The Department of Immigration will be re-evaluating its approach to the arrest and detention of illegal immigrants after more than 140 persons were wrongfully detained in a raid on Friday, Immigration and Labour Minister Shane Gibson told The Tribune yesterday.
Mr Gibson, however, defended the decision of the department to detain the group of Haitians in question until their permits and permanent resident certificates were verified.
“It is unfortunate what happened but I can say with all certainly that there will be a 99 per cent chance it will happen again, where persons are picked up with legitimate documents and detained and as soon as it is determined that the documents are valid they are let go,” Mr Gibson said.
The minister conceded that although legalised persons get held up in every raid, an unusually high number were captured by mistake on Friday.
“We will continue to look at more ways to minimise these kind of things from happening because obviously we don’t want this happening to that extent. It’s like trying to tell people not to steal. You will always have thieves out there. You can only put systems in place to minimise the opportunity,” Mr Gibson said.
Over the weekend Abner Pinder, chief councillor of Spanish Wells, called for the Immigration Minister to publicly apologise after wrongfully detaining more than 140 permanent residents in the most recent immigration raid.
Shane Gibson said the raid, which was carried out early on Friday morning in the North Eleuthera and Harbour Island areas, netted over 200 persons whom were ferried on “The Rookie” to New Providence for processing.
Mr Pinder said he was able to secure the release of more than 140 people who had been wrongfully detained.
However, Mr Gibson said that this move was necessary because of the number of fraudulant documents that officials have observed in the public domain.
“Last week a Haitian in Miami was convicted of having hundreds of fraudulent Bahamian work permits. When you are moving quickly through the community it is difficult to ascertain if a permit is genuine or not,” the minister said. Mr Gibson said if the Miami incident had not happened the massive roundup would not have taken place in the way in which it did.
“I think that they did not want to take any chances,” the minister said.
Mr Pinder arranged a Bahamas Fast Ferries charter to take the Haitians back to their homes in North Eleuthera at a cost of $9,000. He also put them up for the night at the Parliament Hotel.
Mr Pinder said that the Commissioner of Police can expect to receive a bill from him very shortly to be reimbursed for his expenses.
Mr Gibson said that government will pay the expenses of the return trip to Eleuthera. Nowadays, he said, documents can be created that look authentic.
By RUPERT MISSICK Jr Chief Reporter
