Jamaica’s government is preparing the island for the first batch of non-national deportees the Trump administration is dumping on it and other Caribbean nations, with the foreign and security ministries telling locals to brace for 25 arrivals every two weeks.
The two ministries issued a joint statement late on Oct. 12 saying that all arrangements between Jamaica and the US regarding the so-called third country non-national deportation system had been finalized to the point where the first batch is headed to the northern Caribbean island nation as soon as this week.
Jamaica is so far the latest Caribbean Community nation to be targeted by the US. Belize, St. Lucia, Dominica, Guyana and St. Kitts confirmed to have received non-national deportees so far this year. And just this week, Antigua’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne made it clear that while his cabinet will likely bow to the unrelenting pressure from Washington to take in deportees who are not local people, none would set foot in the federation with Barbuda until funding and other issues are worked out.
“My understanding is that some countries may have accepted individuals before making arrangements and may not have gotten the support funding," he said on his weekend radio program last Saturday. "We want to make sure that we don’t make that mistake. The issue of compensation, they asked us to negotiate a separate agreement with them rather than put it in the agreement itself.”
St. Vincent and The Grenadines, which has had its own problems with gun crimes, says it wants nothing to do with the third country deportation system in any way.
The Jamaican ministries, meanwhile, have moved to assure islanders that these arrangements are not permanent.
“The government reiterates that this is a transit arrangement intended to facilitate the return of third-country nationals to their countries of origin or other receiving countries, with the support of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has been formally engaged to provide assistance to the individuals while they are in Jamaica and to facilitate their onward movement,” the release stated, noting that authorities had finalized the operating procedures governing the arrangement, including the necessary safeguards and parameters to ensure its implementation in a safe, orderly, and lawful manner. “The arrangement will not be funded by the government of Jamaica, that no third-country national with criminal antecedents will be permitted to transit through Jamaica under this program. Further, the number of persons anticipated will be a maximum of 25 persons per fortnight.”