Opposition Leader Mark Golding has drawn a sharp distinction between the agreement signed by Dr Peter Phillips in 2004 and one inked just days ago by Deputy Prime Minister Dr Horace Chang, calling the former a routine national security arrangement, while slamming as “unprecedented” the other, which he says turns Jamaica into a dumping ground for migrants.
Drawing on the United Kingdom’s “unlawful” Rwanda asylum scheme and ongoing legal battles in the United States Federal Court, Golding countered claims that the agreement signed by Chang, who is also the minister of national security and peace, is an extension of security frameworks established under previous administrations.
On Wednesday, Chang confirmed that the Government had signed a memorandum of understanding for Jamaica to received third-country nationals from the US.
Golding, the People’s National Party (PNP) president, argued that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) saddles Jamaica with immigration responsibilities unrelated to the island. He said the agreement charts a dangerous and legally volatile course in international statecraft.
“I think the ones that were entered into back then, when Dr [Peter] Phillips was minister of national security, related to the sharing of information for persons who were suspects for serious criminal activities and facilitated joint intelligence sharing and so on,” he said, while speaking at a PNP press conference on Thursday.
He said the arrangement is one of the mechanisms states use to protect themselves against organised crime.
The highly classified MOUs were signed by Phillips during his tenure as minister of national security in the P.J. Patterson-led PNP administration.
These 2004 MOUs – originally signed between Jamaica, the US, and the UK – focused heavily on joint intelligence sharing, wiretapping frameworks, and intercepting communications to combat transnational narcotics trafficking, gun-running, and money laundering.
They became the focal point of public debate years later during a 2011 commission of enquiry into the 2010 operations to capture then-fugitive Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. They were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in 2018, leading to a restructured agreement in 2019.
“We’re not denying that MOUs related to security have existed in the past. Yes, they have, and they still exist, I’m fairly sure,” said Golding. “But nothing like this exists, though, where you’re taking persons who have no connection with Jamaica, and you’re receiving them because another country doesn’t want to have them.”
Golding said the United States has both the authority and the capacity to address its migration challenges through its domestic immigration laws and existing international obligations.
“In this instance, what is being sought is to bring Jamaica and other countries into the affairs of another country, essentially, by saying, ‘Please take these people from us and you deal with them’. That’s unprecedented. We’ve never had an MOU dealing with that; we’ve never had an arrangement like that,” said Golding.
“This third-country arrangement is under judicial scrutiny in the US as we speak. That matter is unresolved, and in fact, to the best of my knowledge, the only ruling of the Federal Court that exists now is a ruling saying that it’s unlawful, and that that is being appealed.
“So, this is an unprecedented situation, a very peculiar situation, and it’s where we find ourselves at the current time.”