Govt keeps cards close to its chest on proposed ID law

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

While the Gov­ern­ment has re­vealed its hand on a pro­posed law re­quir­ing cit­i­zens aged 16 and over to car­ry valid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in pub­lic, it is keep­ing its cards close to its chest on the de­tails.

Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen yes­ter­day de­clined to elab­o­rate on the pro­pos­al, while At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said he was out of the coun­try and would have to seek fur­ther in­for­ma­tion be­fore an­swer­ing ques­tions about pos­si­ble penal­ties.

“At this time, that mat­ter, we are not go­ing to com­ment un­til a fi­nal de­ci­sion and so on is be­ing made on it,” Ho­sein said when ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia.

He al­so point­ed to the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of Cab­i­net pro­ceed­ings.

“Do you know that de­lib­er­a­tions of Cab­i­net are con­fi­den­tial?” Ho­sein asked.

Ameen was sim­i­lar­ly guard­ed.

“It’s un­der re­view. We’ll up­date you when the time reach­es. No wor­ries,” she said.

Guardian Me­dia al­so asked Je­re­mie what fine or oth­er penal­ty was be­ing con­tem­plat­ed should fail­ing to car­ry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion be­come an of­fence.

“I’m away from T&T. So I have to find out be­fore I can say any­thing,” Je­re­mie re­spond­ed.

Cab­i­net Minute No 810 of April 2, 2026, shows Cab­i­net con­sid­ered a pro­pos­al to amend leg­is­la­tion to “re­quire all Cit­i­zens, aged Six­teen (16) Years and over, to pos­sess a valid form of Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in Pub­lic Spaces.”

The pro­pos­al was sub­se­quent­ly re­ferred to Cab­i­net’s Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee for con­sid­er­a­tion.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has con­firmed the mat­ter was al­so sent to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for ex­am­i­na­tion.

Alexan­der has de­fend­ed con­sid­er­a­tion of the mea­sure, say­ing law en­force­ment’s views should be tak­en in­to ac­count and ar­gu­ing that iden­ti­fi­ca­tion could al­so as­sist au­thor­i­ties when uniden­ti­fied peo­ple are found dead or ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tals.

The pro­pos­al comes as the Gov­ern­ment is al­so con­sid­er­ing changes to age re­stric­tions for sev­er­al reg­u­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing rais­ing the le­gal drink­ing age to 21 and the ages for gam­bling and mar­i­jua­na use to 25.

Beck­les: Gov­ern­ments have lost elec­tions over ID laws

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to come clean on its in­ten­tions, warn­ing that manda­to­ry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion laws have proved po­lit­i­cal­ly con­tentious in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and have even con­tributed to gov­ern­ments be­ing vot­ed out of of­fice.

Beck­les, speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion news con­fer­ence, said she was aware of the April Cab­i­net note but ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment had con­duct­ed ad­e­quate con­sul­ta­tion or gath­ered da­ta to jus­ti­fy the pro­pos­al.

“I would pre­fer that this Gov­ern­ment comes clean and tells us if this is a pro­pos­al of theirs and if they in­tend to im­ple­ment it,” Beck­les said.

She said too many Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­als were be­ing “left hang­ing” with­out suf­fi­cient ex­pla­na­tion to the pop­u­la­tion.

“If this is a mea­sure that you in­tend to im­ple­ment, then you should dis­cuss it with the pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

Beck­les ques­tioned what da­ta was dri­ving the pol­i­cy and whether min­istries re­spon­si­ble for ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial de­vel­op­ment had been con­sult­ed.

She al­so point­ed to in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ences with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion leg­is­la­tion, claim­ing on­ly a small num­ber of coun­tries had adopt­ed com­pa­ra­ble re­quire­ments.

Re­fer­ring to the Unit­ed King­dom’s ex­pe­ri­ence with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion leg­is­la­tion, Beck­les said such mea­sures had be­come po­lit­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing.

“That was one of the pieces of leg­is­la­tion that caused a gov­ern­ment to lose elec­tions,” she said.

Seep­er­sad warns against crim­i­nal­is­ing cit­i­zens

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad said there could be prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits for law en­force­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in quick­ly es­tab­lish­ing a per­son’s iden­ti­ty and age, but warned that a uni­ver­sal re­quire­ment could cre­ate se­ri­ous prob­lems if sim­ply be­ing in pub­lic with­out iden­ti­fi­ca­tion be­comes an of­fence.

Seep­er­sad said there was a crit­i­cal dis­tinc­tion be­tween re­quir­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion where po­lice have a le­git­i­mate law-en­force­ment rea­son and crim­i­nal­is­ing some­one mere­ly be­cause they for­got their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at home.

“You could end up crim­i­nal­is­ing peo­ple sim­ply be­cause they for­got to car­ry their ID card, or they’re car­ry­ing an ex­pired ID card,” he said.

He al­so warned that some young peo­ple may face prac­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties ob­tain­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by age 16 be­cause of is­sues such as proof of ad­dress or ad­min­is­tra­tive de­lays.

Seep­er­sad said any leg­is­la­tion should there­fore spell out when po­lice can re­quest iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, which doc­u­ments would be ac­cept­ed and what hap­pens when some­one can­not im­me­di­ate­ly pro­duce one.

There must al­so be safe­guards against ha­rass­ment and ar­bi­trary de­ten­tion, he said, sug­gest­ing peo­ple should be giv­en a rea­son­able op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­duce iden­ti­fi­ca­tion lat­er rather than face im­me­di­ate ar­rest or pros­e­cu­tion.

Seep­er­sad al­so ques­tioned whether a uni­ver­sal ID re­quire­ment was nec­es­sary for en­forc­ing high­er age lim­its on drink­ing, gam­bling and mar­i­jua­na use, ar­gu­ing that reg­u­lat­ed es­tab­lish­ments could in­stead car­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ver­i­fy­ing cus­tomers’ ages.

He said Gov­ern­ment must demon­strate why a uni­ver­sal re­quire­ment was nec­es­sary.

“I’m not say­ing it’s nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad idea. It has its ben­e­fits,” Seep­er­sad said, “but at the same time, we do want to make sure im­por­tant safe­guards are in place.”

Figuera: Do it prop­er­ly

or don’t do it

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figuera took a dif­fer­ent ap­proach, say­ing an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion law could be use­ful but would ac­com­plish lit­tle with­out in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, train­ing and safe­guards.

“The law in a vac­u­um makes no dif­fer­ence,” Figuera said.

He ar­gued po­lice of­fi­cers should have ac­cess to an in­ter­con­nect­ed dig­i­tal sys­tem al­low­ing them to ver­i­fy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion against a na­tion­al data­base in re­al time and de­ter­mine whether a per­son is want­ed or whether an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ment is le­git­i­mate.

“If you are not will­ing to spend that mon­ey and train the peo­ple and put the in­fra­struc­ture in place to en­sure we have a 21st-cen­tu­ry sys­tem to make it worth­while, then it is a to­tal waste of time,” he said.

Figuera said such a sys­tem could al­so as­sist au­thor­i­ties in deal­ing with fraud­u­lent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, but cau­tioned against in­dis­crim­i­nate stops.

He point­ed to the dis­tinc­tion be­tween of­fi­cers re­quest­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion based on rea­son­able grounds and stop­ping peo­ple based on pro­fil­ing, warn­ing that the lat­ter amount­ed to a “fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion.”

Figuera said the TTPS would al­so need func­tion­ing body cam­eras for of­fi­cers and cam­eras on po­lice ve­hi­cles to im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­vide safe­guards against al­le­ga­tions of pro­fil­ing.

His po­si­tion, he said, was straight­for­ward, “You ei­ther do it cor­rect or don’t do it at all.”