Kelly Jobity, 19, a drummer with the Deliverance Temple Church band of Port of Spain has been detained at the JFK airport and is expected to be deported today, relatives said...
News Source: Trinidad Express
They claimed that Jobity was handcuffed to a chair in a room at the airport and has not been allowed to change her clothes or leave the room.
Yesterday immigration officials at JFK could not be contacted.
Jobity spent five months in the US last year and returned to Trinidad in early December.
She left Piarco around 7 a.m. on Saturday aboard a chartered flight on Trans Meridian and landed in New York around midday.
The Laventille teen is among a group of 25 Trinidadians expected to attend an international church convention in Westchester County, New York, next Sunday.
Jobity's mother, Linda, left Trinidad yesterday morning for the same convention on the same airline and was cleared by immigration.
Jobity's father Gerald said: "They have no right to shackle my daughter like a slave. She is a little child not a terrorist."
He said the family will take up the matter legally.
Candace Lewis who was to have picked up Jobity at the airport, said she waited for more than three hours before she was given any information about her.
Lewis is the daughter of Dr Michael Lewis, pastor of the Deliverance Temple in Port of Spain. Jobity was expected to stay with the Lewis family in Westchester.
"When I did not see her I went to information and they told me to contact an airline representative," Lewis told the Express in a telephone interview from Westchester yesterday.
"The airline rep had already left and I went back to information who called the immigration."
Lewis said immigration officials did not give her any information at first but when she tried them back three hours later she was informed that Jobity was being sent back to Trinidad.
Lewis said no reasons were given why Jobity was being deported. Around 6 p.m. last Saturday Jobity telephoned Lewis at her home.
Jobity told Lewis that she was being sent back because she entered the US too soon after her first trip last year.
They reportedly allowed her the telephone call so that Lewis could inform Jobity's relatives in Trinidad that she was being deported.
Jobity was expected to leave JFK on Saturday night but did not.
"She was crying and she told me they chained her to a chair and she was being kept in a dark room," Lewis said.
Lewis said up to the time she spoke to Jobity she had not given anything to eat.
Around 8.46 a.m. yesterday Jobity telephoned Lewis again and told her that there was a mix up with the flight and she was expected to fly out today.
There is a possibility however , that Jobity will not get a return flight until Wednesday and will remain detained by immigration at the airport.
Lewis said she spoke to an immigration officer yesterday who told her they could not discuss the reasons why Jobity was being detained and deported.
Lewis told the Express she was denied a chance to visit Jobity at the airport or carry food or clothes for her.
"So for a second night they are keeping this young girl chained to a chair, in the same dirty clothes and they have not allowed her to take bath," Lewis said.
"We are very upset. Kelly is not a terrorist. She was coming for a church convention. She is only nineteen and for her whole life she has been with the church.
