Tonight, 14 Jamaicans, 11 adults and three children are on their way home after a hellish week of detention in Belize.
Last Friday night, they were intercepted near San Pedro Village, in Corozal, a few miles from the Mexican border. They were spotted by police as they travelled inside the back of a pick-up truck. When police stopped the truck, the driver ran into the nearby bushes, leaving them to fend for themselves.
They were charged initially with willfully supplying false declarations to an Immigration Officer upon arrival, but they were set free today.
The charge arose because they claimed to have hotel reservations but appeared to be heading north.
But, in court today, the charge was dropped and one of them men body spoke up saying he was looking forward to a vacation in Belize:
Fabian Wellington, Jamaican Detainee
"Because we have incarcerated from Friday and we are legally in the country. We are from one jail to another jail to another jail, okay and that feels so bad and it's a bad impact on Belize because we come here to see the zoo and all these things and I book a hotel and I don't go in there from I book it, okay So I don't know what's the outcome of this, right."
Reporter
"Okay, the people you are traveling with they are, your friends?..."
Fabian Wellington, Jamaican Detainee
"We all meet on the plane. I don't know one of those persons. This experience make me meet up with all of them and it was a good experience to meet those persons, because we all Jamaicans and all are nice persons."
Norman Rodriguez, Attorney
"Well, there was a withdrawal of the charges against them on the grounds that they would leave Belize. I guess I would consider it a fair exchange but my clients are not totally happy with the experience that they had because they believe that it should not have happened this way."
"We are looking at the essence of the judgment. I will break it down into small change for you. They're saying that they said something in their entry form that they filled out and sign that they did not live up to."
"I believe it had to do with the fact that they said that they had itineraries for rooms at different hotels in Belize here and at the cayes. and that when they were found within Belize, they were not at those places that they said that they would."
"Regardless of what, we believe that, I mean, as visitors, but more as Caricom residents, the are our brothers and sisters.
"The prosecutor from the Immigration Department says that will offer no evidence from any of the defendants, so they were freed and the matter was withdrawn against them. They are being freed try to get back to their respective homes."
After court, a police team escorted them to the Phillip Goldson International Airport where the two mothers will be reunited with their children after one week apart.
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