Allen Chastanet
Prime Minister Allen Chastanet has broken his silence on the criminal deportation issue, apologizing for mistakenly quoting statistics about criminal deportees.
Chastanet had said on the sidelines of a recent regional conference that some 800 criminal deportees were sent back to this country by the United States in one year.
However, the US embassy responded to the prime minister’s statement clarifying that statistics indicate that the total number of deportees returned to Saint Lucia in the last five years was less than 100.
The US embassy went on to state that only eight persons were deported here last year.
“In fact I said there was a year in which there was as many as 800. So I apologize for that error. I don’t want it to be the issue at hand here, when there is a much bigger issue in play, which has to do with security in Saint Lucia.”,” Chastanet told members of the media outside his office Wednesday.
Chastanet said the issue of deportees has been an issue long before he became prime minister and it continues to be an issue, which he sought to highlight.
“Is it fair that people who have committed crimes in America are going to be deported back here with no assistance? The Caribbean is struggling. And one of the things we forget is not just the land space of the islands but what we call the economic zone. If we take the economic zone with all these islands put together, it’s a huge mass of land we are asking to secure, and America is vulnerable and we are vulnerable and we cannot do it alone,” he explained.
The prime minister also declared that his statement on criminal deportation was in no way to condemn the US, noting that if something is affecting a sovereign state, they must be able to voice that concern.
Chastanet also believes that Caribbean governments need to change their strategy and approach to the US, asserting that the region is no longer speaking as “one voice.”
He has been criticised for his statement, as some readers believe he grossly overstated the problem and have been calling on the prime minister to justify his comments with reliable fact checking.
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