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Professor Ivelaw Griffith and That's a Rap host Earl Moxam on Sunday, February 2, 2025
A regional security scholar is supporting the concerns raised by Prime Minister Andrew Holness about risks associated with the return of some Jamaicans deported from the United States.
More than five thousand Jamaicans (5,120), illegally in the US, are already slated to be sent home under the enhanced schedule being pursued by the new Trump administration.
Late last week, the Jamaican Prime Minister noted that some of those to be deported might return with criminal intentions but warned them against acting on those instincts.
In response, US based security expert, Professor Ivelaw Griffith affirmed on Sunday that this was a well grounded concern, terming it "both reasonable and necessary."
Managing deportation on a large scale will be quite a challenge, he said, particularly in respect of those among the deportees "who are not necessarily skilled or interested in working in the areas where there are jobs... in their native land."
Crime is "a significant concern," he said, noting that "many of the people who will be returned committed some form of criminality in the United States, and so there is already a definition of their identity as criminals," plus the fact that some of them, though born in Jamaica, may have been away from their homeland for many years and therefore disconnected from the society they are returning to.
Professor Griffith cautioned as well that "the little over five thousand that were identified on that list is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg... because there are a number of people who are not necessarily going to be on that list, but may come back voluntarily because they recognise their own status is a problem."
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