Last week we told you about the plight of Carlos Higgins - a Jamaican who arrived in Belize two weeks ago and said he wanted to stay for 7 days at a hotel he'd booked in San Ignacio.
Immigration Authorities suspected that he was trying to head north and declared him a prohibited immigrant - even though, as CARICOM citizens, Jamaicans should enjoy freedom of movement within Belize.
He's gotten Hubert Elrington and Norman Rodriguez to fight his case. Last week they tried for a writ of heaves corpus in the Supreme Court - and that was rejected.
But, now they want to push for judicial review of how Higgins has been treated. Before they could do that though - he was arrested by police on Saturday and taken to Magistrate's court. Rodriguez expressed his anger with the arrest today outside the court:
Norman Rodriguez, Attorney for Jamaican
"And on Saturday, the 9th, the police went there without the assistance of an immigration officer and took him into custody at the Belama police station. He was transferred to the Queen Street police station and he was charged on that same day for wi llfully supplying false information to the immigration officer at the port of entry."
"They came before the court today, objected to bail and asked for the court to sign a removal order for him. The first thing that is that the the prosecutor said that the immigration director directed him to object to bail."
"That is crap, right? And it shows that there is some sort of malice or something else. Tell them to answer that for you. But I suggest at this point it is malicious. So I did my submission for bail and the court understood and ruled that the fact that they were able to release him into my custody for so many days, that shows that he's not of flight risk, which is the main ground for denying bail."
"So he got his bail for 5,000 and two sureties of 2,500. And the matter is adjourned until the 12th of February 2024, when we will come back for disclosure. And then we may we will set a day to get into the fight for this."
"But we are not going to let this go. We're going to hold on to it. We're doing this for all the other Caribbean people who come into Belize and are treated this way. I don't care what the issue is that they may have with him."
"At this point, we hate to see that we treat our own brothers and sisters from the other Caribbean countries like this. They should be no malice in doing a professional job."
As a condition of his bail, Higgins had to surrender his travel documents.
