Antigua will not take any LGBTQ deportees, prime minister says

Apparently feeling the relentless pressure from the Trump administration to accept US deportees, Antigua’s prime minister is pushing back against the types of people the federation might receive in the coming weeks, saying that authorities will not accept LGBTQ individuals.

“We have enough of those here,” Gaston Browne complained on his weekend radio show, pointing to neighboring St. Kitts and Nevis, which was forced to accept two gay individuals from the US recently. “I’m told the three that were sent to St. Kitts, two of them are LGBTQIAs,” Browne said. “We do not want people who are criminals. We don’t want people who are sick. We do not want anyone who is going to become a charge.”

His surprising remarks have come in the midst of seemingly tense negotiations between the Eastern Caribbean nation of just under 100,000 people and the US under the third country initiative, through which the US is seeking to dump unwanted immigrants on countries across the Caribbean and Central America.

He suggested that the limited resources available to the federation makes it unfit to accommodate large numbers of deportees, so the cabinet is only prepared to accept 14 in a calendar year, up from 10 during previous negotiating sessions. The US has proposed that the country accept a much larger number, but Browne has likened any such agreement to political suicide for authorities.

He has even complained that American pressure for the federation to cave has come in the form of visa restrictions on nationals applying for tourist visas from January of this year.

“I have no doubt in my mind that the restriction that was issued on Antigua as of the end of last year, effective January of this year, was as a result of this issue. From all indications, that was issued probably to bully us into signing. I’m not going to willingly drink the poison and die. You have to shoot me,” likening the situation to the US putting a gun to his head to force the government into accepting its proposals. “We are not averse to signing, but it has to be a sensible agreement.”

Several CARICOM bloc member nations are in advanced stages of negotiations with the US in accepting deportees from countries whose governments would not take them back or from those who are unwilling to return for various reasons including persecution.