Probe on into alleged misconduct by immigration to hearing-impaired traveller

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way in­to al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct and un­pro­fes­sion­al be­hav­iour in­volv­ing Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cials as they dealt with a hear­ing im­paired trav­eller at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port some­time ear­li­er this week.

In a video cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, the vis­i­tor Shon­tice McKen­zie—a US cit­i­zen—was record­ed as de­scrib­ing her in­ter­ac­tion with an Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer at the air­port.

McKen­zie claimed that she had dif­fi­cul­ty un­der­stand­ing the of­fi­cer who spoke with her at the Im­mi­gra­tion ter­mi­nal. She not­ed that when she ex­plained that she was deaf, the of­fi­cer mock­ing­ly replied, “I’m deaf too, and you don’t see me hav­ing any is­sues or yelling.”

McKen­zie said an­oth­er Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer in­ter­vened and helped her in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the first of­fi­cer, but was told to sit down twice dur­ing her in­ter­ac­tions.

“It’s al­most like this au­thor­i­ty thing... I don’t un­der­stand why I would want to come back to a place like this if this is how I’m go­ing to be treat­ed.

“It was un­war­rant­ed, it was un­fair, and I didn’t de­serve it. I lit­er­al­ly just couldn’t hear what he was say­ing.”

A me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day from the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty said Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Videsh Ma­haraj and Deputy Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Ali­cia Acre-Youk­see met vir­tu­al­ly with McKen­zie, where she re­count­ed the in­ci­dent.

The re­lease said Alexan­der and Ma­haraj of­fered their “re­gret and apol­o­gy” to McKen­zie as they stressed the im­por­tance of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion in shap­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of vis­i­tors.

“Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers are the first point of con­tact for any­one en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Their con­duct must re­flect our na­tion­al val­ues of dig­ni­ty, re­spect and hos­pi­tal­i­ty.

“Every vis­i­tor should feel sup­port­ed, es­pe­cial­ly those with dis­abil­i­ties or spe­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs.”

The re­lease not­ed that a probe would be done and if any wrong­do­ing was found, dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion would be ini­ti­at­ed ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions.

Min­is­ter Alexan­der al­so an­nounced that en­hanced cus­tomer train­ing and sen­si­ti­sa­tion pro­grammes would be in­tro­duced to as­sist specif­i­cal­ly with the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled. —Shane Su­perville