| US Warned of Criminal Deportees Threat |
By BBC Caribbean
July 25, 2007
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| The United States is to provide millions of dollars to Caribbean governments to help them re-integrate their citizens deported from the US for criminal offences. |
This comes out of a Congressional hearing yesterday during which Caribbean and Latin American representatives outlined the impact the US criminal deportees program was having on their societies.
Leading the arguments for the Caribbean, Anne Marie Barnes, chief |
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| technical advisor at Jamaica's National Security Ministry, cautioned about the impact on security in the region. |
| "The mass deportation of criminal offenders top the Caribbean and Latin America constitutes one of the greatest threats to security in the region," she declared. |
| Washington is to sign an agreement with the Caribbean, possibly within the next two months, to share information on the deportees and to set up social programs for them in the region. |
| Ever since the US started the criminal deportees program started in 1997, Caribbean governments have been claiming that many of the deportees hardly had any previous ties with their countries - having lived most of their lives in the United States. |
| They have also been arguing that the deportees were contributing to a rise in crime in the region. |
| Now Washington says that within the next two months they'll sign an agreement with several Caribbean countries for a social re-integration program for them, based on a pilot program in Haiti. |
| An information-sharing program is also to be set up. |
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