GOVERNMENT will seek the assistance of the United States government to repatriate all the illegal nationals of Africa who are being held in detention at the Maximum Security Prison (MSP) at Golden Grove, Arouca.

There are about 12 of them.

The move comes in the aftermath of the fiasco at Caracas International Airport last Saturday, when local Immigration officers had to abort a move to deport the first batch of seven Nigerians to their homeland after they attempted to seek asylum on their arrival in Venezuela.

Pandemonium broke out after the deportees disembarked from a commercial flight from Trinidad to Caracas intransit to Madrid, Spain, on their way to Lagos, Nigeria.

While on the tarmac to board an Iberian Airways flight, they started to shout, “Asylum, Asylum”, and refused to get on board the flight.

When they eventually got on board, the Nigerians became unruly and again started to shout, “Asylum, Asylum.”

The captain of the Iberian aircraft refused to take the Nigerians on board since, he said, they would pose a risk to other passengers and the flight.

With the assistance of Venezuela National Guard officers, the unruly Nigerians were removed and taken into custody.

The Nigerians had one-way tickets to their homeland, forcing the accompanying officers to send an SOS to National Security Minister Martin Joseph and Chief Immigration Officer Herman Browne for assistance in returning the deportees to Trinidad.

An aircraft from the Trinidad and Tobago Air Guard was dispatched to Caracas to bring back the Nigerians early Sunday morning.

A Defence Force spokesman told TnT Mirror the deportees came back on one flight.

They were whisked away under heavy police guard and taken to the MSP.

The deportees were on the receiving end of some “body music” for their behaviour.

The Nigerians had, for some weeks, been protesting their long detention in prison, threatening to go on a hunger strike.

Some were even contemplating suicide to press the authorities to send them back home.

The Nigerians claimed they had been languishing in jail for more than a year and their only crime was being in the country illegally.

Chairman of the Emancipation Committee Khafra Kambon was in the forefront highlighting the plight of the Africans in jail and had even suggested that they be given work permits and allowed to stay in TnT.

An Immigration source said when the Nigerian High Commission was contacted to inform them that the deportees came back, an official replied: “Let them rot in jail.”

Under the Basdeo Panday Administration in 2001, the government had to solicit help from the United States Government to repatriate 23 illegal nationals of Africa who were in jail.

The then Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and National Security Minister Joseph Theodore were successful in getting a US military aircraft to fly to Trinidad to take the illegal immigrants back to their homeland. The special aircraft with US Marshals, used for the deportation of illegal immigrants, was on its way to take deportees from America to Africa and made a stop in Trinidad.

Kumar Sirjusingh, who was Chief Immigration Officer at the time, told Mirror, that since his department was experiencing problems to deport the illegal immigrants because no foreign country wanted to give them intransit visas the government had to seek assistance from the United States.

He said local Immigration officers also went on the flight to ensure the operation went smoothly.

Sirjusingh said eight years ago the TnT Government was advised by France, the United States, Spain and England that illegal African nationals would not be granted intransit visas because of their unwillingness to return to their homeland. There are also fears when they touch foreign soil they would want to seek asylum -- just as what occurred in Venezuela.