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Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who left the coun­try to fight for the Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS) are re­port­ed­ly at­tempt­ing to re­turn home amid es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence in war-torn Syr­ia and Iraq, rais­ing ur­gent le­gal, se­cu­ri­ty and hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­cerns, ac­cord­ing to at­tor­ney CJ Williams and rel­a­tives of those de­tained.

Williams said the Gov­ern­ment must act swift­ly, us­ing es­tab­lished le­gal chan­nels through the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice and the Min­istry of De­fence to man­age the sit­u­a­tion with­out re­sort­ing to cost­ly lit­i­ga­tion.

“These are Trinida­di­an na­tion­als in Syr­ia,” Williams said. “Tem­po­rary trav­el doc­u­ments should be pro­vid­ed. If they are Trinida­di­ans and they land here, good. If they’re not, we just de­port them back. It’s quite as sim­ple as that.”