The 20 migrants who were residing at the Prospect Reef Resort are missing, and neither police nor the Immigration Department know where they went or why.
The migrants, who were taken into custody on Sept. 8 after marine police intercepted their speedboat near Virgin Gorda, told the Beacon last month that they had started the process of applying for asylum with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
However, Chief Immigration Officer Geraldine Ritter-Freeman confirmed on Friday that she was informed the migrants are no longer at the resort.
“I have no further information with regards to when, why and how [they left] and I wouldn’t want to speculate at this time,” she said.
According to the CIO, the department is “not actively” investigating their disappearance.
“We are always on alert given the intelligence received,” she added.
Acting Police Information Officer Beverly James explained on Tuesday that police have no further information to provide about the situation.
“The force is currently not conducting any investigation into their disappearance,” she stated.
The migrants told the Beacon in October that they had boarded the speedboat in St. Martin, with the hopes of travelling to St. Thomas.
However, the vessel ran out of gas before reaching its destination, and the group eventually used a cell phone to call for assistance.
VI Marine Police responded to the scene, and the migrants were taken into custody.
Police later reported that the migrants — who included 17 Cubans and three Haitians, one of whom was a child — all appeared to be in good health.
The group was initially held at the Immigration Detention Centre, but they were transferred to the Prospect Reef Resort on Oct. 6.
Christopher Boian, the public information officer for the UNHCR, explained on Oct. 3 that the agency was providing “technical support” to the Virgin Islands government in order to ensure that any asylum-seekers have access to a refugee status determination procedure in the territory.
However, Mr. Boian stated, “UNHCR cannot comment on the status of individual cases.”
Previous disappearances
This is not the first time that asylum-seekers have disappeared from Prospect Reef.
In January 2010, six Sri Lankan migrants were granted refugee status, but three of them disappeared five months later as they waited to be relocated to another country.
Inthiran Veluppillai, Vasanthakumar Shanmuganthan, and Sivkaran Sumramaniam were reported missing after they failed to show for a mandatory government check-in on June 4, 2010.
Devon Osborne, then the press secretary in the Premier’s Office, said at the time that the UN would handle the situation.
“The UN will take care of it from here,” he stated. “Government no longer has any responsibility.”
More recently, in 2014, the BVI Red Cross worked with the UNHCR and the Premier’s Office to secure the release of eight Cuban asylum-seekers who had been detained at the IDC for nine months, according to the BVIRC 2014 annual report.
The Cubans were moved to the Prospect Reef Resort, but they left the territory about three weeks later.
“A representative from UNHCR visited the territory and conducted interviews with them to determined their eligibility for asylum,” the report stated. “On learning that the process takes three months, they absconded from the territory to the neighbouring United States Virgin Islands.”