Multi-media journalist Urvashi Tiwari-Roopnarine has been investigating T&T’s flourishing illegal drug trade for the past several weeks. That journey has taken her to several parts of the country for extensive interviews with several people involved in the trade, people who have been researching it and members of the law enforcement agencies charged with trying to prevent the activity.
Today, she chats with some sources who have been involved in the activity or seen it on a regular basis in part two of her six-part series on the trade titled Cracks in Our Borders.
The geographical location of Trinidad and Tobago is not the reason the country is a preferred transit point for international drug cartels drug researcher Darius Figueira says. Figueira says drug smugglers are mainly attracted to regions where the transit countries are open to infiltration. “What you are looking for is states with porous borders, ridiculously porous borders and in the Caribbean we are noted for our porous borders,” Figueira told Guardian Media Limited.
The United Nations, the International Organisation for Migration and the United States’ Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) all describe of T&T’s borders as porous. The DEA believes the drugs enter transit points via high speed boats to unmanned coastal areas, but Figueira says illicit items are entering in many different ways, including “containerised cargo, speed boats, mixing product in with ‘legal ones’ and swallowers/mules.”
In T&T there are two legal air ports and 13 legal sea ports of entry. But Professor Andy Knight, head of International Relations at the University of the West Indies, says securing the “illegal” ports or unmanned coastal areas is a challenge for law enforcement members. “Trinidad has a long border to monitor along and not enough resources to monitor. It makes it easier for drug runners to use Trinidad as a transit point,” Knight said.
Fishermen across the country serve as the eyes at sea, taking in boats as they go and come. Many of them either merely observe or, lured by the prospect of making a lot of fast money, become part of the illegal drug trade A Moruga fisherman said that region is busy with such illegal activity.
“Things happen here, things is happening on the South Eastern coast. I does be on the water at night twenty-four seven. I does see movements of suspicious vessels all over the place and I sees not a Coast Guard,” he said. Cedros is also another known popular landing point for drug shipments. A fisherman in the North meanwhile said drug runners entering through unmanned ports was a regular occurrence.
“I have been fishing many nights and boats with no lights speeding past from Trinidad to Venezuela. Sometimes I in the Bocas fishing and a pirogue will pass and about an hour after a Venezuelan boat will pass.” The illicit cargo, both guns and drugs, is transferred from boat to boat. There’s another method, the drop-off, which sees neither party at the same location at the same time.
Knight has himself gone on the ground to do his own research on this method of operations. “Some islands on the North West are used as drop off points for some of these drugs, and you don’t know if it may be a fisherman in those waters picking up and carrying the drugs. It therefore becomes complex for the Coast Guard to deal with this problem.”
Record haul at Monos Island
In 2005, 1.75 tonnes of cocaine were seized at Monos Islands. The drugs carried a street value of $700 million. An Uzi machine gun, four handguns, two assault rifles and 247 rounds of assorted ammunition were also seized. Two Trinidadians, five Venezuelans and an Antiguan were arrested.
$30,000 a trip
Another fisherman gave an account of what he has seen first-hand. “The Venezuelans come in and would go on the island on a marked spot and hide the drugs overnight. The next team would pick it up and run ashore with it.” This method is not always fool-proof as either Coast Guard members, rival drug gangs or people merely looking to profit indirectly, could get to it before the intended pick-up team, the fisherman later explained.
“There is fellows—like pirates—who specialise in robbing drug runners. As a drug runner you don’t only have to look out for the Coast Guard, cause it have other fellows marking you to take it from you," he said. The profits from “running drugs” prove to be so lucrative that even talented and successful fishermen have been abandoning their trade. “When you go for drugs you could make $30,000 as a runner. I am telling you, as a fisherman who run and go for drugs you could make $30,000 a night.
“Who would want to take their money and buy gas and bait and when you go out you not guaranteed to catch a fly?” the fisherman rationalised. But while drugs are one evil, he says there is another which make the fishermen think twice to accept a job.
“Fellows who does move drugs fraid guns. Fellows who does take work, strangely enough, once guns involved they want to back out.” He said there was also little fear of being caught by the Coast Guard.
Yet there is another element to this, as sometimes those given the responsibility for protecting the country’s borders are also perpetrators of the crime. “A lot of drug runners does get caught too, but because the Coast Guard men keeping the drugs they not going to arrest you. They going to let you go, but seize your drugs.”
Griffith responds
Contacted on this allegation, Minister of National Security Gary Griffith said while corruption of members of the Coast Guard was possible, it was important for the fishermen to make formal reports so that such individuals could be “weeded out” from the service. Addressing T&T’s borders, Griffith said he believed they are safe compared to other islands in the region.
“Many times people will criticise us for this road march we continue to hear about the borders being porous, but it is a fact in comparison to many other islands and the size of T&T, we have done pretty well," Griffith said.