US deportees don’t cause crime in TT

UNITED STATES Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago Dr Roy Austin declared that criminal deportees from the US do not “contribute significantly to increasing crime rates in TT.” In statement yesterday, the Ambassador said since his arrival in TT in November 2001, he has been “besieged” with complaints from the former UNC government and its PNM successor of “criminal participation by Trinidadians deported from the US for crimes.” Austin said statistics on US criminal deportees to TT tell an entirely different story. According to Austin, those statistics show: US deportees committed fewer than two percent of crimes reported in TT each year in 2000 and 2001(according to official TT data); most criminal deportees to TT between January 1997 and September 2002 have not committed crimes in the US which the FBI considers most serious; the average criminal deportee migrates to the US between ages 18 and 22, after the stage of life when criminal tendencies are shown to develop, and returns to TT around age 35, when criminal involvement has diminished markedly and TT immigrants to the US bring a benefit to their home country that far outweighs any harm caused by criminal deportees.

The Ambassador said “official TT data” shows deportees’ contribution to crime in TT is “minuscule” and “only one kidnapping” was attributed to deportees during the period 1999 to 2002. “US criminal deportees to TT cannot be considered ‘the most violent criminals in the US.’ From January 1, 1997 to September 30, 2002 only around 35 percent of the 1,112 US criminal deportees to TT had been convicted in the US of crimes that the FBI considers serious,” Austin stated. He further pointed out that “US immigrant selection procedures are specifically designed to weed out and reject known criminals” and these procedures have been in place “for more than 30 years.” Austin added that a June 12, 2000 Memorandum of Understanding signed between then US attorney-general Janet Reno and then prime minister Basdeo Panday, obligates the US government to properly inform TT authorities about returning criminal deportees.