Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley slammed the U.S. State Department for T&T’s ranking in their 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report, which placed the country at Tier 2.
Rowley, speaking Friday at the opening ceremony for the last leg of phase one of the Chaguanas Traffic Alleviation Project, accused the U.S. of hypocrisy, given their own struggles with migrants.
“If I was marking their paper, what would I give them? They have the same problem that we have,” he said. “Thousands of migrants rushing your border wanting to come into your country because they see greener grass on your side than on their side. That is the number-one political issue in America.
“Their own people are telling you that those people, some of them are treated like dogs and cattle, children are dying at the border,” Rowley said. “Some of them are in cages. A hundred people in a room that was made for 10.”
He said the U.S. is no better off despite having a larger military and treasury: “How have they handled their situation better than ours?”
Rowley explained that Trinidad and Tobago maintained an open border with Venezuela up until Monday, allowing the migrants to come into the country for up to 90 days before returning to their country. A new visa policy went into effect but the details have not yet been made public.
The prime minister drew reference to the recently completed two-week registration of the Venezuelan migrants saying that we have treated them in the best way possible.
“A little Caribbean nation like Trinidad and Tobago, we have 15,000 Venezuelans authorized now to be within our borders and we treat them like human beings within Trinidad and Tobago,” he said.