DEPORTEES STRANDED! No family, friends to meet some kicked out of the UK....32 Jamaicans, including six women, were sent back on a chartered flight.

BY KIMONE FRANCIS Observer staff reporter francisk@jamaicaobserver.com  Thursday, March 09, 2017  

A large crowd gathered yesterday outside Harmon Barracks at Mobile Reserve, family members among them, awaiting the release of just over 30 Jamaicans who were deported from the United Kingdom.

A woman attempts to block Television Jamaica’s Krista
 Campbell from interviewing her relative who was yesterday
deported from the United Kingdom.

Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Area 4, Devon Watkis, told journalists at a press briefing on the compound that 32 Jamaicans, including six women, were sent back on a chartered flight. He said a woman, who was identified by the UK press only as ‘Sophia’, who had been separated from her three children since October, was not among those deported because of “litigating” issues.

Laffihama Morgan is interviewed by
 journalists while feeding his
son Raheem. Morgan 

The deportees arrived in the island shortly before 1:00 pm at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston where they were met by a team from the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency, a team from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a group from non-governmental organisations, before being transported to Harmon Barracks.

Yesterday, some family members waited with bated breath to see relatives, some of whom left the island as children, while others, who had no ties to the island, were met by hustlers waiting to provide phone calls and accommodation. Sherene Dean-Collins, her son Laffihama Morgan and his infant son Raheem were among those waiting outside the facility where the deportees were being processed. The woman and her son were awaiting the release of her younger son, François Somers.

A woman assists a deportee as she leaves
 Mobile Reserve in Kingston yesterday
 after being processed.
(Photos: Michael Gordon) 

A deportee from the
 United Kingdom makes his
 way to relatives outside the
 gates of Harmon
 Barracks after he was
 processed yesterday..

Dean-Collins told the Jamaica Observer that her son was being deported because of immigration issues. Those issues, the Observer learnt, involved domestic violence. Somers, 22, left Jamaica when he was eight years old.

“Mi nuh really feel nuh way about it. A fi dem country and a fi dem rights. Mi nuh really know how the immigration system stay so we have to just work with what dem do. Him never get a criminal case yet enuh but dem just a deport him,” Morgan said, adding that his main concern is that his brother does not know Jamaica.

Others who had no family members or friends to meet them were perplexed about their next move. Some were assisted by a woman who gave her name as ‘Tasha’. She told journalists that she has been assisting deportees for the past five years. more