ATTORNEYS for 13 minor Venezuelan children now intend to file legal proceedings in the High Court after the Privy Council has ruled that lawful authority cannot be derived from an unwritten policy as it relates to the detention of children.
Thursday's ruling of the Privy Council involves a Venezuelan mother and her teenage son who entered Trinidad and Tobago illegally with a larger group in November 2020. It will now serve as a guide for other cases involving the detention of illegal immigrants.
They were escorted out of TT by the Coast Guard but returned days later. They were held again and detained in quarantine and then on a deportation order. The mother also filed a constitutional motion contesting deportation. A deportation order was issued for her alone, but at the time it was argued by the State that the order also covered her child.
On the morning of the hearing of their expedited emergency hearing in the Privy Council on March 16, the National Security Minister issued a deportation order for the teenager. This has not been invalidated by the Privy Council which said that matter was for the local courts to decide. They also left it for the local courts to decide if the mother and son's period of detention is reasonable.
However, the London Law Lords of Lords Reed, Kitchin, Hamblen, Stephens, and Lloyd-Jones ruled the boy's detention from December 15, 2020, to March 16, 2022, was unlawful.
In their ruling, the apex court held that the correct interpretation of section 16 of the Immigration Act was that in the absence of a deportation order, there is no power to detain.
'Lawful authority to detain cannot be derived from the respondent's policy.'
According to the State, it is the ministry's policy that when a parent and child enter TT illegally, a deportation order against the parent is also taken as a deportation order against the child.
'A policy is not a legitimate external aid to statutory interpretation," the Privy Council said.
At the appeal, the mother and son's attorneys Gerald Ramdeen and Tom Richards advanced three grounds of appeal which challenged five points of law that had been struck down by the Appeal Court last July.
Although they were successful on only two grounds of appeal, the Privy Council overturned the Appellate Court's decision on the five points of law.
The unsuccessful ground dealt with a complaint that any detention must be deemed to be 'pending deportation.' The Privy Council did not agree, saying the existence of a temporary impediment to deportation - such as an injunction - did not mean there was no prospect of them being deported.
'There is every prospect of them being deported if the appellants' constitutional challenge is unsuccessful. As it stands, deportation is still pending, though it may not be imminent…
'It would be an absurd consequence if an injunction granted to prevent the implementation of a deportation order, by a side wind, also had the unintended consequence of bringing the detention of the individual to an end.
'The absurdity of
