Barbados will introduce sweeping new powers for immigration authorities to screen travellers before they arrive, under legislation that ministers said will transform the island’s border security and guard against terrorist and organised criminal threats.
The new legislation also contains provisions to protect personal data, allow for cross-border communication between CARICOM authorities, and prevent racial and ethnic profiling.
The Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record Bill was moved for its second reading in the House of Assembly by Minister of Home Affairs Gregory Nicholls on Tuesday evening.
The bill provides the framework for the collection, transmission, processing, storage, sharing and protection of advance passenger information and passenger name record data for anyone travelling into or out of Barbados by air or sea.
Nicholls said the purpose of the bill is to provide an extra layer of protection that can no longer be provided solely by physical efforts at the country’s ports.
He said: “This bill will strengthen Barbados’ ability to know in advance who is travelling, to assess whether any persons pose risks to the country, to the border security apparatus, to public safety and national security, and it responds to a threat long before any passenger reaches our borders.”
Describing the bill as a frontline national security weapon at the border amid increasingly transnational threats, Nicholls said Barbados must be able to identify travellers with suspicious travel patterns and persons of concern before they enter the country.
“There are terrorist networks, organised criminal networks, traffickers, trafficking in persons and illicit narcotics. People who traffic in firearms, document forgers and other criminal actors who rely on mobility, concealment, and the exploitation of the gaps within a country’s national border systems. These international criminals move between airports [and] seaports; they move between reservation systems and travel networks.”
The bill will modernise the country’s border security architecture by shifting the emphasis from a reactive system to a preventative model, he declared.
Nicholls said the bill would be a major enhancement to national border security and immigration enforcement capacity, strengthening the country’s ability to identify and analyse risks, improve intelligence and border control systems, secure its immigration systems and work more effectively with regional and international partners.
It would also require significant strengthening of the Immigration Department’s enforcement capacity, the home affairs minister said.
“I’ve had to discuss with the Immigration Department how we in Barbados are able to enhance our enforcement capacity unit within the Immigration Department. This legislation will require a complete overhaul and rethink of the internal mechanisms of how the staff are organised, but certainly we will have to be beefing up our immigration enforcement capacity.”
Nicholls said Barbados was not necessarily going to have an “ICE-style” enforcement capacity, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the US that has been heavily criticised for violent crackdowns on immigration there.
But he indicated that stronger immigration enforcement was something the country would have to seriously consider.
He noted that airlines have recently been pressed to meet advanced passenger information requirements, which help immigration officials verify identities, confirm travel details, identify discrepancies and improve passenger screening.
The advance information would also help identify travellers with bogus papers, he added.
“It cannot be denied also that the prevalence of fraudulent travel documents, false identities, manipulated travel patterns can be used to evade border controls. The immigration department has detected people with two and three passports, with two or three different identities. They’ve detected passports that look real, birth certificates and other travel information that to the naked eye presents as real.
“Some of them are laminated; people say that they do that so that they can withstand the rigours of travelling, or that they use these documents so often and it’s difficult to get a reproduced document in their native land and therefore they have to laminate these documents, but on closer examination and scrutiny, you can tell that these documents are all forged.”
Noting that Barbados would be the latest jurisdiction to enact a model CARICOM law on the advance passenger data, Nicholls said the bill would also allow Barbados to liaise with regional and international partners where necessary and lawful.
The home affairs and information minister sought to assure the public that the legislation contains safeguards to protect personal information.
“Firstly, it must be in compliance with the Data Protection Act. All collection of data processing, storage, disclosure, and transfer of advanced passenger information data and passenger name record data must be done in accordance with the Data Protection Act and other legal protections. Indeed, the protections under the Constitution of Barbados, nonetheless. This is not a piece of legislation that is intended to create any doubt as to whether or not there is data protection.”
The bill provided for a data protection officer who is to operate autonomously and without conflicts of interest. The officer would monitor compliance, conduct risk assessments, oversee data protection impact assessments, handle complaints and advise the Chief Immigration Officer and Passenger Information Unit on data protection requirements.
Nicholls said this provision is intended to prevent government overreach and reassure the public that the system is not a “Big Brother” mechanism.
The legislation also requires human review of automated decisions, meaning any positive match generated through automated screening must be reviewed by a human officer before action is taken against a passenger or crew member.
“This human review of automated decisions is an essential statutory feature of this bill. This is an important safeguard in any modern system that uses technology for efficiency but does not surrender the final judgment to automation. The bill therefore ensures that technology assists in the decision-making process rather than replaces the element of human accountability.”
The bill expressly prohibits screening criteria based on race, ethnic origin, religion, philosophical beliefs, political opinions, trade union membership, health, sexual life or sexual orientation.
Access to passenger information will also be restricted, with other government ministries and agencies unable to directly access the databases. Requests must be made through the proper channels and reviewed and validated by the Chief Immigration Officer.
Passenger name record data must be depersonalised after six months, with direct identifiers removed, while the general retention period for advance passenger information and passenger name record data is seven years. After that, the data must be deleted unless it is needed for an active case, investigation, threat or pending prosecution.
The bill also provides passengers with the right to access their own data, seek corrections and lodge complaints with the data protection officer. Serious personal data breaches likely to affect privacy or data protection rights must be reported without undue delay to the data protection officer.
The legislation also establishes an administrative penalty regime for breaches, rather than automatically treating every failure to comply as a criminal offence.
Before a penalty is imposed, the person accused of breaching the law must be notified of the alleged contravention and given an opportunity to respond. The Chief Immigration Officer must consider factors including the nature and seriousness of the breach, any harm caused, whether it was deliberate and efforts made to correct or prevent a recurrence.
Decisions imposing penalties must be made in writing stating the reasons, while those affected would have a right of appeal to the High Court.
Nicholls said: “I want to reiterate this is not intended to be an immigration bill; [it] only is indeed a national security bill, a border management bill, and a modern border management law enforcement all in one. This bill purports to give the State of Barbados the necessary tools to protect the public, strengthen the integrity of our immigration system, and ensure that lawful travel is facilitated with ease while the risk is managed intelligibly.”
(LG)
