Home Invasion Bill passed without Opposition support

The Home In­va­sion (Self-De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty) Bill, 2025, has been passed in the Low­er House with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

Short­ly be­fore mid­night, de­bate on the leg­is­la­tion that seeks to crim­i­nalise home in­va­sion and em­pow­er oc­cu­pants of homes to law­ful­ly de­fend them­selves, oth­ers, and their prop­er­ty came to an end and was put to a vote af­ter a di­vi­sion was called by Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert.

The vote end­ed with 23 votes in favour, in­clud­ing the 21 Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MPs in the House and the two elect­ed mem­bers of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

The 10 Op­po­si­tion MPs in the House vot­ed against the Bill.

The Bill now awaits Sen­ate ap­proval. If passed in­to law, it will re­move the du­ty to re­treat for oc­cu­pants con­front­ed by a home in­vad­er in­side their res­i­dence or yard, al­low­ing them to use or threat­en de­fen­sive force to pro­tect them­selves, oth­ers, or their prop­er­ty.

It al­so cre­ates the of­fence of home in­va­sion. Ac­cord­ing to the Bill, a per­son com­mits home in­va­sion if they un­law­ful­ly en­ter or re­main in a dwelling and use or threat­en vi­o­lence, cause in­jury, death, or sex­u­al as­sault, steal, dam­age, or de­stroy prop­er­ty, or use firearms or ex­plo­sives.

The pro­posed penal­ties are sub­stan­tial.

For a stan­dard of­fence, of­fend­ers face a fine of TT$500,000 and up to 20 years’ im­pris­on­ment.

For an ag­gra­vat­ed of­fence, such as when the crime is com­mit­ted as part of a gang, or­gan­ised group, or in the pres­ence of vul­ner­a­ble per­sons like chil­dren, the el­der­ly, or the dis­abled, the penal­ty in­creas­es to a TT$750,000 fine and 25 years’ im­pris­on­ment.

If the act re­sults in a death, the of­fend­er could be charged with mur­der, even if there was no in­tent to kill.

But ac­cord­ing to the Bill, the right to de­fend your­self or your prop­er­ty would not ap­ply in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. It can­not be used as a de­fence if force is used against some­one who is law­ful­ly on the prop­er­ty, if the force used is clear­ly ex­ces­sive or dis­pro­por­tion­ate, or if the oc­cu­pant is com­mit­ting a crime or us­ing the prop­er­ty for il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties. It al­so does not ap­ply if the per­son at­tacked is a po­lice of­fi­cer or law en­force­ment agent act­ing with­in the law, or if the oc­cu­pant’s judg­ment is im­paired by vol­un­tary drug or al­co­hol use.

In wrap­ping up the de­bate last evening, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie dis­missed Op­po­si­tion con­cerns that the law could lead to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. Op­po­si­tion mem­bers had point­ed to ex­am­ples from Flori­da, where they claimed peo­ple of African de­scent were un­fair­ly tar­get­ed un­der sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion.

“So vig­i­lante jus­tice, black peo­ple in Flori­da be­ing sin­gled out by the po­lice and so on and so forth. This is not Flori­da. All of our po­lice of­fi­cers are African Amer­i­can peo­ple, most of them. Our so­ci­o­log­i­cal con­di­tions are dif­fer­ent. And as the Prime Min­is­ter says, every­thing is not about race,” Je­re­mie said.

Ear­li­er in the de­bate, Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young cau­tioned the pub­lic that the Bill does not grant au­to­mat­ic pro­tec­tion to any­one who us­es dead­ly force in their home. He ex­plained that oc­cu­pants would still have to go through the le­gal process be­fore it could be de­ter­mined whether their ac­tions fall with­in the lim­its of the new law.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der did not con­tribute to the de­bate.