Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the pres­ence of US war­ships and marines in this coun­try’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters and the wider re­gion has stopped gun and il­le­gal drug traf­fick­ers in their tracks — some­thing he says he is grate­ful for.

“The pres­ence of the Unit­ed States in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters con­tin­ues to ben­e­fit the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause now per­sons are hes­i­tat­ing. There is great hes­i­ta­tion in per­sons bring­ing in guns, il­le­gal drugs and per­form­ing this act of hu­man traf­fick­ing. That much I can tell you. I con­tin­ue to show­er praise on them. Our bor­ders were very porous over the years, and we have some friends or part­ners with us, that is as­sist­ing with that,” he said yes­ter­day out­side the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo.

His praise for the US fol­lowed sim­i­lar com­men­da­tion from both the Prime Min­is­ter and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, who cred­it­ed US mil­i­tary ac­tion against sus­pect­ed nar­co-traf­fick­ers in the re­gion with a de­crease in the traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal guns and drugs, as well as a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go.