The Deportee Albatross

Aug 09, 2013 Editorial

The news that the U.S. chartered a special plane to return twenty-six (26) deportees to our shores raises once again the issue of the impact of the U.S. program on small, poor nations such as Guyana. The U.S. has deported thousands of convicted criminals to Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean annually since 1996, when Congress mandated that every non-citizen sentenced to a year or more in prison be deported from the U.S. upon release.
For Guyana alone, some 1528 criminals who had served sentences were deported during the period 1996-2007 from the U.S. at an average of 127 criminal deportees annually. This figure, which excluded persons deported for immigration offences, was greater than the total criminal deportations from all other countries combined. Guyana and the region have consistently protested the measure from the onset. But when this country refused to comply, the U.S. revoked the visas of all government officials and their families in late 2001.
The program resumed in 2004 after the government backed down: the visas were reissued. The main concern, not surprisingly, is the direct correlation between the deportee program and the precipitous rise in violent crimes in the region. While there is no definitive study on the issue this is due more to the lack of resources than anything else. What exacerbates the issue of criminals being dumped into societies without the wherewithal to deal with their impact is that by having the criminals incarcerated in their prison system before they are deported from the U.S., in effect is giving them graduate degrees in crime.
One CARICOM study showed that “The U.S. is responsible for more than 75 percent of all criminal deportations to the region.” In a 15-year period 30,000 criminals
had been deported to Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana, of which 17,000 had been convicted for drug trafficking, 600 for murder and 1,800 for illegal gun possession. Placing the number in a context, the researcher proposed that in calculating the proportionate effect of deportation, with a combined population of less than 5 million people in Guyana, Trinidad and Jamaica, the impact of “this relocation of criminal offenders would be roughly equivalent to the influx, into the U.S., of more than 1 million convicted drug offenders and close to 40,000 convicted murderers.” One wonders how the U.S. would have coped with this influx of criminals.
Another sore point that the U.S. refuses to address also is that home countries are told only why an offender is deported: other details cannot be provided without permission first from federal or state entities. In this context, in her meeting with US VP Joe Biden earlier this year, T&T’s PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who is the Caricom head with responsibility for security, insisted that increased focus should be placed on improved information and intelligence-sharing with respect to criminal deportees, in particular, access to complete dossiers on medical and criminal history.
Persad-Bissessar pointed out that undertakings given by the U.S. in the MOU (memorandum of understanding) of 2000 had not produced all of the expected results, as it failed to ensure forwarding of complete criminal records of these persons deported from the U.S. The PM pointed out to Biden that the majority of criminal deportees, having left the region as children, had few support networks or connections in their home country, making them vulnerable to criminal careers and threatening citizen peace and security in the region.
In June 2008, Guyana signed a cooperation agreement which allowed for the International Office for Migration (IOM) to implement a “Reintegration of the Returned Migrants Project”. The Ministry of Home Affairs was identified as the lead agency for the initiative whose focus was supposed to be in areas such as capacity building, advisory services, and technical cooperation on migration issues. By June 2009, US$3 million had been budgeted to deal with 250 deportees – less than two years’ accumulation.
We believe that the Ministry should issue a report on the efficacy of the program.

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The Deportee Albatross

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