Seven Sri Lankans who came to Turks and Caicos Islands on an illegal sloop from Haiti in 2019 and are now seeking political asylum here, have been granted a total of USD$532,500 by the Supreme Court for false imprisonment. This story was first reported by The TCI SUN newspaper.
The Immigration Department and Attorney General’s Chambers admitted that the seven Sri Lankan men were illegally detained at the Immigration Detention Centre for around 320 days.
The Sri Lankans had asked to be compensated for the damages that they sustained during their time at a daily rate of $350 per day, while the government asked for a daily rate of $200 per day. The court settled for $200 for each day of illegal detention.
Court documents obtained by The SUN revealed that four of the Sri Lankans were awarded $76,500 each and the other three were awarded $75,700 each.
The seven Sri Lankans were among a group of 29 from that country who were nabbed on the sloop along with several Haitians and a man from India on October 19, 2019. They were held at the Immigration Centre in Five Cays from then until August 24th, 2020, when the Supreme Court ruled that they must be released from that facility because, among other things, they had applied for political asylum.
Through their lawyers, Tim Prudhoe and Yuri Saunders, who are representing the men for free, they sued the then Director of Immigration, Derek Been, the Minister of Border Control and the Attorney General, and sought damages for false imprisonment, breaches to their constitutional rights and exemplary damages.
It was confirmed that several Sri Lankans have already left Turks and Caicos Islands and returned to their native countries and did not file a claim for illegal detention, otherwise the payout would have been higher.
The Sri Lankans had arrived in Turks and Caicos Islands as part of an international human smuggling operation that included The Bahamas, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Canada, and USA.
On May 17th, 2021, the mastermind of the smuggling operation, a Canadian national, Sri Kajamukam Chelliah, who extradited from Turks and Caicos Islands, was sentenced in America to 32 months in prison for conspiracy to bring undocumented immigrants to the United States for private financial gain in connection with his role in a scheme to smuggle undocumented immigrants from Sri Lanka through the Caribbean and into the United States.
Chelliah admitted to conspiring with others to facilitate the travel of undocumented immigrants from Sri Lanka through Haiti, Turks and Caicos Islands, and The Bahamas to the United States from on or about July 1, 2019, through on or about Oct. 10, 2019.
