Stop in the name of Jesus!- Jamaica Council of Churches calls on Jamaican Govt to halt TCN deal

The issue of Third Country Nationals (TCN) and the deal made between Jamaica and the United States continues to concern many and is a hot topic of discussion.

Ambassador Audrey Marks has said she would never propose that 10,000 criminals receive sanctuary in Jamaica and that the uproar is due to a conflation of issues.

Civil society, business groups, the church, and the media have said there has been a lack of transparency surrounding the TCM MOU, and it still remains largely unexplained.

The Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) has issued a statement on the TCN agreement with the U.S., which reads: “Why are persons being sent to third-party countries like Jamaica rather than their country or origin? Wouldn’t direct repatriation to their homeland have made more sense? If the ruling authorities harbour genuine, legitimate safety or security concerns about the deportee’s home country, how is sending them to a third country going to help mitigate that situation? 

“Shifting human displacement from one shore to another does nothing to heal the root causes of regional and global instability. It merely outsources the logistical burden.”

It is not known at this time whether the Jamaican Government has responded to the Jamaica Council of Churches’ call to halt the TCN MOU.

Ambassador Marks has again stressed that she had nothing to do with the TCN MOU and that the matter is between the U.S. Government and Jamaica’s Ministry of  Foreign Affairs.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has yet to fulsomely address the matter and come before the country to explain how exactly this agreement will work in practical terms.

The Jamaica Council of Churches continued: “For decades our successive administrations have pleaded a lack of systemic capacity, fiscal room and infrastructural resources to justify the rapid, unceremonious repatriation of spontaneous regional arrivals- most notably our brothers and sisters fleeing the harrowing humanitarian catastrophe in nearby Haiti. We have been told repeatedly that Jamaica cannot absorb the vulnerable at our gates. Yet when a proposal is brokered with a global superpower, our structural incapacity is suddenly set aside to accommodate a specialised transit apparatus.

“To turn away the desperate seafaring migrant while opening an official transit pipeline for a superpower’s unwanted populations is to be found fundamentally wanting in the scales of justice. We cannot trade our moral birthright for political expediency or foreign assistance dividends.”

The Jamaica Council of Churches wants the Prime Minister to halt any further dialogue with U.S. authorities on the TCN agreement and come before the country, revealing the contents of the MOU and what it means for Jamaica.