“Abandoned by the country of his birth – The Tribune tracks down ‘missing’ Jean Rony to Haitian village” – The Tribune

Excerpt from this article; “JEAN Rony Jean-Charles, the Bahamian born man, who according to relatives, went ‘missing’ after three months at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre, has been found in a North Haitian slum.

The 35-year old C V Bethel Senior High School alumnus was tracked down to a small village on the outskirts of Port-de-Paix, Haiti by The Tribune and his attorney after a social media campaign was launched by relatives who feared he would be forever lost in the poverty-stricken nation.

He told The Tribune he was sent to ‘hell’ by The Bahamas government, and each day since has been a struggle to survive, both physically and mentally.

Mr. Jean-Charles was arrested in early September by immigration officers, and an application contesting the lawfulness of his detention was filed on November 29.

In an affidavit, his sister Clotilde Jean-Charles’ claimed she took documents proving his birth to the Department of Immigration at the request of officials, only to be repeatedly told that he matter was under investigation.”

I am left to wonder how did this situation go wrong and further, how often has it gone wrong in the past.

When I worked as a project manager for a construction company, there were several occasions when my work force was depleted during immigration raids when person suspected of being illegal migrants were apprehended and detained until someone was able to produced their ‘papers’; many of them having applications into the Ministry of Immigration and only having a receipt of sorts to show, only then were they released; so what exactly happened in this case with Bahamian born Rony Jean-Charles?

I have seen “serious” posts on the proliferation of sex dolls, some questioning whey Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis was named ‘Man of the Year’ and a variety of other topics that should not be of great concern, in my opinion, but very few on how do we prevent this unwanted situation from happening again.

If one were to work on the presumption that Rony Jen-Charles was actually born here and went through the process of applying for citizenship on his 18^th birthday, if he was born to parents that were illegal migrants themselves, then one must ask the question why was he not afforded every opportunity to prove his citizenship?

 Is there an abuse of power at the Immigration Department/Defense Force level which needs to be corrected?  Did his lawyer represent his best interest when it was discovered that he was indeed ‘missing’? 

Why was the writ if habeas corpus filed so late and after so much drama?

But my focus here is more on the Department of Immigration’s role in this entire ordeal; I find it totally unacceptable that in this day and age that one would be picked up and deported in this manner without what appears to be the total lack of due process.  Would it be acceptable for a Bahamian college student  to be picked up by US immigration at Wal-Mart and processed and sent back home due to the fact that they did not have any identification on them; this may not be the most ideal parallel to draw but I am certain that most will get my point.

So in this digital age why would this be a problem and why does it seem that our immigration department is overwhelmed on the whole?

Does the entire system in need a total purging; stripping down it’s bear skeleton to re-built so that it can at least appear to function properly?

If the fact bear out in this case, it just an unwanted embarrassment.

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