National Security officials are denying allegations that a group of immigrants from Ebola-ravaged Liberia passed through T&T recently en-route to the United States. However, the T&T Coast Guard has increased its patrols in coastal waters to ensure such people do not sneak into the country.
Speaking after an Ebola preparation meeting at the National Operations Centre (NOC), Port-of-Spain, yesterday Deputy Chief Immigration Officer Charmaine Gandhi-Andrews said preliminary checks with her division’s records showed no Liberians had arrived in T&T recently.
Gandhi-Andrews’ claims were verified by NOC director Garvin Heerah, who said the Ministry of National Security was doing its own investigation into the claim made last month by commander of the US Southern Command, Marine Corps, Gen John F Kelly.
“We are speaking to our international counterparts to confirm or deny the veracity of the information,” Heerah said.
However, Heerah and Gandhi-Andrews admitted if Kelly’s claims were true, the group may have entered T&T illegally, and hence would not have been registered in the immigration division’s database. In an address at a forum at the National Defence University in Washington, DC, last month, Kelly said:
“(The) embassy persons asked who they were and they said, ‘Well, we’re from Liberia and have been on the road for about a week and were on the way to New York City,’... illegally... so not on network. They had flown in through, I think, Trinidad and met up with traffickers and are on the way in. They still could have made it to New York City and still be within the incubation period for Ebola.”
Questioned on the possibility of the Ebola virus arriving here through infected west African illegal immigrants, Heerah said the Coast Guard had already increased its offshore patrols and other arms of the protective services were ready to lend assistance. Saying the NOC was in communication with law enforcement personnel operating in coastal communities used by human traffickers and illegal immigrants, retired deputy police commissioner Mervyn Richardson said:
“The intelligence community is out there ensuring that anybody who comes in that don’t belong to that area of society is reported to police and dealt with, using the protocols set by the Health Ministry.”