Barefeet and cold, lit­tle Lu­cia Meza sat on the street hun­gri­ly lick­ing an emp­ty pack of bis­cuits while her moth­er tried to find ac­com­mo­da­tion for them to spend the night. The five-year-old child was among 105 peo­ple picked up by po­lice dur­ing a mas­sive crack­down on il­le­gal Venezue­lans on Wednes­day. Among those ar­rest­ed were four Venezue­lan po­lice of­fi­cers and a fire of­fi­cer.

Meza had been on a boat from Tu­cu­pi­ta with her moth­er and sev­er­al oth­er chil­dren since Tues­day night. They ar­rived at Beach Camp, Pa­lo Seco be­fore dawn. They walked for two miles to a for­est camp where they were round­ed up and ar­rest­ed by the po­lice. Thir­ty-five Venezue­lans were held at Erin, 58 at Beach Camp and 12 at Ce­dros.

Look­ing ha­rassed and scared, the Venezue­lans were tak­en to the Siparia Po­lice Sta­tion where they were in­ter­ro­gat­ed. They were re­leased from cus­tody around 5 pm af­ter get­ting an or­der of su­per­vi­sion clear­ance from the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion to stay un­til Ju­ly. How­ev­er, po­lice said more ar­rests are im­mi­nent.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]