Golding rejects Chang migration pact as unlike past security MOUs

People’s National Party (PNP) President and Opposition Leader Mark Golding has separated two very different kinds of government agreements, describing a 2004 security memorandum signed under Dr Peter Phillips as standard practice while condemning a pact Deputy Prime Minister Dr Horace Chang signed days earlier as a first-of-its-kind migration arrangement.

Golding told reporters at a PNP press conference on Thursday that the recent deal would make Jamaica a receptacle for migrants another nation does not want to keep. He pointed to the United Kingdom’s contested Rwanda asylum programme and continuing litigation in United States Federal Court to push back against claims that Chang’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) simply builds on security frameworks put in place by earlier administrations.

Chang, who also serves as minister of national security and peace, confirmed on Wednesday that the Government had signed an MOU under which Jamaica would receive third-country nationals from the US.

Golding argued the arrangement loads immigration duties onto Jamaica that have no bearing on the country’s own security needs. He warned it sets a hazardous and legally uncertain path in foreign relations.

“I think the ones that were entered into back then, when Dr [Peter] Phillips was minister of national security, related to the sharing of information for persons who were suspects for serious criminal activities and facilitated joint intelligence sharing and so on,” he said. He described that type of pact as a tool countries use to shield themselves from organised crime.

Phillips signed the highly classified MOUs in 2004 while serving as minister of national security in the P.J. Patterson-led PNP administration. Those agreements among Jamaica, the US, and the UK centred on joint intelligence work, wiretapping rules, and intercepting communications to fight transnational narcotics trafficking, gun-running, and money laundering.

The 2004 documents later drew heavy public scrutiny during a 2011 commission of enquiry into 2010 operations to capture then-fugitive Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. Chang said in 2019 that the Supreme Court had in 2018 ruled them "unsatisfactory and inadequate" and therefore they were unlawful. The PNP has maintained that no court ruling has declared them "unlawful".

“We’re not denying that MOUs related to security have existed in the past. Yes, they have, and they still exist, I'm fairly sure,” Golding said. “But nothing like this exists, though, where you're taking persons who have no connection with Jamaica, and you're receiving them because another country doesn't want to have them.”

He said Washington holds both the legal power and the resources to manage its migration issues through domestic law and existing international commitments.

“In this instance, what is being sought is to bring Jamaica and other countries into the affairs of another country, essentially, by saying, ‘Please take these people from us and you deal with them’. That's unprecedented. We've never had an MOU dealing with that; we've never had an arrangement like that,” Golding said.

“This third-country arrangement is under judicial scrutiny in the US as we speak. That matter is unresolved, and in fact, to the best of my knowledge, the only ruling of the Federal Court that exists now is a ruling saying that it's unlawful, and that that is being appealed.

“So, this is an unprecedented situation, a very peculiar situation, and it's where we find ourselves at the current time.”