Email

Print

For three weeks we’ve been telling you about the nine Chinese nationals who came into Belize without visas, and have been detained at the Hattieville Prison. Well, tonight, finally, we can report that they’re gone. After two weeks when they should have gone, but somehow never did, they were loaded up at the Hattieville Prison today and sent, not to the airport, but to the western border.

Director of Immigration Gareth Murillo confirmed that they were taken from the prison at 3:00 pm and loaded into a van headed for Guatemala. He told us that the persons responsible for them in Belize provided a travel itinerary with a travel destination in China and confirmation from Guatemalan authorities that they would be allowed to fly out from that country back to China. With that they were sent to the western border this evening along with a witness from the Ministry of National Security where Murillo tells us that at 5:00, the handover to the Guatemalans was underway.

So that’s it for them and the episode, but the effects were significant: first the immigration officers assigned to the airport when the group arrived were rotated off that duty, second, it was established that false visa stamps were on their passports in Cuba, thirdly, there is now a new procedure – we are told – to deal with Chinese arrivals at the airport when the Cuba flight comes in on Wednesday.

7News has confirmed that five more Chinese nationals arrived yesterday but a senior officer was there to process them, and according to a senior official in the ministry, they held legitimately approved visas and there was nothing irregular about their arrivals.