Jamaica Government says it’s prepared to handle increase in deportations

The An­drew Hol­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion has sought to re­as­sure Ja­maicans that the re­turn of de­por­tees from over­seas ter­ri­to­ries is nei­ther un­ex­pect­ed nor un­man­aged.

The state­ment was made as the au­thor­i­ties pre­pared to re­ceive a flight with 107 de­port­ed na­tion­als on Thurs­day.

Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Dr Ho­race Chang, and For­eign Min­is­ter Sen­a­tor Kam­i­na John­son-Smith, say the gov­ern­ment has been close­ly mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments and de­por­ta­tion trends, and sys­tems are ac­ti­vat­ed to man­age any po­ten­tial in­crease in re­turns.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,500 Ja­maicans have been con­firmed for re­moval from the Unit­ed States in line with due process and lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments.

These re­movals are ex­pect­ed to be ex­e­cut­ed over the next two years.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Chang, the Ja­maica Gov­ern­ment “con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the mat­ter care­ful­ly”. He al­so con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains in di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its coun­ter­parts in the US and oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions.

The Deputy PM fur­ther em­pha­sized that Ja­maica, like oth­er sov­er­eign na­tions, is ob­lig­at­ed un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law to ac­cept the re­turn of its cit­i­zens who are sub­ject to de­por­ta­tion.

Amid con­cerns sur­round­ing pub­lic safe­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to de­por­tees with crim­i­nal back­grounds, Min­is­ter John­son-Smith says the gov­ern­ment is em­pha­siz­ing its struc­tured and mea­sured ap­proach.

“Cab­i­net has ap­proved a co­or­di­nat­ed de­por­ta­tion re­sponse ac­tion plan and es­tab­lished a mul­ti-agency work­ing group to en­sure an or­der­ly, se­cure and hu­mane process for any mass re­turns,” she said.

In 2023, a to­tal of 655 Ja­maican na­tion­als were re­turned from the Unit­ed States and in 2024, this fig­ure in­creased to 814.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary and April this year, 331 na­tion­als were re­moved.

Dr Chang added that arrange­ments al­ready have been made to ac­com­mo­date in­com­ing mi­grants with a clear fo­cus on se­cu­ri­ty and rein­te­gra­tion. —KINGSTON, Ja­maica (CMC)