Nassau, Bahamas - The following is a communication by Fred Mitchell, MP, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration to the House of Assembly on April 22, 2015:
I wanted to inform the public that we have been
dealing with a deluge of illegal migrants who have breached our borders over
the past week. We are working to expedite their immediate return to
Haiti. Last week ten people were intercepted at Inagua and are being processed
for return.
In Bimini late
Wednesday night 15th April
168 people were intercepted by the Royal Bahamas Defence Force. They were
brought to Nassau on Friday 17th April by the Royal Bahamas Defence Force HMBS
Durward Knowles.
168 people: 103 males 28 females 37 children. The
children housed in a safe house not in the detention centre. Some of them were babes in arms.
On Monday 20th April 41 people were
repatriated to Haiti in two flights at cost of 16,000 dollars.
Two additional flights are being arranged. We have to use a foreign carrier because the
Bahamasair jet does not have the nav aids to fly into Port Au Prince without a
waiver from the civil aviation authorities.
Those flights will take 145 people each at a cost of $67,265. This excludes the cost of housing 16 officers
in Miami and their return transport to Nassau.
At the moment there are 318 people in the detention
centre. 285 are Haitian. There are 30 in the safe house. 20 are children and 10 adults.
I bring this to the attention of the country to show
that this continues to be a vexing, consistent and expensive issue.
Instead of spending that money on docks, on roads,
on airports, we have to spend it trying to send illegal migrants back
home. We are trying to break the back
of a continuing criminal enterprise. Increasingly
there are reports of small boast leaving his country taking illegal migrants
into the United States. This then is a
national security issue. This country
should not be staging ground for illegal activity.
We continue to work with all Border States with a
view to stopping this illegal migration and bringing it under some control.
I want the people of Eleuthera to know that the
request about the situation in Eleuthera is known to us and as soon as
resources permit we intend to move to bring some relief to the situation.
