The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

IMMIGRATION Director Clarence Russell said the Department of Immigration intends to “make sure people are safe, treated as humanely as possible and that due course is taken”.

He was speaking to The Tribune after a Supreme Court judge awarded Kenyan national Douglas Ngumi the largest award of damages ever in the country because he suffered cruel and inhumane treatment during his unlawful six-and-a-half-year stay at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre.

Mr Russell noted that he took over the Immigration Department in 2018 and that Mr Ngumi’s matter preceded his tenure.

“My position is I don’t question the jurisdiction and decision of the judiciary,” he said. “That comes under the portfolio of the Attorney General. With respect to immigration, I manage immigration and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that since my arrival in the Immigration Department there have been numerous changes. As long as I sit in this position, the law will be applied with every single situation.

“One of my mandates was to give each individual due process. The history since I’ve been in the department suggests that has been the case.”

Nonetheless, attorney Fred Smith, who represented Mr Ngumi, said little has changed at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre since his client was released in 2017. Mr Smith took aim yesterday at comments made by Immigration Minister Elsworth Johnson.

“I take issue with Minister Ellsworth’s suggestion that we are a country governed by the rule of law,” he said.

“Insofar as immigration is concerned, there is no rule of law and that is reflected by the fact that there are judgments after judgments from the courts which expose the civil criminality of the Immigration Department who are in fact kidnapping people, beating people, torturing people, holding them for arbitrary and illegally long periods of time, separating families and abusing almost all of their human and constitutional rights,” he alleged.

“And this state institutionalised savagery and state sanctioned terrorism against thousands and thousands of people, many of which are born in The Bahamas, is a terrible stain internationally on our nation.”

Mr Smith challenged immigration officials to publish a list of people at the detention centre, how long they have been at the centre, why they are detained and whether they have been taken before a court as required by the constitution and the criminal procedure code.

“I have clients who are currently at the detention centre that have been there for over two years without being taken before a court,” he said. “I am tired of these mealy-mouthed sophistry about respecting the rule of law. Before Minister Johnson became a minister, he was a human rights activist and stood for the rule of law. He is overseeing an Immigration Department which has very little respect for the laws of The Bahamas or the international obligations of The Bahamas and I call upon him, firstly, as a spiritual Christian human being, to reign in the Immigration Department’s abuse and to release all of the illegally held detainees currently at the detention centre.”

Mr Smith continued: “This is no time for jokes and pandering words to the constitution. He is in charge and he knows what is going on and he knows there are people at the detention centre who are there illegally. As Moses said, ‘let my people go!’”