A video now circulating on social media of the group of Venezuelan migrants detained shortly after they came ashore at Los Iros on Tuesday afternoon, shows children and adults crowded into one cell at a police station.
A local attorney, who confirmed the authenticity of the video, said it was filmed by one of the migrants. He said they are detained at the Erin Police Station.
The Spanish-speaking woman recording the video is heard saying: “We are all in the same cell—24 people.”
The video was shared by Venezuelan journalist Sergio Novelli via his Twitter account and has been posted by news outlets in that country, where reports of the deportation saga involving the migrant children has been widely shared.
The woman describes conditions in the cell and reports that one of the migrants is suffering from back pains and “has not stopped crying because of his pain.” She also said some of the others are ill, including the four-month-old baby, who has a fever.
“We are all here begging the Lord to get us out of this cell,” the women said.
An activist with the Venezuelan NGO Foro Penal, Orlando Moreno, said after the deportations on Sunday the group went to an indigenous community in the town of Barra de Cocuina on Venezuela’s east coast before returning to Trinidad and Tobago.
The issue has been widely reported in the media there.
The Commissioner for Foreign Relations in Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, Julio Borges, said a formal communication has been sent to T&T Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Amery Brown about the deportation.
It states: “On behalf of the interim government of Venezuela, we respectfully demand the initiation of an investigation of these facts by the competent authorities of your country, and like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, we urge them to guarantee the international protection of in accordance with the practice recognised by the States and international treaties in force and binding for Trinidad and Tobago, to the people who arrive in its territory whose human rights are violated by the prevailing dictatorship in Venezuela.”
