On March 26 Donald Trump's Homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, visited the high security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who were allegedly gang members living in the US were deported to. Prisoners were lined up by guards near the front of their caged cell and ordered to remove their T-shirts. Those bare-chested prisoners served as the backdrop for a propaganda video recorded by Kristi Noem. She threatened "know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people".
Among those men who Trump's administration deported for being an alleged gang member was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of the US married to an American woman and father to their disabled child. He'd lived in the USA since 2011. He had no criminal record. The man was seized by American officials, held in detention without legal basis, then forcibly transported to the El Salavadorean high security prison which Noem visited.
The Trump administration admitted his deportation was "an administrative error" but claimed they could do nothing about it since the man was no longer under US jurisdiction.
Human rights organisations denounced Kristi Noem for using those El Salvador prisoners as "a cinematographic space". She was condemned for her "typical gross and cruel display of political theatre that we have come to expect from the Trump administration". That "administrative error" was a measure of the glaring incompetence and amateurism of Trump's administration. It's also a dire warning of the dangers of lawlessness and fecklessness. A judge ordered the flight carrying those deportees to turn back to the US. The Trump administration defied the court. That plane landed in El Salvador and those deportees were transferred to that high security prison.
Our own homeland security minister, Byron Camilleri, appears to share the same penchant for "cruel displays of political theatre" as Kristi Noem. He too has been an avid sharer of images of detainees on Facebook. In one particularly distasteful post, Camilleri uploaded an image of a black man in handcuffs wearing sandals in pouring rain being manhandled by a police officer. In the same post he uploaded an image of police officers with dogs ready for action. He shared a photo of black men in matching fluorescent green tops being escorted up the stairs of the airport to be deported. He triumphantly posted photos of bulldozers demolishing "illegal structures" where irregular migrants had allegedly been housed.
Byron's police force, so adept at overlooking multi-million euro frauds, has been regularly updating us about the latest batch of illegal migrants they arrested. Their utter incompetence was manifest in their latest press statement on the pulizija.gov.mt website - "Continues (sic) inspection in connection with irregular migration". You can't even trust Angelo Gafa's force to get a headline right. The police proudly announced they "carried out coordinated inspections in relation to irregular migration on public transport and in Marsa and Paceville".
They arrested 35 allegedly irregular migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Ghana, Brazil, Mali, Nepal, Pakistan, Nigeria, Niger, Gambia, Sudan and Ivory Coast. The police reassured the public that those men would be held in detention until returned to their country of origin. If Byron Camilleri thinks that repeated press statements about more and more irregular migrants being arrested reassures the public he's seriously deluded. Minister Camilleri has been bragging for years about his "strategy built on prevention, return and relocation". He's been Minister for years. If the police keep arresting irregular migrants from all around the world, clearly his strategy of prevention has utterly failed.
The Minister's bragging posts and the police's self-congratulatory press statements raise even more concerns. How come the Prime Minister keeps boasting that he's managed to stop irregular immigration into the country and yet the police keep arresting hundreds of irregular migrants on a regular basis? Robert Abela told us the boats have stopped coming. So how are all these irregular migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Ghana, Brazil, Mali, Nepal, Pakistan, Nigeria, Niger, Gambia, Sudan, Ivory Coast, India, Turkey, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Togo, Bangladesh getting into the country?
Didn't Robert Abela insist that Colonel Alex Dalli is performing 'miracles' on migration? Didn't Abela prevent people coming into the country illegally? Isn't that Byron Camilleri's job? Judging by the number of irregular migrants the police keep arresting and deporting Camilleri isn't very good at his job. He's either letting in people into the country who shouldn't be here or else he's just letting those whose legal stay has expired remain here.
While Minister Camilleri tries to score brownie points with the electorate by bragging of his police force's arrests and detentions, he's really exposing his own incompetence. If he did his job properly, the police wouldn't have to waste their time hanging around on bus stops to try and catch some of the thousands of illegal migrants in this country.
Byron Camilleri's ineptitude was dramatically highlighted when a Turkish Airlines plane made an emergency stop in Malta because of a medical emergency. While the Armed forces and immigration officials waited for the sick passenger to disembark from the front door of the aircraft, four Moroccans opened the rear door, jumped onto the runway and simply ran off, vaulting over the perimeter fence. Two of them were eventually caught and deported. The other two are still on the run 4 months later.
Byron Camilleri's defence of the comical events at the airport was "the situation was very dangerous...an aeroplane was moving,.... I think no one is asking the AFM to risk their lives in this way, soldiers would have risked their lives had they chased those men on the runway". Even more hilarious was his next excuse - "security measures are geared towards stopping people entering an airport rather than stopping them getting out". So what happened to his strategy for preventing people entering the country illegally?
The Minister announced an investigation by the Aviation Security Department into the incident. What's happened with that investigation? And where are those two escaped Moroccans?