A 25-year-old Guyanese woman who walked out of Piarco International Airport in January 2020 without being screened at the immigration and Customs checkpoints has been fined $15,000 by an Arima magistrate.
Fathima Khan, 25, appeared virtually before Third Court magistrate Avion Gill on Wednesday, when she was sentenced.
On February 7, 2020, she pleaded guilty to the charge of eluding examination by an immigration officer, laid by Sgt Ajene Balewa.
It was the prosecution’s case that Khan disembarked from a Caribbean Airlines flight from Guyana on January 14, 2020, and walked out of the terminal building with someone’s assistance, evading immigration and bypassing Customs, and going straight to an awaiting vehicle.
On January 17, 2020, Special Operations Response Team officers arrested Khan at a house in Carapichaima. Her passport showed no arrival stamps to show she had arrived in Trinidad and Tobago.
She and another person were arrested and taken to the Arima police station. A report was made to the immigration investigations department and after investigations Khan was charged.
In sentencing her, Gill said the court had to send a “clear message” that it will not tolerate the breaching of TT’s immigration laws.
“One only has to look at the media reports to know we have a real and present threat of persons who breach the borders of TT.”
She said Khan’s entry into TT, bypassing the two security checkpoints, was a real threat to national security.
‘She would not have been assessed by the authorities,” she said.
Gill also said she considered her guilty plea, the 27 days Khan spent in custody, her age, the fact that she assisted the police when she was arrested, and that there was no precedent for this kind of offence. So she was not going to impose a term of imprisonment.
Instead, she fined Khan $15,000.
Under the Immigration Act, the offence carries a maximum sentence of $50,000 and three years in prison.
Gill also said Khan would not have been operating from a position of ignorance of the process when entering TT, or naivety, as she was a haggler who was accustomed to travelling and would have known what to expect.
She said she also did not accept as a mitigating factor that Khan simply followed someone out of the airport and was acting without thought.
Khan was allowed three months to pay the fine or, if she fails to do so will serve 18 months’ simple imprisonment.
Two other people who were also charged will return to court in September.
Deputy DPP George Busby prosecuted and Renuka Rambhajan represented Khan.
The post Guyanese woman fined for evading Immigration at Piarco appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
