The mother of the 15-year-old Venezuelan boy who was awarded $2.4 million in damages after being detained at the heliport as an illegal immigrant for 450 days is now in the process of filing for a judicial review of the heliport, calling for it to be shut down as a detention centre for immigrants.

Gerald Ramdeen, attorney representing the mother and child revealed this to Newsday in a phone conversation on Sunday. He said the mother has called for the closure of the heliport coming out of the evidence that came out of the boy's case. "The evidence that came out of this case made it clear that this place was unfit to detain people, let alone children," Ramdeen said.

On Friday, Justice Margaret Mohammed ordered that the defendants in the case, the Chief Immigration Officer and the Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago pay the boy the sum of $900,000 in general damages, $500,000 as aggravated damages and a million dollars in exemplary damages.

In 2020, the boy, 13 at the time, left Venezuela in a pirogue with the hope of seeking asylum in TT and arrived on November 17, where he and his mother were held. They were escorted out of TT waters by the Coast Guard in the vessel they came. However on November 24, they attempted again to enter TT, and were again arrested, this time by the police.

The boy was first detained under a quarantine order in connection with covid19 at a health facility then at Erin Police Station and finally at the heliport.

In December 2020 he commenced constitutional proceedings seeking interim relief which restrained the State from taking steps to remove him and his mother from TT during the quarantine period. His quarantine ended on December 15 but he remained in detention at the heliport because of ongoing constitutional proceedings which prevented the state from removing him and the mother from TT, but the same was not issued to the boy.

The Chaguaramas Heliport was declared an immigration centre by then Minister of National Security, Stuart Young, in 2020 at the height of the covid19 pandemic. Young declared the heliport as a detention centre for the duration of the pandemic.

The World Health Organisation declared that covid19 was no longer a global public health emergency on May 5, 2023, but, in contradiction to Young's orders, people were still being detained at the centre.

Ramdeen told Newsday that in July 10, 2023, when about 200 undocumented Venezuelan nationals were arrested at a St James bar, they were detained at the heliport in contrast to the specification of Young's orders that the facility was to be used as a detention centre only for the period of the pandemic. On July 25, current Minister of National Security, Fitzgerald Hinds, continued the establishment of the heliport as a detention centre until otherwise declared.

Ramdeen said the heliport continued to operate as a detention centre under Hinds' orders, meaning that several children continued to be taken to the centre. "When they hold minors in these exercises they still take minors there. They carry child