BELMOPAN, Tues. Mar. 29, 2022– In today’s meeting of the Senate, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, and Immigration, Hon. Eamon Courtenay addressed the increasing number of undocumented migrants entering the country, remarking that Belize currently has a “serious migration problem.” According to Hon. Courtenay, to solve this problem and reduce the number of illegal migrants entering the country, as well as the number of trafficked persons and persons using Belize as a transit point, the ministry will be enforcing local immigration laws. He added that the Ministry will be working diligently to reduce the flow of illegal migrants into Belize—stating firmly that “the laws of Belize will be applied.”
“Efforts—and I’m going to be clear and unapologetic—efforts continue up until this very morning to attempt to undermine the laws of this country. People pretending that they are representing people who want refugee status, people pretending that they’re representing people who should not be repatriated as the law requires. Madam President, there is a serious migration problem in this country,” stated Minister Courtenay.
A huge part of the problem, says Hon. Courtenay, is the fact that persons continue to arrive in Belize posing as asylum seekers before fleeing to other nations shortly after.
The Ministry’s crackdown on immigration recently resulted in the detention of a group of nine Cuban nationals—seven adults and two minors—who were detained after being caught attempting to enter the country undocumented on February 15. This week, after having spent 50 days at the Kolbe Foundation, those persons narrowly escaped deportation and would have been placed on a flight to Cuba had the Human Rights Commission of Belize not intervened on the basis of the “Great Writ” of Habeas Corpus, a fundamental constitutional right that protects persons against unlawful imprisonment by demanding they be subjected to a fair trial in court before any action is taken against them.
Previously, in January, AMANDALA reported on the authorities’ initial decision to deny entry to 37 passengers who arrived at the Philip Goldson International Airport aboard a COPA Airlines flight. While some of those passengers were eventually repatriated, eight of them, all Venezuelan nationals, were allowed to stay after stating that they wished to seek refugee status. Those persons never made it to the Immigration Department to apply for asylum, however, and reports quickly surfaced that they had left the country en route to Mexico. During his address in the Senate, Minister Courtenay suggested that incidents such as these have been continuously occurring.
These two incidents and the countless others that have occurred, however, are the telltale signs of not only a migration problem but issues that are much larger, which according to UNICEF include poverty, violence, climate change, and extreme weather events, all of which have prompted persons to leave their home countries.
In the past few years, Belize and other nations have seen an uptick in migrants as persons flee their homes in search of a better quality of life, in search of better opportunities, or out of a fear of persecution, with most of them headed to North America. As a result of this, many organizations, including the Center for Migration Studies of New York and the American Immigration Council, have begun to propose that governments pursue alternative—and more humane—approaches to tackling the migration issue rather than resorting to the detention and subsequent deportation of undocumented immigrants who are often in need of protection, as they are the most at risk of being trafficked or exploited.