The Tribune

By MORGAN ADDERLEY

Tribune Staff Reporter

madderley@tribunemedia.net

THE Department of Immigration yesterday rejected the characterisation of its arrest of a suspected migrant as a ‘kidnapping’  — maintaining instead that the man in question was “cautioned and arrested” by officers. 

The Department released a statement yesterday clarifying the matter following an outcry from an activist group over a viral video of the incident, which depicts the suspected migrant being placed in the trunk of an SUV by a group of Immigration officers.

When contacted on Sunday for comment, Immigration Minister Brent Symonette told The Tribune he was awaiting a report on the authenticity of the video. Mr Symonette said once authenticity is confirmed, all warranted disciplinary action will be carried out.

However, the Department of Immigration released a statement defending the actions of officers yesterday.

“The Department wishes to inform the public that it is aware of a video circulating in the media of Immigration Officers on duty apprehending a male of Haitian descent in Eleuthera,” according to the Immigration department statement. 

 “To bring clarity to the situation, the Department further wishes to inform that on Friday, 15th February 2019, Immigration and Royal Bahamas Police Force Officers of the Eleuthera District conducted an island-wide apprehension exercise. 

“As a result, while in the area of Palmetto Point, Eleuthera, the male in question, was cautioned and arrested after he was unable to provide the officers with identification showing his legal status in The Bahamas.  

“In an effort to secure the male in question, officers placed him in the Department’s vehicle, a Hyundai Tuscan “Hatchback” that transported him to a larger, more secured vehicle less than two minutes away from his place of arrest. 

“All persons (including the male in question) were transported to Governor’s Harbour Police Station for further processing.  

“Therefore,” the statement read, “any assumption circulated in the media that Immigration Officers allegedly committed the criminal offence of ‘kidnapping’ is false.”

In the short clip, a man is seen being guided to a grey SUV by two male immigration officers, as a third opens the trunk. The man is placed head first into the trunk before all three officers get into the backseat of that same vehicle.

Rights Bahamas (RB) described this occurrence, which took place in Eleuthera, as “extremely disturbing” and “(going) beyond the bounds of lawful procedure and common decency”.  

RB President Stephanie St Fleur likened the ordeal to a kidnapping, questioning how such an act was permitted to have taken place in The Bahamas.

Yesterday, attorney Fred Smith said the department’s response “completely misses at the point”.

“The fact is that it was inhumane and degrading to dump a suspect into the trunk of a car,” he continued.

“It certainly looked like a kidnapping and bore no relation to a civilized arrest, especially if the larger immigration vehicle, as they say, was ‘less than 2 minutes away”. There was no excuse four kidnapping him in the trunk.”

Mr Smith underscored “island wide exercises” are unconstitutional and illegal because they are random and there is no actual cause to suspect a particular individual. He said that since 1986, the Supreme Court has ruled that random searches are illegal.

“There must be reasonable cause to suspect a particular person,” Mr Smith said.

“In addition, there is no offence known to the law of the Bahamas of not being able to ‘provide identification or to show legal status’.”

Ethnic profiling and sweeping apprehensions were discouraged by Attorney General Carl Bethel last year as he remarked on the government’s difficulty in defending its position in court on immigration matters.

On a talk show in January 2018, Mr Bethel suggested it was time to move away from “crack-downs” instead of a more sustainable approach.

As a guest on “Z Live” with host Zhivargo Laing, Mr Bethel said: “You can’t rake and scrape every person who sounds foreign, looks foreign, doesn’t have their papers and lock them away. You must – just to avoid the legal problems that the government gets itself into – go through the process of properly analysing and screening and separating those who have some entitlement, those who have a work permit, from those who are plainly undocumented.”