hearing is to be held in the US in the next week on the matter of criminal deportees.


2 July 2007