The Tribune

By LETRE SWEETING

lsweeting@tribunemedia.net

IMMIGRATION Minister Keith Bell said there will be an increased number of immigration officers deployed to Abaco due to the recent expansion of several shanty towns there, with one unregulated community mushrooming to 200 acres since 2019.

A recent operation on Abaco resulted in 52 arrests and exposed the scope of the worsening shanty town problem.

The Department of immigration launched Operation Expedition from October 7 to 10, where immigration officers as well as the Royal Bahamas Police Force and the Royal Bahamas Defence Force went to the island to explore, detain and eventually repatriate any irregular migrants found.

The expedition found that one shanty town in particular - The Farm - grew from 50 acres to about 200 acres since Hurricane Dorian.

Other shanty towns, including a large area in Marsh Harbour, have expanded as well.

Mr Bell yesterday echoed his statements made earlier this month, saying that illegal immigration is not at a crisis level in The Bahamas, but instead should be considered a “complex problem”.

“We have an immigration problem in the country,” he said at a press conference. “And I indicated before that a crisis is something which springs up, which you’re not necessarily prepared to deal with. But again, as I indicated, it is a more complex problem, a challenge.”

Mr Bell said, “We want to assure the Abaconians and the Bahamian people that there will be an increased presence from this point going forward in the Abacos and certainly in other areas nonstop.

“But it will obviously call for a multi-agency approach involving immigration, the Ministry of Works, police, defence force, Ministry of National Security, etc to address this issue once and for all.”

Regarding The Farm’s growth, Immigration Director Keturah Ferguson said: “It was about 50 acres initially; it has grown a lot more, possibly as much as 200 acres.”

Assistant Director of Immigration Peter Joseph explained further that during Operation Expedition two teams explored two shanty town areas where buildings were being built illegally on crown land.

“I lead a team to Abaco. On arrival, we split into two groups, one team went to Treasure Cay. Another team went into the Marsh Harbour and surrounding areas. The Farm has expanded to two to three times the original size that it was over the past year and the Marsh Harbor area.

“We identified also a number of areas that initially had no building and no development or very little development, which has also expanded exponentially. We conducted this exercise over the course of three days. During the exercise you have a number of persons who attempted to flee offices or to give chase, they were apprehended, taken to our local immigration office or processed.”

Chief Immigration Officer Chad Adams said during the expedition, some Bahamians were assisting irregular migrants with hiding and not providing identification.

“In some vessels we would have found some trap doors underneath, where persons were pulled from. We also had houses with some trap doors underneath, where we pulled persons from. We also saw individuals who are Bahamian citizens, we entered their home. They would hide them (irregular migrants) in their closets, cupboards, cabinets. So we saw this as a challenge,” he said.

“We had some battles with Bahamian citizens who didn’t feel that they needed to present us with an ID. Those that were questionable were taken into custody, taken to the local immigration offices where they were questioned and interviewed,” he said.

“Those that did not meet the requirement to be legally in the country were taken into custody and escorted or transported here to New Providence Some are still pending investigations. Some of those individuals are before the courts as we speak,” Mr Adams said.

Yesterday Mr Bell said the government has to move toward establishing a positive system of identification of Bahamians born in the Bahamas.

“The taking of the biometrics, palm printing, fingerprinting, to ensure that persons born in the Bahamas, they have definitive means of identification of these individuals,” he said.

“We have cases of fraud, persons assuming the identity of other individuals. And so when they present a birth certificate, for example, there are challenges that we have in the Immigration Department to authenticate or verify that who is claiming to be ‘x’ is in fact ‘x’.”

Meanwhile Ms Ferguson agreed with Mr Bell adding that the number of irregular migrants this year is higher than previous years.

“The Department of Immigration has noticed the increase of irregular migrants particularly from Haiti and Cuba. This is evident in our repatriation statistics for the period January to October 2022. For this period, the department repatriated approximately 2,804 persons to their homeland; of this number 1,992 were Haitians and 519 were Cubans.

“This compares to the statistics for the overall year 2020 and 2021, in which case, there were 964 persons and 2,815 persons, respectively, repatriated. . .,” Mrs Ferguson said.

“The more notable and larger groups of irregular migrants this year have come from Jamaica, Ecuador and Dominican Republic. Additionally, the department has observed an increase of irregular migrants and several of the major islands throughout the Bahamas.”

To date, the government of the Bahamas has spent over $2.2 million on repatriation exercises, she said.