Homeland Security Minister orders probe into visitor report

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has ini­ti­at­ed a probe in­to an in­ci­dent re­port­ed by Unit­ed States vis­i­tor Shon­tice McKen­zie, who said she faced an un­pleas­ant ex­change with an Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer up­on ar­rival at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Videsh Ma­haraj, and Deputy Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Ali­cia Acre-Youk­see held a vir­tu­al meet­ing with McKen­zie ear­li­er to­day from the Min­istry’s of­fices at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre in Port of Spain. McKen­zie de­tailed the en­counter, in­clud­ing her con­cerns about the treat­ment she re­ceived while seek­ing as­sis­tance re­lat­ed to her hear­ing im­pair­ment.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Alexan­der and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ma­haraj is­sued an apol­o­gy to McKen­zie on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment, the Min­istry, and the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion. Alexan­der not­ed the role of Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cers in set­ting the tone for the vis­i­tor ex­pe­ri­ence and said of­fi­cers must op­er­ate in a man­ner that re­flects na­tion­al val­ues and sup­ports all trav­ellers, in­clud­ing those with com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs.

The Min­istry has be­gun a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent. Of­fi­cials said the probe will be im­par­tial and will de­ter­mine whether any of­fi­cer failed to fol­low es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures. The Min­istry stat­ed that any breach of pro­to­col will lead to ac­tion un­der Pub­lic Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions and ex­ist­ing Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion poli­cies.

Alexan­der al­so or­dered new train­ing mea­sures for all Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cers. The pro­grammes will cov­er cus­tomer ser­vice, dis­abil­i­ty aware­ness, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods for trav­ellers who re­quire as­sis­tance. He said these mea­sures are in­tend­ed to ad­dress gaps and en­sure con­sis­tent stan­dards across the Di­vi­sion.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Alexan­der thanked McKen­zie for re­port­ing the mat­ter and said her ac­count will sup­port the Min­istry’s ef­forts to strength­en its op­er­a­tions. He as­sured her that steps will be tak­en to avoid sim­i­lar in­ci­dents.

The Min­istry said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that every vis­i­tor re­ceives treat­ment that aligns with na­tion­al prin­ci­ples and re­flects the con­duct ex­pect­ed at the coun­try’s bor­ders. The re­lease not­ed that the in­ci­dent high­lights the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty car­ried by front­line of­fi­cers and the need for con­tin­ued im­prove­ment with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.