Foreign Ministry rejects report of sitting minister’s US visa revocation

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs is re­ject­ing a re­port that the Unit­ed States visa of a sit­ting min­is­ter has been re­voked, in­sist­ing that no serv­ing mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment has had their US visa with­drawn.

In a state­ment pub­lished on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, the min­istry di­rect­ly chal­lenged a re­port in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ex­press head­lined, “Sit­ting Min­is­ter’s US Visa ‘Re­voked’...As Se­nior Ju­di­cial Of­fi­cer Con­firms Be­ing Sum­moned to Em­bassy.”

The min­istry said, “Con­trary to a sto­ry in to­day’s Trinidad Ex­press au­thored by Mark Bas­sant, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs is pleased to in­form the pop­u­la­tion that no sit­ting Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter’s US visa has been re­voked.”

It al­so sought to clar­i­fy the gov­ern­ment’s role in the process, stat­ing that “the Gov­ern­ment has no in­volve­ment in the is­suance or re­vo­ca­tion of US visas.”

The Sun­day Ex­press re­port al­leged that, along­side the pur­port­ed re­vo­ca­tion of a sit­ting min­is­ter’s visa in the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, the visa sta­tus of a se­nior ju­di­cial of­fi­cer had al­so come un­der scruti­ny.

The ar­ti­cle has since been re­moved from the Trinidad Ex­press web­site.

Ac­cord­ing to the news­pa­per, the min­is­ter was con­tact­ed via What­sApp on Oc­to­ber 2 for a re­sponse to the al­le­ga­tions. The re­port said the mes­sage ap­peared to have been read that day, but no re­ply was re­ceived de­spite sub­se­quent fol­low-up mes­sages and tele­phone calls.

The news­pa­per al­so cit­ed un­named se­nior im­mi­gra­tion and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sources who al­leged­ly linked the re­port­ed ac­tions to US visa en­force­ment mea­sures tar­get­ing in­di­vid­u­als sus­pect­ed of con­nec­tions to crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions, cor­rup­tion, drug traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing and oth­er il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

Those sources re­port­ed­ly sug­gest­ed that visa re­vo­ca­tions and sus­pen­sions were con­tin­u­ing and could in­ten­si­fy in the com­ing weeks and months. How­ev­er, the re­port did not pub­licly iden­ti­fy the in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly af­fect­ed.

While the For­eign Min­istry’s state­ment cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­jects the claim that a sit­ting gov­ern­ment min­is­ter’s US visa has been re­voked, it does not specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress the sep­a­rate al­le­ga­tion con­cern­ing the se­nior ju­di­cial of­fi­cer.

The min­istry’s re­sponse comes amid scruti­ny of US visa en­force­ment mea­sures and their po­ten­tial im­pli­ca­tions for pub­lic of­fi­cials in T&T.

The Unit­ed States re­tains au­thor­i­ty over the is­suance and re­vo­ca­tion of its visas, with the min­istry re­it­er­at­ing that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment has no in­volve­ment in those de­ci­sions.