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Opposition MPs press Govt. for transparency on U.S-Guyana deportee pact
(Kaieteur News) – Members of the parliamentary opposition are demanding full disclosure and parliamentary scrutiny over a newly finalised migration cooperation agreement with the United States, accusing the government of executive overreach and governing in the dark after third-country deportees began arriving on local soil.
The demand follows confirmation that an agreement has been struck between Georgetown and Washington allowing Guyana to receive up to, according to MP Walton’s statement, 12 third-country nationals per month, capping at 144 individuals annually over a one-year period. The agreement’s implementation became public only after the first batch of six individuals, including Cuban and Afghan nationals, landed in the country.
Amanza Walton Desir, Leader of FGM , MP
Walton said the administration concluded months of secret negotiations without informing the National Assembly or briefing the relevant Sectoral Committee on Foreign Relations. Walton released a statement yesterday raising concerns regarding the legal, security, and administrative gaps in the framework, emphasising that the public was left to learn about the deal through foreign news outlets.
“Guyanese deserve answers on this third-country deportee agreement,” Walton stated, criticising the government’s timeline. “Six deportees arrived on Friday. The government’s statement confirming a concluded agreement followed only on Saturday, by which time the Associated Press and Al Jazeera were already reporting the arrangement to the world.”
Walton stressed that reliance on the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to administer the framework does not absolve the state of its constitutional responsibilities. Pointing out that Guyana lacks national asylum legislation and is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, she questioned which domestic agencies would oversee the admission, legal protection, and potential removal of the arrivals.
“The government’s own release admits that IOM will not assume, and the arrangement will not transfer to it, any of the government’s responsibilities concerning admission, legal stay, protection or removal,” Walton warned. “Those four functions remain with Guyana alone. The question the government has not answered is which domestic agency exercises each of those four functions, under what legal authority, and through what documented procedure.”
Walton further questioned the long-term legal and civil status of those brought into the country, raising practical concerns over their right to work, access to public health, voting eligibility, and security vetting.
Echoing these concerns, opposition MP Sherod Duncan condemned the executive branch for executing high-stakes international deals in secret, particularly at a time when the nation is confronting heightened public safety concerns, recent firearm seizures, and persistent border enforcement challenges.
Sherod Duncan, MP
Duncan clarified that his critique remains strictly focused on executive governance and democratic oversight rather than the migrants themselves, but insisted that sovereign agreements cannot be brokered out of public view. He cautioned that a pattern of administrative discretion without legislative input leaves fundamental issues, such as local vetting protocols, employment authorisation, and long-term state liabilities, completely unanswered.
“Humanitarian obligations and public transparency must coexist,” Duncan declared, urging responsible government ministers to immediately lay the complete legal framework before Parliament, allowing only essential redactions for operational security.
Duncan added that as Guyana’s economy rapidly expands, the administration must abandon fragmented, surprise announcements in favour of a clear, legally grounded immigration system equipped with traceable records, proper border staffing, and routine parliamentary oversight.
Walton argued that this lack of disclosure fits a broader, troubling trend within the current administration, drawing parallels to previous instances where major national developments were withheld from the public.
“This lack of transparency and frankly non-disclosure is not isolated,” Walton noted, pointing to delayed public disclosures regarding national oil revenues and updates on maritime disasters. “A government that treats disclosure to its own people as optional, whether the subject is an international agreement, the nation’s oil revenue, or the deaths of its own citizens, has a transparency problem, to put it mildly, that goes beyond any single incident.”
The MPs are demanding that the executive immediately publish the U.S. migration agreement in its entirety, present it to the national assembly, identify the exact government officers directly responsible for each individual received, and provide full accounting, with protections for personal safety, regarding the qualifications, background, and long-term status of every person brought into Guyana under the deal.
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This “deportee fiasco” is good for Irfan Ali.
They will be housed and fed, able to work on the president’s FARM up
the Linden Soesdyke Highway. Any deal involving money by the Trump/US
will somehow pay for the upkeep of the deportees and their wages, and to
Ali’s benefit.
This is just a presumption.