Enforce First, Verify Never

 Enforce First, Verify Never

On Saturday, September 19, High Court Judge Gino Persaud arrived to travel to Kingston, Jamaica, for the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association Annual Conference — a gathering whose stated purpose is judicial independence, integrity, and good governance. He did not board. Airline staff informed him his United States visa was “under review” and advised him to contact the US Embassy.  His itinerary required transit through Miami; he was stopped in Georgetown, before ever leaving Guyanese soil. He rebooked on another carrier and reached Kingston a day late.

That a judge missed a day of a conference is not, by itself, the story. What is the story is the order in which things happened — and the list of people who, by their own account, did not know why.

THE SEQUENCE

By the time US Ambassador Nicole Theriot addressed the matter on the sidelines of the Americas Regional Conference, the visa flag had already reached an airline’s boarding system in Georgetown, already stopped a sitting judge from traveling, and already become public knowledge in Guyana — all before, on her account, the Embassy she leads had any idea why.

Set beside her own qualification — that the Embassy does, “on occasion,” submit the information that triggers such reviews, just not in this case; the timeline does not describe an Embassy that was informed and stayed quiet. It describes a flag that reached an airline’s system in Guyana before it reached the people Washington maintains here specifically to handle Guyana.

If that is accurate, it is not a communication delay. It is a process that enforces before it verifies, and verifies only when a newsroom asks.

A CASE THAT WAS ALREADY ON FILE

This did not happen to an anonymous traveler. Attorney General Anil Nandlall has confirmed that government was critical of a ruling by Justice Persaud barring the Guyana Revenue Authority from reopening a tax assessment on imported vehicles after duties had already been calculated — a ruling that intersects, at minimum by subject matter, with a Lamborghini import cited in a US federal grand jury’s eleven-count indictment. Whether that intersection is the reason for the visa review is not established. It does not need to be established to ask the question: did anyone, at any point in this chain, check whether the sitting judge they were about to deny boarding to was the same judge named in connection with a live US prosecution file — before, not after, the denial?

Nandlall says the government had no hand in the US decision. Neither the President nor the Vice President, he notes, has authority over American visa policy. That may well be true, and it answers one question. It does not answer the others. A denial of government involvement is not a demonstration of due diligence by anyone else in the chain — the airline, the reviewing authority in Washington, or the Embassy that says it was not consulted.

WHO WAS SILENT

Georgetown’s airport and airline staff deal with a small, known pool of frequent travelers. A sitting High Court judge, traveling with a delegation of Guyanese judicial officers to a judicial conference, is not a name that passes through unrecognized. Whether frontline staff had the authority to pause and escalate before enforcing a system flag is a fair question to the airline. Whether anyone with that authority chose not to use it is a fair question to whoever operated behind them.

The Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association convened more than 430 delegates from 44 countries in Kingston under the banner “Sustainable Justice, For Today, For Tomorrow, For All.” One of its own delegates was stopped en route to that conference over an unexplained flag on the day the conference opened. Four days into a five-day gathering built around judicial independence, the Association, the Jamaican Judiciary hosting it, and the Guyanese Judiciary have said nothing public about a member of their own being turned back.

Silence from an institution whose entire mandate is the integrity of judicial office, in a case involving one of its own delegates, is itself a fact worth recording.

WHAT WE ARE ASKING

This board does not allege coordination it cannot prove. We are asking, in public, the questions that four institutions have so far left unanswered:

1.To the United States Embassy in Georgetown: If the review was not initiated on information the Embassy submitted, what is the standard process by which a visa flag reaches an airline’s boarding system in a third country before the resident Embassy is briefed — and does that process allow for local verification before enforcement, or only after?

2.To the US Department of State: Is a boarding denial based on a visa “under review” status standard practice absent a final revocation, and what safeguards, if any, apply when the traveler holds sitting judicial office in the host country?

3.To the Guyana Revenue Authority and the Attorney General’s Chambers: Has any Guyanese authority, formally or informally, shared information related to Justice Persaud’s ruling on vehicle-import tax assessments with any US agency, at any point before September 19?

4.To the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association and the Judiciary of Guyana: Given the Association’s stated mandate on judicial independence and integrity, why has neither body publicly acknowledged that a delegate travelling to this year’s conference was blocked en route on his way to attend it?

5.To American Airlines’ Georgetown operation: At what point in the boarding process was the visa flag received, and did any staff member with authority to escalate have the opportunity to verify the traveler’s identity and status before enforcing the denial?

WHY THIS BOARD IS ASKING

This board has long noted — in our coverage of this government’s own “bite with no teeth” pattern; that public bodies announce measures they never enforce. This is close to the inverse: a measure enforced before anyone charged with explaining it had an answer ready. Both patterns share the same defect. The public, and in this case a sitting judge, is left to absorb the consequence of a decision that the people responsible for it cannot yet account for.

We note, too, that scrutiny in this country is not evenly distributed. Activism and independent journalism in Guyana draw swift local response — official and otherwise. The country with genuine leverage over who crosses its borders has, on this occasion and by its own ambassador’s account, moved without anyone here being consulted at all.

A system that enforces first and explains only under press inquiry is not accountable by design. It becomes accountable only when someone insists on it.

We are insisting on it. We will publish what we receive, and we will note, by name, whoever declines to answer.

— The Board